Heart and Mind Quotes

“Every single pattern asks the journeyer to begin and start some form of inquiry. Next comes a time of trial, often involving pitfalls, and sometimes trickery, but always bringing new and hard-won understanding. The gift of enlarged comprehension, wholeness, and greater perspective is third, sometimes coming suddenly, often with the sense of outside assistance. The fourth step requires actual practice of the wisdom gained, with some component of bringing that knowledge back to the community or those who follow after the journeyer.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“The first stage always called for “entering”; it involved ignorance and loneliness. The second always held pitfalls or trickery. The third brought dawning understanding, even ecstasy. The fourth held the final keys to maturation, which were carried back into the community in some way.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“They force us to purge our traditional conception of God as a super-parental divine rescuer. These lessons have a clear message: God is certainly capable of rescuing us, but God will not always rescue us, because rescue may stop our growing maturity. The journey is long and full. It by necessity contains peacefulness, joy and ecstasy, pain, conflict and paradox—all of which we must eventually learn to balance in order to reach a capacity for inner serenity and know our place in God. This is the way of the Christ.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Jesus continues to use his power to calm storms, yet in each crossing, Mark recounts that he grows increasingly impatient. His disciples simply presume that Jesus will perform a divine act and in every instance, relieve them of their fear. They seem to completely ignore their responsibilities, which were to endure and attempt to find inner calm through faith. By the fourth and final crossing, Jesus is totally exasperated and demands to know if his disciples have yet learned anything whatsoever.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Then a Samaritan, an outcast from Jewish society, passed, saw the beaten man, and stopped. He bandaged the man’s wounds and, after taking him to an inn on the Samaritan’s own donkey, paid the innkeeper for his care. This poignant story offered a revolutionary teaching. The behavior it showed—and held up as expected of Christians—moved well beyond the limitations of ritual or bureaucratic law to the benefit of all people. This was not only timely for the burgeoning Christian communities, but essential.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“The lineage continues with more elements considered highly nontraditional. According to ancient tribal custom, eldest sons always inherited and younger sons frequently received little or nothing, yet for generations Matthew’s list does not contain a single eldest son. Abraham completely broke with custom when he made Isaac his inheritor instead of Ishmael, his eldest son. Jacob, the second son of Isaac, tricked his way into his inheritance in place of Esau, his elder brother. In turn, Jacob named his fourth son, Judah, as heir, bypassing three older sons and again deviating from the community’s beliefs and expectations. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. (1:2)”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“He directed his gospel specifically to them in their time of chaos, trial, and difficult beginnings. Matthew wanted them to understand that their Messiah who had come, Jesus the Christ, taught about a new temple to be built within the heart of each follower as a direct and personal relationship with God, supported by a community of like believers. No longer was a huge edifice or a special location needed. Matthew’s inspired gospel became the prayer and practice of the Messianic Jews, forming their spiritual foundation.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“may not clearly understand that they signal the opening of an inner rift. Their rocking, gentle at first, but then increasing, alerts us to a disconnection between our interior and exterior lives—often extreme, and sometimes total. Our first and completely natural instinct is to push these feelings away. We have busy lives and no desire to disrupt them. We dismiss the feelings as minor, and related “only” to a specific outward event—a disappointment or a loss. We attempt to ignore them. In the short term, this may be a successful strategy for us, especially if they are indeed minor.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Designed to be led by a spiritual director over a thirty-day retreat, the retreatant is supposed to focus on Ignatius’s exercises (although the gospels are also used in the process). The first week is spent in deep contemplation of God’s love and in praying to be purified and rid of “disordered attachments”—anything that stands in the way of doing God’s will. In the second week, the life of Jesus the Christ is contemplated, with the objective of moving beyond mere history into a sense of Jesus’s life as a present, participatory reality. The third week is devoted to a complex understanding of pondering the intensity of God’s unconditional love. The final week shares in the joy of resurrection and synthesizes the experience so that a whole vision may be achieved. The objective is a daily life that glorifies God and extends love to others.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“More specifically, Hildegard of Bingen, in her Book of Divine Works (written in the twelfth century), discussed spiritual “progress” in terms of a cycle of four, which she called “the very pulse of life.” She wrote that progress begins with a time of “purging and purification,” followed by “confrontation with temptuous impulses,” then moves into “vigorous life and enchanting fragrance,” and finally reaches “the ripeness of nature and the perspicacity of the increasingly alert and mature human being.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Our ego-selves need to become grounded. We have to learn the behavior—not just the theory—of a new way. Our inner guidance continues to grow so that we may reduce, even eliminate, the old ego-self’s protective and controlling reactions to events. This path of full psychological and spiritual transformation takes time. As it becomes familiar, we discover that the new way is more fluid and less predictable than the ways we have known. Our daily practice becomes a faithful and ongoing study of joy, compassion, and integrity, and our sense of equanimity strengthens. We comprehend that our journey will never end. The fourth path leads back to a new first path, filled with promise. As we reflect back and peer ahead, we welcome this perpetual cycle of new beginnings and the fresh opportunities we will have to learn and deepen in a conscious way.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Over the two centuries before Jesus, the celebration had taken on quite a bit of Greek Socratic (Hellenistic) influence, which suited Jewish social tradition quite nicely, so what had begun as the recitation of a story had morphed into almost a question and response ritual. On the morning of Preparation Day for the celebration, the head of the household took a lamb to The Temple for slaughter. Then, he would bring the meat home so that it, together with the other prescribed ritual foodstuffs, could be properly prepared. Eventually, when it was time for the meal, those gathered would be called to table for a joyous repast. But the feast included an important ritual. Someone at table would query those gathered, following an informal script that revolved around four questions that not only told the great Story of Exodus, but also applied it to the participants’ present lives. So we might imagine: “This is the story of our slavery, and today we are enslaved…” “We wandered for forty years in the arid desert, and today we find that we are wandering, unable to make a decision…” “But at last we arrived in the Promised Land, and we’re planning … this year, God-willing.” Followed by, “Since then we have been committed to making ourselves and our people thrive in God’s promise of this Land—and look around this table and see the kernel of the community that needs our love, every day.” From this deep annual ritual and the understandings flowing from it, we can well imagine how this core metaphor became a spiritual springboard for every Hebrew’s journey with God—a journey of freedom and liberation, one with four sequential paths that continually repeated in the lives of every individual, and in the life of the community. So there is the key—and it is a far-reaching link, indeed. The explanation for early Christians’ natural comfort with being Followers of The Way was specifically and profoundly rooted in their Jewish traditions and almost certainly, the principal of fourness, in ancient rituals from prehistory. The sequence was well-known to them, and the road well-marked. Yet, as Christians did in so many other ways, they expanded the journey from that of their predecessors, pushing beyond the liberation of a single tribe and outer freedom from an oppressive Pharaoh. Christians took the framework of freedom and crafted an identifiable, cyclical inner journey of transformation available to everyone, incorporating the living reality of Jesus the Christ. And soon, The Way came to be understood by early Christians as the ongoing gradual process of transformation into the image of the eternal Christ in whom they believed they were already made.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“when our inner selves convert distinctions into a perceived right to diminish others, we are not on a holy path. We are submitting to the mighty enticements of the third temptation, and we are serving the tempter. God, whom we seek and serve, does not devalue our differences. God holds us all as equally beloved.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Suddenly, I comprehended the original reading cycle in a completely new way. I trembled in the dark as I saw revealed the landscapes of faith, the ancient journey that our early mothers and fathers had walked—but which had been long forgotten.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“one seamless Gospel—the full internal/eternal journey, the great and immutable design, the heart and mind of God that moves all creation.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation

“Regardless of how one approaches quadratos, it is not a mere re-working of the Gospel as it has been taught for many, many years. It is a genuine metamorphosis—one I believe to be entirely consistent with early Christianity’s view—but nonetheless, far different from Christian thought and interpretation of the last few centuries. However, the fourfold journey teaches us that growth often comes from necessity, and its arrival not only yields benefit, but also exacts cost, most often discomfort and adjustment, sometimes severe.”
― Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation