What Faith Sees

God, Joy, Life 0

What does faith see?  For that, we must return, I think, to the moment when we saw by faith for the very first time.  In that moment, we saw differently than we had ever seen before.  We had x-ray vision then.  We were able to see through the things of this world and recognize in them God’s invisible qualities — love, order, patience, enthusiasm — revealed in the world he created for our benefit.  Faith, after all, merely confirms what creation shows us in that first lightning bolt of believing.  We looked at apples, grass, shade and saw provision.  We looked at algebra and saw order.  We looked at our pain and struggles, even our terror, and recognized God’s patience and his amazing gift of free will.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 55

Vibrancy

Inspiration, Joy 0

When your tribal beliefs conflict with your soul, your vibration drops, your inner light dims, and you open yourself to physical, emotional, and spiritual maladies.

This doesn’t mean you have to give up your tribal heritage and throw away everything you own, but simply the items that cause a conflict or that do not raise your vibration or allow you the life you want and deserve….  You need to consciously and happily — not forcefully — decide what to keep, what will raise your vibration.

— Christel Nani, Sacred Choices, p. 194-195

Little Tests

Forgiveness, God, Life 0

Our life unfolds as if God were showing us a slide show, and each slide is a little test.  God says, “Can you forgive this?“  If the answer is no, God simply moves the slide back for us to view again later.

— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 18

Mythic Truth of Fiction

Books, Reading, Truth 0

Why else do we read fiction, anyway?  Not to be impressed by someone’s dazzling language — or at least I hope that’s not our reason.  I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth:  The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all:  our own self-story.  Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

— Orson Scott Card, Introduction, Ender’s Game, 1991 Tor edition

A Greater Truth

Forgiveness 0

It’s not that there is never a mistake or an evil motivation, but that there is something else as well.  Forgiveness is the door to experiencing that something else.

Forgiveness doesn’t excuse behavior; it looks past it to a greater truth.

— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 18

Choosing Happiness

Joy 0

We need to make the choice to be happy in a particular situation, just as it is, and at a given moment.  It might not be a perfect moment, but it is ours; we are breathing; we are alive.  We choose our happiness incrementally, moment by moment, hour by hour.  Now.

— Alexandra Stoddard, Choosing Happiness:  Keys to a Joyful Life, p. 1

Someone Wonderful

Life 0

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life.  It never crossed my mind that person could be me.

— Anna Quindlen, quoted in This Is Not the Life I Ordered, by Deborah Collins Stephens, Jackie Speier, Michealene Cristini Risley, and Jan Yanehiro