In the Absence of God Quotes

“Does the sacred quest end with cultivating our own gardens and dwelling within our private and incommunicable experiences? Because we human beings are verbal and communal animals, we cannot remain wonder-struck and dumb. We need to say something. We are a species given to storytelling and philosophizing to explain our world. Ergo, it is pure folly to suppose we can avoid speaking about the ultimate context and meaning of our existence. We cannot simply be content with the private experience of elementary emotions and the great encompassing mystery. Our feelings demand expression. How are we to understand this perennial need to speak to G-d and about G-d even when what we say involves contradictions, paradoxes, and sacred nonsense? To communicate is to come back into the community. The hero must return from the inner journey to the common life of dialogue and engagement.”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. —RALPH SOCKMAN”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

“Because we human beings are verbal and communal animals, we cannot remain wonder-struck and dumb. We need to say something. We are a species given to storytelling and philosophizing to explain our world. Ergo, it is pure folly to suppose we can avoid speaking about the ultimate context and meaning of our existence. We cannot simply be content with the private experience of elementary emotions and the great encompassing mystery. Our feelings demand expression. How are we to understand this perennial need to speak to G-d and about G-d even when what we say involves contradictions, paradoxes, and sacred nonsense? To communicate is to come back into the community. The hero must return from the inner journey to the common life of dialogue and engagement. PRAYERS TO AN ABSENT G-D ON PRAYER You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was “thank you,” that would be sufficient. —MEISTER ECKHART”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

“the historical tide of faith ebbs and flows. Currently in the industrialized nations it seems to have receded, depositing its driftwood of nihilism and violence on the shore, leaving us devoid of a vision of the sacred that we need in order to create a hopeful society. We suffer from a spiritual autoimmune disease. Lacking antibodies of faith to keep us from despair, we attack ourselves. We are trapped in a life in which little attention is paid to the encompassing mystery of Being traditionally known by the Ten Thousand Names of God.”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

“We who have been unsatisfied by any traditional religion have spent our lives in quest of a rose, but the closest we ever get is entering a room still redolent with the scent of a rose that was removed before we arrived. We cannot easily locate God in the house of our longing, yet we remain haunted; God’s missing presence echoes throughout the empty rooms. In the void we hear faint hymns of an ancient faith for which we no longer have room among the endless quarks, waves, and subatomic particles identified by science. We exist in a God-shaped vacuum.”
― Sam Keen, In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred