Category: Faith
If prayer would do it
I’d pray.
If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.
If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he was free.
If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.
If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a black belt.
If anything other than love could do it
I’d have done it already
and left the hardest for last.
Stephen Levine
From: Breaking the Drought: Visions of Faith
O God,
let something essential happen to me,
something more than interesting
or entertaining,
or thoughtful.
O God,
let something essential happen to me,
something awesome,
something real.
Speak to my condition, Lord,
and change me somewhere inside where it matters,
a change that will burn and tremble and heal
and explode me into tears
or laughter
or love that throbs or screams
or keeps a terrible, cleansing silence
and dares the dangerous deeds.
Let something happen in me
which is my real self, God….
O God,
let something essential and joyful happen in me now,
something like the blooming of hope and faith,
like a grateful heart,
like a surge of awareness
of how precious each moment is,
that now, not next time,
now is the occasion
to take off my shoes
to see every bush afire,
to leap and whirl with neighbor,
to gulp the air as sweet wine
until I’ve drunk enough
to dare to speak the tender word:
“Thank you”
“I love you”
“You’re beautiful”
“Let’s live forever beginning now”
and “I’m a fool for Christ’s sake.”
-Ted Loder
Guerrillas of Grace
My heart has grown capable of taking on all forms
It is a pasture for gazelles
A table for the Torah
A convent for Christians
Ka’bah for the Pilgrim
Whichever the way love’s caravan shall lead
That shall be the way of my faith
-Ibn Arabi
“Well schooled in a false sense of control, we usually cling to the illusion of power as we struggle with the paradoxes of life. Each of us knows those times when we dig in our feet, stiffen our body, tighten our jaw and demand rational explanations for unexplainable events…. As we encounter experiences for which there are no answers, no rational explanations or solutions, we arrive at a point where, in faith, we are asked to stand in a Mystery that far exceeds our human understanding.” -Doris Klein, Journey of the Soul
“Jesus won’t try to speak over the noise in our lives; love whispers so we won’t be confused about who’s doing the talking.” -Bob Goff
“The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.” -Mother Teresa
“Always pray to have eyes that see the best in people, a heart that forgives the worst, mind that forgets the load, and a soul that never loses faith in God.” -Unknown
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing, there is yet faith
But the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“The truth is there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what the steps are, and worse, at any moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy and His love.” -Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
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