Quotations Search Results
We found 355 matching quotes
Robert Frager, The Wisdom of Islam
My Sufi master used to teach that the best way to express gratitude for a gift is to use it well. For example, if someone were to give you an automobile, it would be extremely ungrateful to let that car sit and rust in the garage, or to drive it without maintaining it until it broke down. To be grateful for the gift of a car means to use it well and maintain it conscientiously.
To be grateful for the gift of intelligence is to develop your intelligence by ongoing study, to use your intelligence to help others, and to seek to understand God's creation and God's Truth. To be grateful for the gift of material abundance is to share your wealth with those in need.
Be generous with your other gifts as well. For example, you have been given the gift of time; be generous and spend time with the lonely. You have been given a heart; give compassion to the heartbroken. Make a list of all you have to be grateful for, and then make a second list of all the ways you can express your gratitude.
The best way to express gratitude for a gift
Jean Dalby, Wallace Clift, The Archetype of Pilgrimage
In all kinds of pilgrimages, people may reach out to others, hold hands, pray or sing together, connecting collectively with one another and with the spirit of the site. People have a sense of shared unity in these shared experiences. Sometimes traveling pilgrims sing the stories of the events and images as they walk together. Sometimes in these group pilgrimages the images themselves are carried in procession by the pilgrims, connecting bodily with the image of the god or saint being honored.
People have a sense of shared unity in these shared experiences.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
Real dialogue makes us more open-minded, tolerant, and understanding. Buddhists and Christians both like to share their wisdom and experience. Sharing in this way is important and should be encouraged. But sharing does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. That would be cruel. People are stable and happy only when they are firmly rooted in their own tradition and culture. To uproot them would make them suffer.
Real dialogue makes us more open-minded
The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners
“Real success is when we have peace in our home and happiness in our heart. Then we are truly a successful person. The richest people in the world are still chasing and purchasing things and businesses. Are they enjoying life? Are they satisfied, or do they still want to buy more? We can have material things, but the real key is to enjoy what we have — now. If we are rich, it is wonderful because we can share and give to help others. Many of us live in abundance. We need to appreciate it and enjoy it. Enjoy the weather. Enjoy our family. Enjoy our life. It doesn’t matter if we are rich or poor — enjoy. If we want to be happy, we need to train ourselves to appreciate what we do have. No need to pine or grasp for what we don’t have. When we appreciate our life, there is no suffering.”
Advice for joyful living and peaceful dying.
Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center
If you belonged to the Ojibwa or some other rooted people, when you returned from a long and perilous journey, your family and neighbors would ask if you learned a new song, met a new animal, come upon a healing herb or a source of food or a holy place. What vision had you brought back for the community? The prime reason for traveling, after all, was to enrich the life at home.
"What did you find?" my father would ask when I returned from a camping trip or an after-dinner stroll. And I would show him a fossil or feather, tell him how the sun lit up the leaves of a hickory, how a skunk looked me over; I would recall for him the taste of elderberries or the rush of wind in the white pines or the crunch of locust shells underfoot. Only in the sharing of what I had found was the journey completed, the circle closed.
What did you find?
Walter Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text
Moses — probably a secret Calvinist — announced to Israel God's will for money and property, one of the most distinctive marks of Biblical ethics. It's called Jubilee. Moses — the secret Calvinist — declared as God's will: every fifty years you must give back to the people the land and property that is inalienably theirs that they have lost in the rough and tumble of the economy. You must give it back, even if you own it legally, and it is properly yours. You must give it back, because in the end it is theirs and not yours, inalienably. The start of the occasion for the return of property is signaled by a trumpet, in Hebrew, yabal, from which we get Jubilee, Jubilation, a huge celebration of bringing things back to where they ought to be. So imagine, when the yabal sounds, when the signal is given, everybody returns property, everybody cancels debts, everybody breaks off the mad scramble of accumulation and acquisition. It is a signal not unlike the great gavel that ends the fury of Wall Street every day, only it signifies something very different. At the center of biblical faith is a command from God that curbs economic transactions by an act of communal sanity that restores everyone to proper place in the economy, because life in the community of faith does not consist in getting more but in sharing well. . . .
It is ethical. Moses observed the working of the market, the practice of accumulation and acquisitiveness and greed and monopoly. He observed, as anyone can see, that in the long run the operations of accumulation and acquisitiveness tend to monopoly, so that some end up with a lot and some end up with a little or with none, have and have-nots, wealth and poverty. And what Moses figured out is that such a process is an impossible way to run a community. And so he announces in that long speech in Leviticus 25, at the end of forty-nine years of accumulation, the property will be returned to its proper owners (vv. 27-28). The land cannot be sold to perpetuity (v.23), that is, irreversibly, because the land belongs to God and not to the accumulators. God wants the little ones, who always lose in the market game, to have their stuff. When the signal is given, the vicious cycles of accumulation are broken, wealth is divested back to the ones who do not have it. It is an act of divestment.
It is likely here, more than anywhere, that the Bible questions our usual assumptions about our life in the world.
It's called Jubilee
Prayer — A Litany of Generosity
(Response to each: Gracious God, give us generous hearts.)
— to share whatever gift it is that you have given to us. . .
— to acknowledge you as the giver of all good gifts. . .
— to give without counting the cost. . .
— to share without expecting something in return. . .
— to be wise in the way of caring for ourselves and others. . .
— to hold all of our treasures and values with open hands. . .
— to have gospel priorities and to align our life, love and time in their light. . .
— to be gracious and unbegrudging in our giving. . .
— to recognize the abundance of blessings in each passing day. . .
— to know the freedom that comes with true generosity. . .
— to experience the heart of the widow giving her mite. . .
— to accept our talents, whether many or few, and to use them in service of the Kingdom. . .
— to grow in giving thanks for everything. . .
— to be happy with having what we need and to be wise enough to know what it is that we want and do not need. . .
— to fall more deeply in love with the God of all generosity so that our hearts are strong enough to give away freely whatever is asked. . .
O gracious God, who so generously lavishes our lives with goodness, create in our hearts a deep center of gratitude, a center that grows so strong in its thanksgiving that sharing freely of our treasures becomes the norm and the pattern of our existence. Remind us often of how much you cherish us, of how abundantly you have offered gifts to us, especially in the hours of our greatest need. May we always be grateful for your reaching into our lives with surprises of joy, growth, and unearned love. Amen.
A litany of God's generosity.
Shoplifters
We are huge fans of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's films; they always touch our hearts with their quirky characters and respect for the manifold mysteries of life. We were moved by Maborosi, a profound film about one woman's long and arduous journey through grief's labyrinth. Next was After Life, an exquisite drama about individuals choosing the best days of life. Nobody Knows told the harrowing story of four children in Tokyo who are abandoned by their mother and forced to fend for themselves. In Still Walking, the director turned his attention to a Japanese family get-together to explore sibling rivalry, the yearning to be wanted, and the mysteries of death. I Wish was a charming and inventive drama about wishes, questing, friendship, sibling solidarity, and the wonderful support of grandparents when we need them the most.
Perhaps the film most similar thematically to Shoplifters is Like Father, Like Son, in which Kore-eda explored the slow and surprising transformation of a self-absorbed and distant father who comes to see how important it is for both children and parents to be loved and appreciated. This sensitive director has a gift for exploring the ups and downs and ins and outs of family life.
Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) lives with his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) in a ramshackle Japanese bungalow with Shota (Jyo Kairi), a pre-teen boy. a college-aged young woman Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), and Grandmother (Kirin Kiki). This makeshift family is not bonded to each other by blood but by the ancient virtues of respect, kindness, empathy, and compassion.
The Shibatas have improvised their living situation. The apartment is rented to Grandmother, and her pension pays for other expenses as well. Osamu works on a construction site, Nobuyo has a job in an industrial laundry, and Aki performs strip teases for an Internet site. Still, they can't make ends meet without daily shoplifting excursions by Shota and Osamu. When they hear of a new program called "workshare" where workers are expected to alternate one-half day shifts, Osamu observes that "everyone gets a bit poorer every day."
One cold day, they come across a sickly little girl (Miyu Sasaki) and bring her back to their place. After seeing that she carries cuts and wounds on her body, and overhearing outside her house that her parents never wanted her, they decide she is better off with them. The little girl quickly warms to the others and soon is calling Shota "Brother" and enjoying the care and hugs from Grandmother and Nobuyo.
Every human being has the capacity for kindness, and it is up to the grown-ups in their lives to provide the milieu that brings out the best in children. We see this happening as the family shares meals, watches fireworks, and frolics in the ocean at the beach. "Sometimes it's better to choose your own family," one of them observes. They become like the fish in the book Shota is reading, Swimmy by Leo Lionni. The little fish are threatened by a big bad tuna, until they learn to swim together in the shape of a fish — their chosen family — and scare their troubles away.
Kore-eda's Shoplifting encourages our empathy for others, our outrage at the injustice brought on my economic inequality, and our awareness of the vulnerability of those forced to exist on the outskirts of society. Most of all, it shows us the value of family in the nurturing of young and old alike.
This Japanese film is one of the Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2018.
A Japanese film that touches the heart with its sensitive and soulful advocacy of kind-heartedness.
Mini-Retreat - Spiritual Work on Simplicity
(Center yourself in a quiet place. Light a candle or ring a bell to signal the beginning of your mini-retreat.)
Invocation
Open my heart and my mind
to be receptive to the beauties
and the bounties of simplicity.
Read and Reflect
(Read these short passages aloud. Choose one or more of them to copy into your journal. Reflect upon and write about how you can apply the thought(s) to your own experiences.)
"Simple living is about freedom. It's about a freedom to choose open and generous living rather than a secure and sheltered way. . . . Simple living is about moving through life rather lightly, delighting in the plain and the subtle."
— Jose Hobday in Simple Living
"Our lives are filled with a million things to do and consume that distract us from simple living. When I pay attention and become mindful, I marvel at the simple things in life that I once passed over. Consuming less and living simply are the true conditions of happiness."
— Barbara Ann Kipfer in 201 Little Buddhist Reminders
"Living simply entails clearing our lives and our houses of spiritual and material clutter so as to create more space for faithful living."
— Catherine Whitmire in Plain Living
"Simple living is about living deliberately. . . . It's about being fully aware of why you are living your particular life, and knowing that life is the one you have chosen thoughtfully."
— Janet Luhrs in Simple Living Guide
"The older I grow the more clearly I perceive the dignity and winning being of simplicity in thought, conduct, and speech: a desire to simplify all that is complicated and to treat everything with the greatest naturalness and clarity."
— Pope John XXIII in Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster
"Simplicity is the seedbed for sane, free, and illumined holy living."
— Tilden Edwards in Living Simply Through the Day
"Voluntary simplicity has the additional feature that it tends to position sharing rather than growth as the centerpiece of justice."
— Mark A. Burch in Stepping Lightly
Practice
The first step in embracing simplicity is discernment – discerning how much is enough for you. Take a few minutes to reflect on what you really need in your life. Do you have enough already? What is lacking? What is excess?
Then reflect on the larger implications of your choice to live simply. As Mark A. Burch writes in Stepping Lightly: "Discerning how much is enough also involves placing our personal consumption of things in the context of environmental sustainability, social justice, and inter-generational equity. In this realm, we move beyond considerations of what may be expedient or comfortable in terms of our individual lives and consider ourselves to be part of a much larger whole."
Record your thoughts in your journal or draw a picture of yourself living a simple life.
Closing Prayer
A Prayer for Simplicity
by Edward Hays in Pray All Ways
Lord of True Liberty,
You who commissioned Moses
to lead Your chosen children from bondage in Egypt
to the freedom of a new land,
help me to find a real freedom in simplicity.
Cure me, Lord, of "buyer’s itch";
heal me of the consumer’s consumption
that keeps me constantly discontent
and continuously craving more and more.
Show to me the joys of a simple lifestyle
whereby in my “freedom from things”
I shall have more time and energy
to invest in my relationships with those I love,
with myself, and with You, my God. . . .
May my efforts at simplicity not cease
with looking into my closet and counting clothes,
but may they take on their greatest energy and zeal
when looking into my heart
and removing all that is not in the fashion
of Your divine heart,
all that blocks my loving others.
May I be reminded frequently that whatever form
my attempts at simplicity may take
that it is a simple heart
which You first and foremost desire.
(Blow out the candle or ring the bell to signal the end of your mini-retreat.)
A personal retreat on living freely, simply, and from the heart.
Where Two or Three Are Gathered
Daniel Prechtel is a spiritual director and consultant with Lamb & Lion Spiritual Guidance Ministries, which provides personal, group, and church/organization spiritual direction, consulting, apprenticeship, and spiritual formation programs. He also offers long-distance spiritual guidance as well as online spiritual direction and dreamwork groups.
Prechtel has designed this paperback for "all who desire useful models for group spiritual companionship and a resource for developing leaders of these groups." He begins by making a good case for the formation of small groups in churches and moves on to a brief historical overview of traditions of spiritual guidance along with an assessment of their theological and psycho-spiritual dimensions.
The core of Where Two or Three Are Gathered is an impressive compilation of ten models of spiritual companionship groups delivered in four categories:
• Groups for Sharing Spiritual Practices and Exercises: Circle of the Spirit, Holy Reading, Contemplative Prayer
• Groups for Cultivating Inner Awareness and Discernment: Spiritual Friends, Dreamwork, Communal Dreaming
• Groups for Building a Spiritual Community of Support: Benedictine Community, Companions in Transition
• Groups for Compassion and Social Action: Healing Prayer, Covenant for Justice and Peace
In addition to this helpful material, Prechtel provides a set of spiritual exercises for Circle of the Spirit groups and retreats. We liked "God Within You in Unity," "Names of God Through Your Life," and "Those Who Have Been Christ for You."
Useful models for group spiritual companionship.