How has love changed you?
January 2012
129 posts
“I love God: I have no time left
In which to hate the devil.” —Rabi’a
In which to hate the devil.” —Rabi’a
“…the highest freedom consists in the most lasting and the most extensive usefulness, in self-denial, in devotion to our calling, in holy fortitude, and in cheerful obedience to the best and highest will”
—Charles Follen (Unitarian, minister, poet, abolitionist)
How is faith shifting you into a bolder life?
“Faith is like a shift key on a typewriter. You can type along in lower case and you have exactly the same message as you would have if you hit the shift key and started typing in all capital letters. But when you hit the shift key, everything is brighter and cleaner and bolder and easier to see”
—Sr. José Hobday, Stories of Awe and Abundance, p.16
“Reform is the current of Providence, and the genuine reformer a man of principle.”
—E. H. Chapin, “System and Principle,” Universalist Quarterly (January 1849) p. 40 (via uuquotes)
“Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (Unitarian, Transcendentalist, philosopher, naturalist)
What are the blessings of the desert?
“If we are to be pilgrims of justice and peace, we must expect the desert.”
—Dom Helder Camara
“Your reluctance to go ‘among strangers’ cannot too soon be overcome; & the way to overcome it, is not to remain at home, but to go among them and resolve to deserve & obtain the love & esteem of those, who have never before known you. With them you have a fair opportunity to create the world anew…”
—Margaret Fuller in a letter to her father (Unitarian, Transcendentalist, social critic, author, editor)
“It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”
—Adlai Stevenson (Unitarian Universalist, statesman)
“Kindness is the only reality in the world.
Dust will eventually settle,
but human kindness lives forever.” —Carl J. Nelson, “Whirlwinds Gather Dust” Eternity Can Wait (1962) (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
Dust will eventually settle,
but human kindness lives forever.” —Carl J. Nelson, “Whirlwinds Gather Dust” Eternity Can Wait (1962) (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
“Dear Friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideals, which has confronted you in sorrow, strengthened you for noble duty, and made the world beautiful for you…One God, one law, one element, and one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”
—Olympia Brown (Universalist, minister, reformer)
“Dear Friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideals, which has confronted you in sorrow, strengthened you for noble duty, and made the world beautiful for you…One God, one law, one element, and one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”
—Olympia Brown (Universalist, minister, reformer)
How is the Holy at work with others?
“Faith is the willingness to see God at work in others – in their needs and ideas, their hopes and plans – as well as in ourselves.”
—Joan Chittester, Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia for All That Is (2010) Liturgical Press, p.10
How does attending to compassion change how you think, speak, & act?
“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (2002): 40.
“In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin;
A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.” —James Russell Lowell (Unitarian, poet)
A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.” —James Russell Lowell (Unitarian, poet)
“We live also by love. He who loves no one and is loved by no one is only half alive. We need the daily bread of human affection.”
—James Freeman Clarke, Messages of Faith, Hope, and Love (1905) Boston: Geo. E. Ellis p.203 (Unitarian, minister, reformer)
