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In Benedictine spirituality, work is what we do to continue what God wanted done....God goes on creating through us. Consequently a life spent serving God must be a life spent giving to others what we have been given.

Joan D. Chittister

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Joan D. Chittister
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More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

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The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually we become what we say we are - followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God
Joan D. Chittister
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Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other.
Joan D. Chittister
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If anything diminishes a person, it is the cancer of constant complaining.
Joan D. Chittister
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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.
Joan D. Chittister
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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.
Joan D. Chittister
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There is a built-in danger in old age which, if we give in to it, makes aging one of the most difficult periods of life, rather than one of the most satisfying - which it should be. Tye danger of old age is that we may start acting old.
Joan D. Chittister
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Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.
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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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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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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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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In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world.
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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In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often.
Joan D. Chittister
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Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges.
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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Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.
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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Hospitality is simply love on the loose.
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