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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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Joan D. Chittister
Abandon
Response
Blame
Spiritual
Often
Simplistic
Abandoning

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June is the time for being in the world in new ways, for throwing off the cold and dark spots of life.
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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.
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Humility is authenticity. It comes from the Latin word humus, meaning earth. As the church has taught, we're made of dust, and unto dust we shall return.
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prayer can be an easy substitute for real spirituality. It would be impossible to have spirituality without prayer, of course, but it is certainly possible to pray without having a spirituality at all. How do you know? 'Am I becoming kinder?' is a good place to start.
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If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the kings acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.
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Only ideas keep ideas flowing. When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves - and to others - to keep on growing.
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Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.
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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.
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When I get on the internet and hide behind a false identity, and then allow that hiding to free me from the standards of decency, to begin to use language I would never use in front of my mother, all of a sudden, there's nothing between me and you, but worse than that, there's nothing between me and my worst self.
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Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.
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Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.
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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.
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Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.
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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.
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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.
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Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . .It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.
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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.
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The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.
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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.
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Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad.
Joan D. Chittister