"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."  --Desmond Tutu

"It is true that Love knows no such word as "impossible," for it deems "all things possible, all things allowed.'"  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell."  --William Saroyan

Prayer Leads to Compassion

Prayer and action can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. If prayer leads us into deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service. And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us to a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer. In prayer we meet Christ, and in him all human suffering. In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ. . . .

Action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of a compassionate life and the final criterion of being a Christian. Such acts do not stand beside the moments of prayer and worship but are themselves such moments. Why? Because Jesus Christ, who did not cling to his divinity, but became as we are, can be found where there are hungry, thirsty, alienated, naked, sick, and imprisoned people. Precisely when we live in an ongoing conversation with Christ and allow the Spirit to guide our lives, we will recognize Christ in the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden and will hear his cry and respond to it wherever he is revealed.

--Henri Nouwen

"I love you, Jesus, and bear in mind the words of St. John of the Cross: 'The least act of pure love is of more value than all the other works put together.'"  --St. Therese of Lisieux

“Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it.”  --Mother Angelica

"I am always discovering in [the Gospels] new lights and hidden mysterious meanings. I know and I have experienced that "the Kingdom of God is within us." (Luke 17:21)"  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"For me, prayer means launching out from the heart toward God; a cry of grateful love from the crest of joy or the trough of despair: it is a vast supernatural force that opens out my heart and binds me close to Jesus."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"I am not dying, I am entering into Life..."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"It is so wonderful to think that God is really just, that God takes into account our weakness and our frailty."  ---St. Therese of Lisieux

“The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying”  --Robert Louis Stevenson

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."  --G. K. Chesterton

"The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and [we] cannot live without a song."  --Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Something Has Happened

"One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you stay with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. Isn’t this true of all really important events in life? When I am together with someone I love very much, we seldom talk about our relationship. The relationship, in fact, is too central to be a subject of talk. But later, after we have separated and write letters, we realize how much it all meant to us, and we even write about it."  --Henri Nouwen

Be Still and Wait

"Maybe I have been living much too fast, too restlessly, too feverishly, forgetting to pay attention to what is happening here and now, right under my nose. Just as a whole world of beauty can be discovered in one flower, so the great grace of God can be tasted in one small moment. Just as no great travels are necessary to see the beauty of creation, so no great ecstasies are needed to discover the love of God. But you have to be still and wait so that you can realize that God is not in the earthquake, the storm, or the lightning, but in the gentle breeze with which he touches your back."  --Henri Nouwen

"To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing."  --Pamela Haines

“If love dwells in you, you have no enemy on earth.”  --St Ephraem the Syrian

'I, who am but a little grain of sand, wish to set to work, though I have neither courage nor strength. Now this very want of power will make my task easier, for I wish to work for love."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to that day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.”  --Henri Nouwen

"To live by love is to go through life sowing peace and joy in hearts!"  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Now is the time we must shake off the great mantle of night which has enveloped us, and reach for the light. The new day which is dawning must find us determined, enlightened, and resolute."  --Frantz Fanon

"It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. [God] gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity."  --Cesar Chavez

"I desperately want a movement space that knows that compassion is not a zero-sum game. Where we have compassion for people's ignorance. Where we are allowed to be messy and to make mistakes. Where accountability is an act of love and the word 'holding' is the key word in 'holding others accountable.' Where the sanctity of all life and our interdependence to everything that exists is so deeply known and felt that no person will ever question their sense of belonging. Where no matter what any of us has done, that we all know that there will always be space for us here. That no matter what we have done, we will trust our circle enough to grieve the harm that we caused and to say, 'yes, I did that,' and know that we will not be cast out of humanity. Where we can learn to respond to even the most egregious harms without letting our sights off of the North Star of healing."  --Kazu Haga

See Through Things

"Contemplative life is a human response to the fundamental fact that the central things in life, although spiritually perceptible, remain invisible in large measure and can very easily be overlooked by the inattentive, busy, distracted person that each of us can so readily become. The contemplative looks not so much around things but through them into their center. Through their center he discovers the world of spiritual beauty that is more real, has more density, more mass, more energy, and greater intensity than physical matter. In effect, the beauty of physical matter is a reflection of its inner content."  --Henri Nouwen

Clear the Path to Your Heart

"To be calm and quiet by yourself is not the same as sleeping. In fact, it means being fully awake and following with close attention every move going on inside of you. It requires the discipline to recognize the urge to get up and go as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is really close at hand. It offers the freedom to stroll through your own inner yard and rake up the leaves and clear the path so you can easily find the way to your heart. Perhaps there will be fear and uncertainty when you first come upon this “unfamiliar terrain,” but slowly and surely you will discover an order and a familiarity that deepens your longing to stay home with yourself."  --Henri Nouwen

"Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change."  --Richard Rohr