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To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God.

Joan D. Chittister

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Joan D. Chittister
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More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

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Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.
Joan D. Chittister
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It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
Joan D. Chittister
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The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.
Joan D. Chittister
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The question is not, do we go to church the question is, have we been converted. The crux of Christianity is not whether or not we give donations to popular charities but whether or not we are really committed to the poor.
Joan D. Chittister
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Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Joan D. Chittister
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I begin to understand as never before that holiness is made of dailiness, of living life as it comes to me, not as I insist it be.
Joan D. Chittister
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A life of value is not a series of great things well done it is a series of small things consciously done.
Joan D. Chittister
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Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn.
Joan D. Chittister
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We punish the body and strip the earth. And we do it in pursuit of a so-called holiness that smacks of the bogus, that denies the gifts of God, that makes us marauders on the earth.
Joan D. Chittister
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The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us. The harvest of youth is achievement the harvest of middle-age is perspective the harvest of age is wisdom the harvest of life is serenity.
Joan D. Chittister
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Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.
Joan D. Chittister
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Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there.
Joan D. Chittister
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There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us.
Joan D. Chittister
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Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves.
Joan D. Chittister
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Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time.
Joan D. Chittister
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We each should have 2 pockets: in 1 the message, 'I am dust & ashes' in the other, 'For me the universe was made.'
Joan D. Chittister
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We have learned that the things we amassed to prove to ourselves how valuable, how important, how successful we were, didn't prove it at all. In fact, they have very little to do with it. It's what's inside of us, not what's outside of us that counts.
Joan D. Chittister
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Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it.
Joan D. Chittister
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To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God.
Joan D. Chittister
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We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is
Joan D. Chittister