With the right words, you can change the world. ~ EB White

And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. ~Terry Pratchett

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

~ Nelson Mandela

I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary,

that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting. ~ Barack Obama

According to the most recent Gallup poll [in the year 2000], 95% of United States residents continue to believe in God. They simply stop going to church, where the language they hear about God neither matches the reality of their lives nor feeds the hunger of their hearts. They design their own worldviews…Along the way, they acquire new language that better describes the world as they understand it, and many of them never darken the doorway of a church again…To use my own language, what I believe each of these young people is seeking is some kind of salvation - that is, a transformed way of life in the world that is characterized by peace, meaning, and freedom. In the search process, each has to come up against the interior and exterior obstacles to that way of life - what I would call sin—and each has discovered some tools for surmounting those obstacles…They are all involved in turning away from an old way of life and turning toward a new way that promises them more abundant life. My curiosity as a Christian - and also, to be honest, my sorrow - is about how the language of the church failed them so badly that they have decided to look elsewhere for life.

Speaking of Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation

by Barbara Brown Taylor

The main problem with symbols is that people tend to get lost in the symbol…. You should not lose the message in the symbol. The message is always of the spirit, and when the symbol is taken to be the fact…, you’ve mistaken the message.

~ Joseph Campbell

A German anthropologist made an important distinction (according to Joseph Campbell) when he realized that in religions throughout the world the same themes and images recur; he called them “Elementary Ideas.” But he also saw that wherever they occurred,

they were in different costumes and provincial interpretations, which he called “Folk or Ethnic Ideas.”

~ Adolf Bastian

Deities are symbolic personifications of the very energies that are of yourself. These energies that are of yourself are the energies of the universe. And so the god is out there and the god is in here.

The Kingdom of God is within you, yes, but it’s also everywhere.

~ Joseph Campbell

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love.

~ Gandhi

Jesus is a historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith,

and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.

~ Barak Obama

Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

The Earth is what we all have in common.

~ Wendell Berry

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

~ Margaret Mead

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.

~ Jane Goodall

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

~ Dr. Seuss

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

~ Gandhi

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

~ Dorothy Day

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

~ Albert Einstein

Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.

~ Dorothy Day

And remember as it was written

to love another person is to see the face of God.

~ Les Miserables

I am like the sick sheep that strays from the rest of the flock. Unless the Good Shepherd takes me on His shoulders and

carries me back to His fold, my steps will falter, and in the very effort of rising, my feet will give way.

~ St. Jerome

When we are fearful and worried all the time, we are living as if we don't believe that we have a strong and able Shepherd who is tenderhearted toward us,

who only leads us to good places,

who protects us and lovingly watches over us.

~ Joseph Prince

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. ~ Aristotle

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. ~ Lao Tse

By three methods we may learn wisdom:

First, by reflection, which is noblest;

Second, by imitation, which is easiest;

and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ~ Confucious

The quality of our expectations determines the quality of our action. A. Godin

Let us ask ourselves today: Are we open to God's surprises? Pope Francis