Carl McColman > Carl's Quotes

“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.”
― Evelyn Underhill

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

“Some people are granted the experience of very high states of consciousness, and yet if these states are not accompanied by a development of character through a prior education that involves every department of human experience, you might have an enlightened being whom you would not trust even to be a baby-sitter.”
― Kabir Edmund Helminski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation

“Prayer is a common link to most expressions of faith, but the question this prayer moment raises for us is: “What happens after we pray? What do we actually do in response to that for which we have prayed?”
― Leah Gunning Francis, Ferguson and Faith: Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community

“It is a modern mistake to think that great personalities can grow without being rooted in the rich soil of the past, in the memory of great deeds and in fidelity to promises made across the generations. Civilization is founded on covenants that cannot be broken without consequence.”
― Stratford Caldecott, The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit

“the need to prioritize prayer, reverence for the Eucharist, the importance of solitude, and the call to immerse oneself in sacred Scripture.”
― Robert J. Wicks, Prayer in the Catholic Tradition: A Handbook of Practical Approaches

“So when one person has said ‘Moses thought what I say,’ and another ‘No, what I say,’ I think it more religious in spirit to say ‘Why not rather say both, if both are true?’ And if anyone sees a third or fourth and a further truth in these words, why not believe that Moses discerned all these things? For through him the one God has tempered the sacred books to the interpretation of many, who could come to see a diversity of truths.”
― Hans Boersma, Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church

“Jesus’s parables are more like Zen koans than theological propositions.”
― Timothy Beal, Biblical Literacy: The Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know

“Silence is the indispensable climate for all revelation; noise renders it absolutely impossible.”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“Faith is not merely a way of knowing; it is also a way of participating.”
― Robert S. Ellwood, The Cross and the Grail: Esoteric Christianity for the 21st Century

“The mystic attempts to overcome dogma, insisting that God, Christ and heaven are not ‘up there’ but are to be found in the heart by desire, by love, by the will; that is, by a path of inner purification.”
― Don Cupitt, The Sea of Faith

“Fragments from the Big Bang lie all around us, just as in distant stars. In the same way, the mystics say, a trace of our original divinity is present in every creature. In some, like Saint Francis of Assisi, it is highly revealed; in others it is more heavily veiled; but that divinity is present throughout creation.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Original Goodness: A Commentary on the Beatitudes

“The effect of the “mystical” is not to mystify, but to return us to a better relationship with the cosmos, which is the heritage of all native traditions.”
― Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus' Words

“I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; I seek what they sought.”
― Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment

“I feel it is the duty of one who goes his own way to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discovery,”
― Anthony Stevens, Jung: A Very Short Introduction