The Printed Word

The printed word carries the power to change the world. That is why some places ban books, for fear, that words will create ideas, that in turn, will result in actions. 

  As in the past I list my favorite words…or phrases that I have read this past year and share with you. I hope you enjoy my collection of quotes. If you ever come across a quote or phrase that speaks to you, please send it to me! 

  2025 

  When great difficulties arise, and troubles beset, regard your perplexity as a call to deeper thought and more vigorous action. Nothing will attack you that you are not capable of overcoming; no problem will vex you that you cannot solve. The greater your trial, the greater your test of strength, and the more complete and triumphant your victory. However complicated your maze of confusion may be, there is a way out of it, and the finding of that way will exercise your powers to the utmost, and will bring out all your latent skill, energy, and resource. When you have mastered that which threatens to master you, you will rejoice in a new-found strength. ~James Allen 

  Judgment keeps you stuck. Curiosity gets you results. The Black Swan Group 

  What you’re not changing you’re choosing. 

  “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing, that is our life, to be trained by longing.” Augustine 

  For me faith is more about longing and thirsting than knowing and possessing. David Brooks, NYTimes 

  Every day, I wake feeling grateful. 

I no longer pray to any deity-imagined or immortal. 

I don’t cast my eyes upward while pleading for redemption or deliverance. 

I ask for nothing and expect nothing in return. 

I don’t believe in or live out a transactional relationship with eternity. 

Instead, I simply choose to be kind and compassionate without expectation or reciprocity. 

For me, the meaning of life comes each day, 

simply by setting aside moments in time, to be grateful. 

As I wake each morning and as I close my eyes each night 

my first and my final words to the universe are always, 

“I am grateful.” And I am. 

- Steve Ramirez (b.1988) 

  It’s not about getting a ticket to heaven, it’s about becoming an instrument of God to transform this world.” 

Tony Campollo 

  "The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism". Reinhold Niebuhr 

  “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 

There is society, where none intrudes, 

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: 

I love not Man the less, but Nature more. Lord Byron 

  “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 1.36.40) 

"Days pass, and the years vanish, 

and we walk sightless among miracles. 

Fill our eyes with seeing 

and our minds with knowing. 

Let there be moments when your Presence, 

Like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. 

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, 

that the bush burns, unconsumed. 

And we, clay touched by God, 

will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, 'How filled with awe is this place...'". 

Jewish Sabbath Prayer 

  A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. - D. Elton Trueblood 

  The older I get the more deeply I believe, but the less beliefs I have. Bishop John Spong, pg ix,”the Fourth Gospel” 

  Faith is not believing the creeds, doctrines, or dogmas; faith is trusting the divine presence to be in every moment, in every tomorrow. Bishop John Spong, pg115,”the Fourth Gospel” 

  The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has already taken place.