”Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smil at one another...In order for love to be genuine, it has to be above all a love for our neighbor. WE must love those who are nearest to us, in our own family. From there, love spreads toward whoever many need us...It is easy to love those who live far away. It is not always easy to love those who live right next to us. It is easier to offer a dish of rice to meet the hunger of a needy person than to comfort the loneliness and the anguish of someone in our own home who does not feel loved.”
“Always be faithful in the little things, for in them our strength lies. To God nothing is little...do not think that sitting, standing, coming and going, that everything you do, is not important to God.” “Do not allow yourself to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best. Neighbor glroy in your success, but refer all to God in deepest thankfulness. If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about peoples opinion. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. The Lord has wille me here where I am. He will offer a solution.” ”God will not ask how many books you have read, how many miracles you have worked; God will ask you if you have done your best, for the love of him. Can you in all sincerity say, “I have done my best?” Even if the best is failure, it must be our best, our utmost.” ”If you are really in love with Christ, no matter how small your work, it will be done better; it will be wholehearted. Your work will prove your love. You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill your self with work, bu tuneless your work is interwove with love, it is useless.” “To work without love is slavery.”
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God’s seed is in us. If it were tended by a good, wise and industrious laborer, it would then flourish all the better, and would grow up to God, whose seed it is, and its fruits would be like God’s own nature. The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, the seed of a nut tree grows to be a nut tree, the seed of God grows to be God. —Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) To this James Holis writes, “One can experience the quiet joy of living in relationship to the soul simply because it works better than the alternative. The revisioned life feels better in the end, for such a person experiences his or her life as rich with meaning, and opening to a larger and larger mystery.
Vocation, even in the most humble of circumstances, is a summons to what is divine. Perhaps it is the divinity in us that wishes to be in accord with a larger divinity. Ultimately, our vocation is to become ourselves, in the thousand, thousand variants we are. . . . As all of the great world religions have long recognized, becoming ourselves actually requires repeated submissions of the ego. Work Cited James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up (Gotham Books: 2005), 91, 153-154. Meister Eckhart, “Of the Nobleman,” Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (Paulist Press: 1981), 241. |
Ian MacdonaldAn ex-copywriter turned punk rock pastor and peacemaker who dedicates his life to making the world a better place for all humanity. "that they all might be one" ~John 17:21“Prius vita quam doctrina.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) * “Life is more important than doctrine.”
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