Category: Spirit matters

To pray is to revolt. To pray is to revolt. The one who prays is not saying, that’s the way is and that’s that!The one who prays is saying, that’s the way it is, but it should not be that way. Dorothy Soelle Our crying out is, as it was for Jesus on the cross, […]

Using and Leaving; finding out what helps or hinders As everything on the face of the earth exists to help us fulfil our purpose,we must appreciate and make use of everything that helps,and rid ourselves of anything that is destructive to our living in love in his presence. Ignatius of Loyola, Principle and Foundation Image: […]

This is a difficult country, and our home Edwin Muir ….forget your self-defeating parables. You alone have the choice among earth’s countless creatures to live or die…. Gwen Harwood Image: Corita Kent, Flowers Grow out of Dark Moments The acceptance of oneself is the precondition of all human vitality.Romano Guardini Life has a way of […]

He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. Neitzche What are we here for? Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?Isaiah 55:1 The aims of life are the best defence against deathPrimo Levi Image: Michael Winters, […]

First, create silence – as a precondition to any kind of healing. Kierkegaard There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.        Albert Einstein Days pass when I forget the mystery.Problems insoluble and problems offeringtheir own ignored solutionsjostle […]

God is a cherishing presence that sets us free Edward Schillebeeckx If God is love, and if the universe is His creation, then for the being of the universe God is totally expended in precarious endeavour, of which the issue, as triumph or as tragedy, has passed from his hands…..God waits upon the response of […]

God is the “bottomless encouragement to a faltering and frightened being”. John Updike Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed, inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of […]

God makes room for creation by contracting divine presence and power. Elizabeth Johnson To “have room inside yourself….to have another actually living and moving and having being in yourself…is quintessentially a female experience” (cf Philippians 2:6-8- the self-emptying, or divine kenosis enacted in Jesus Christ). God restricts divine presence and power to make room for […]

God desires us, as if we were God Rowan Williams The whole story of creation, Incarnation and our incorporation into Christ’s body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God’s self-giving that God’s self makes in the life of the Trinity. We are […]

God is a beckoning word Gerard Hughes Patrick White, the Nobel Prize winning Australian novelist, wrote of a defining moment in his life: “During what seemed like months of rain I was carrying a tray load of food to a wormy litter of pups down at the kennels when I slipped and fell on my […]