Mandy > Mandy's Quotes

“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Speed is the ultimate defense, the antidote to stopping and really looking. If we really saw what we were doing and who we had become, we feel we might not survive the stopping and the accompanying self-appraisal. So we don't stop, and the faster we go, the harder it becomes to stop.”
― Dan B. Allender, Sabbath

“The only parameter that is to guide our Sabbath is delight. Will this be merely a break or a joy? Will this lead my heart to wonder or routine? Will I be more grateful or just happy that I got something done?”
― Dan B. Allender, Sabbath

“Hope is not mere optimism; rather, it is moving forward in anticipation of redemption in spite of the improbability of rescue.”
― Dan B. Allender, Sabbath

“It is not presumptuous to ask, 'What is it that you see in me that brings you delight?”
― Dan B. Allender, Sabbath

“We are not to work on the Sabbath because it takes us out of the play of joy. It is as bizarre as making love to your spouse, but getting out of bed during the process to cut your lawn or wash dishes. Such an offense would do far more than spoil the mood; it would be a direct assault on the integrity of joy, announcing that a mundane chore is more pleasurable than sexual joy with your spouse.”
― Dan B. Allender, Sabbath

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”
― L.R. Knost

“At this point I could have asked myself several questions: Why am I so clumsy? Why does this have to happen now? What did I do to deserve this? But the problem with these questions is that they are completely unproductive and disempowering. They are natural, of course. Probably even necessary. It’s all part of the process of grieving a loss. But ultimately there are better questions.”
― Michael Hyatt, Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want

“So where is the output? How am I regularly getting rid of the soul clutter I no longer need?”
― Emily P. Freeman, The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions

“Becoming a soul minimalist does not mean that you should hold on to nothing but rather that nothing should have a hold on you.”
― Emily P. Freeman, The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions

“Balance only happens in dynamic tension. Balance is giving not equal but appropriate attention to each of the various categories of your life. This will necessarily mean that some categories get more time and some less, but each will get the attention and resources necessary to keep it moving toward an intentional outcome.”
― Michael Hyatt, Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want

“You can’t get where you want to go unless you start with where you are. Unfortunately, modern life seems to provide an endless array of distractions to avoid the difficult things of life. Worse, so much of pop culture tells us that our circumstances are someone else’s fault. The truth is, you can’t improve what you won’t face and own. The problems you encounter in your health, marriage, parenting, career, or personal finances will not just magically disappear. They have to be confronted and dealt with. This is difficult to do without outside help or a process that forces it.”
― Michael Hyatt, Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrowmindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” - Mark Twain”
― Jerome D. Lubbe, The Brain Based Enneagram: You are not A number

“sense of community will suffer when churches focus more on propositions and theological points than on people. People are much more than brains. They are wholistic beings with varied thoughts, an assortment of backgrounds and experiences, and varied needs to uniquely express themselves. They desire to feel a sense of belonging amidst diversity rather than feeling like they can only find acceptance if they believe exactly the same as everyone else.”
― Keith Giles, Before You Lose Your Mind: Deconstructing Bad Theology in the Church

“You would not cry if you knew that by looking deeply into the rain you would still see the cloud.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

“As G. K. Chesterton once wrote, Your religion is not the church you belong to, but the cosmos you live inside of. Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“At best, the theory of substitutionary atonement has inoculated us against the true effects of the Gospel, causing us to largely “thank” Jesus instead of honestly imitating him. At worst, it led us to see God as a cold, brutal figure, who demands acts of violence before God can love his own creation”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“Too often, we have substituted the messenger for the message. As a result, we spent a great deal of time worshiping the messenger and trying to get other people to do the same. Too often this obsession became a pious substitute for actually following what he taught—and he did ask us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him.”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong

“Prophets move us beyond uncritical groupthink. Every group and every movement have their shadow sides. We need trained seers who are neither co-dependent on the religious system for their identity (such as clergy) nor seeking to make a good name for themselves.”
― Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage

“True prophets will guide us into, hold us inside of, and then pull us through to the other side of what will always seem like disorder. The more you have bought into any kind of absolute and necessary order, the bigger a dose of disorder you will need. A rule follower, for example, might need to confront a situation where their rules just don’t work—and be honest about it.”
― Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage