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Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Joan D. Chittister

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Joan D. Chittister
Responsibility
Suffering
Others
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Sympathy
Mercy
Commitment
Compassion

More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

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Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step towards dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.
Joan D. Chittister
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Our role in life is to bring the light of our own souls to the dim places around us.
Joan D. Chittister
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Indifference is the acid of life. It erodes all the spirit that's in us and makes us useless to anyone else. We all have to stand for something, or our souls cease to breathe.
Joan D. Chittister
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Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.
Joan D. Chittister
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We must learn to pray out of our weaknesses so that God can become our strength.
Joan D. Chittister
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I celebrate myself, the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self — our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, That's good.
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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It's possible to have too much in life. Too many clothes jade our appreciation of new ones too much money can out us out of touch with life too much free time and dull the edge of the soul. We need sometimes to come very near the bone so tha we can taste the marrow of life, rather than its superfluities.
Joan D. Chittister
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We are living in a period of commerical globalization. What we really need is spiritual globalization.
Joan D. Chittister
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Memory is not about what went on in the past, it is about what is going on inside us right this moment. … It is made up of the stuff of life in the process of becoming the grist of the soul.
Joan D. Chittister
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Hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression.
Joan D. Chittister
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Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.
Joan D. Chittister
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Religion is pointing toward the moon
Joan D. Chittister
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But we are here to depart from this world as finished as we can possibly become.
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 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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Ideals are like stars, Carl Schurz wrote. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life They govern what we become as we do it.
Joan D. Chittister
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Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.
Joan D. Chittister
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Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it
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