Praying With Icons Quotes

“Henry David Thoreau, by no means the most conventional man of his time, lamented on his death bed, “What demon possessed me that I behaved so well.” He would have taken comfort in Holy Fools. They remind us of a deeper sanity that is sometimes hidden beneath apparent lunacy: the treasure of a God-centered life.”
― Jim Forest, Praying with Icons

“We need to think long and hard about sanity, a word most of us cling to with a steel grip. Does fear of being regarded by others as insane confine me in a cage of “responsible” behavior that limits my freedom and cripples my ability to love? And is it in fact such a wonderful thing to be regarded as sane? After all, the chief administrator of the Holocaust, Adolph Eichmann, was declared “quite sane” by the psychiatrists who examined him before his trial in Jerusalem. Surely the same psychiatrists would have found Saint Basil, Saint Theodore and Saint Xenia all insane—and Saint Francis, and that most revered of all mad men, the Son of Man, the Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.”
― Jim Forest, Praying with Icons

“Prayer is love-centered. It is not so much belief in God that matters, but love of God, and similarly love of others, including love of enemies.”
― Jim Forest, Praying with Icons