Patrick > Patrick's Quotes

“God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
― John Shelby Spong

“Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“This is a good time to remember that when we harden our heart against anyone, we hurt ourselves. The fear habit, the anger habit, the self-pity habit—all are strengthened and empowered when we continue to buy into them. The most compassionate thing we can do is to interrupt these habits. Instead of always pulling back and putting up walls, we can do something unpredictable and make a compassionate aspiration. We can visualize this difficult person’s face and say his name if it helps us. Then we say the words: “May this person who irritates me be free of suffering and the roots of suffering.” By doing this, we start to dissolve our fear.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
― Paul Coelho

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“He was an autodidact, and gave himself the education he needed.”
― Robert Wehrman, Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher

“When you spend time on your own away from society you find, upon your return, much of the human-created world appears tawdry and low class, common—like a cheap trinket, or worse.”
― Robert Wehrman, Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher

“Even before The Walk was finished, he no longer wanted any part of the tinsels and money-thrust of Homo oblivious.”
― Robert Wehrman, Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher

“At night you lie on your soft sleeping bag listening to the trees and wind talking to the night while the stars spin their slow but constant dervish.”
― Robert Wehrman, Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher

“In dog philosophy it was always better to go somewhere than to be left behind”
― Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

“Tis a Fearful Thing

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –

to be,
And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

And a holy thing,

a holy thing
to love.

For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”
― Judah Halevi

“Is maith an scáthán súil charad!” Juniper replied ruefully. “A friend’s eye is a good mirror!”
― S.M. Stirling, Dies the Fire

“If you have to farm, the Willamette is about the best place in the world to do it.”
― S.M. Stirling, The Protector's War

“The cure for loneliness is solitude.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Prose of Marianne Moore

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
― James Baldwin

“We should always be grateful to people who disagree with us. At the very least, they sharpen us as a stone sharpens a knife. At best, they wake us up to how stunning the beliefs we profess actually are.”
― Martin Kochanski, The Creed in Slow Motion: An exploration of faith, phrase by phrase, word by word

“Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“(In Catholic universities, a doctorate in theology is not referred to as a PhD but as an STD, Doctor of Sacred Theology. It’s an unfortunate name for a degree. It must be hard for someone’s mother to say, “I’m so proud of my little boy. He went to seminary and got an STD.”)”
― Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale

“We forget that when we see Christ dead upon the cross, we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.”
― Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

“I’m not quite sure what it means to “believe in Jesus” without believing in the Jesus way.)”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace