Waving or Drowning?

Living life in Vancouver, BC. (but currently in Xiamen, China.) I also blog at Waving or Drowning? when I have more to say.

[miketodd07]

Widen your consciousness to the dimension of the earth and you will have a place for everything.

Mira Alfassa

[miketodd07]

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

[miketodd07]

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle

[miketodd07]

People seldom look very hard for things they don't want to find. They avert their eyes from such things.

My Ishmael (Daniel Quinn)

[miketodd07]

History has revealed too many people who have tried to be spiritual before they have learned how to be human! It is a major problem. Maybe this is why Jesus came to model humanity for us—much more than divinity. Once we get the simplest human parts down (stop slamming doors and start loving rocks), God will most assuredly take it all from there. Get the ordinary human thing down, and you will have all the spirituality that you can handle.

Richard Rohr

[miketodd07]

The precise message of the Raised Up Christ is that God is available everywhere, as his body moved beyond any limits of space and time. For some reason we like to keep God “elsewhere” or “just here,” where we can control God by our theologies, tabernacles, and services. We often tell God whom he can love or not love. Poor God must conform to our moral systems and judgments.

Richard Rohr

[miketodd07]

When man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because.

E.E. Cummings

[miketodd07]

The difficult part of seeing is setting aside what you're sure you already know.

Seth Godin

[miketodd07]

If you want to do something you have never done before, you have to do something you have never done before. If you want to go somewhere you have never gone before, you have to go somewhere you have never gone before. You cannot do something new by doing old things. If you want your life to change, you have to change your life. So go ahead. It's safe. And it's also...about time.

Neale Donald Walsch

[miketodd07]

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

George Bernard Shaw

[miketodd07]

Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

[azspot]

I have no interest in megachurches with jocular millionaire pastors. I think what happens in them is sociopolitical, not spiritual. I believe the prosperity gospel tries to pass through the eye of the needle. I believe it is easier for a Republican to pass through the eye of a needle than for a camel to get into heaven. I have no patience for churches that evangelize aggressively. I have no interest in being instructed in what I must do to be saved. I prefer vertical prayers, directed up toward heaven, rather than horizontal prayers, directed sideways toward me,” he continued. “If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must regard their beliefs with the same respect our own deserve.

Roger Ebert (via azspot)

[miketodd07]

Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, 'Have no care for tomorrow. Don't worry about whether you're going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don't you think he'll do the same for you?' In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, 'Hell no!'

Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

[miketodd07]

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Arundhati Roy

[miketodd07]

If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success...If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

Thomas Merton

[miketodd07]

For the first 1000 years of the church's history, believers took for granted that there were literal, historical, analogical, symbolic, mystical, moral, inspirational, cosmological, and eschatological levels of interpretation of the Bible text. Each was true on its own level, but maybe not helpful on the other levels. Nor did one level trump all the others. This became a living and prayerful experience. Presently, we seem to have gone backwards.

Richard Rohr

[miketodd07]

Confession is like really, really healthy vomit. It may smell and get all over the front of your shirt, but you feel better--you feel cleansed--when you're done.

Rob Bell