The Rebirthing of God Quotes

“Too often in the past our approach to truth has been to assume that we have it and others do not. Consequently, we have thought that our role is to tell people what to believe. We are being invited instead into a new humility, to serve the holy wisdom that is already stirring in the hearts of people everywhere, the growing awareness of earth’s interrelatedness and sacredness.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“It was Roland who taught us that there are two types of prayer. One, he said, is the dozing pussycat prayer, purring by the warm fire of God’s presence. The other is the yappy dog prayer, scratching at the door of heaven, imploring God’s help in our lives.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“It was on Iona years ago that I first became aware of the need to reclaim some of the features of ancient Christianity in the Celtic world as lost treasure for today. Part of that treasure is the much-cherished image of John the Evangelist, also known as John the Beloved, leaning against Jesus at the Last Supper. Celtic tradition holds that by doing this he heard the heartbeat of God. He became a symbol of the practice of listening—listening deep within ourselves, within one another, and within the body of the earth for the beat of the Sacred Presence.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“Humanity’s great wisdom traditions are given not to compete with each other but to complete each other. We need each other as much as the species of the earth need one another to be whole. Rebirthing will happen within our Christian household when we reverently approach the heart of other traditions. It is what Griffiths in his work in India calls the “marriage of East and West,” a conjoining of what has been tragically torn apart.8”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“We have become so accustomed to seeing compassion as a duty, almost as a burden, she says, that we fail to see it essentially as a benediction.12 Compassion can free us from the prison of the ego, whether our individual ego or that of our family, community, or nation. To want to bear responsibility for the needs”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“Bede Griffiths says of the way of relationship with other faiths that we need to stop living from only “one half of our soul.”4 We need to open to the treasure of wisdom in traditions other than our own. Not only have they much to teach us, but they also hold the key to unlocking depths within our own religious inheritance that we know nothing of as yet.5 Jesus says, “You must be born anew.” Rebirth means letting go of the cords of confinement so that newborn vision may emerge.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“When he awakened from sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.... This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16–17). In the Celtic world that gateway is present everywhere. In every place is the immediacy of heaven. In every moment we can glimpse the Light that was in the beginning and from which all things have come. As Oliver says, “The threshold is always near.”3 We can step over this threshold and back again in the fleeting span of a second. In a single step we can find ourselves momentarily in that other world, the world of eternal Light, which is woven inseparably through this world—the world of matter that is forever unfolding like a river in flow.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“My work is loving the world,” says Oliver, ”which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”10 As she writes elsewhere: It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.11”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

“Reconnecting with Compassion”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings