Steve posted this Covey quote today. Chew on it all day, and it won’t be nearly long enough.
A Conscious Commitment to the Important
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Category Archives: Quotes
Valuing Scripture
Gandhi has always inspired me. Often the inspiration comes in the form of a knock right between the eyes.
Like this one…
“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside-down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of good literature.”
I don’t know what to say after that, so I’ll just leave it hanging there for you.
Getting an Education
I just started a book.
The author unapologetically warned me in the preface that this is no devotional piece and will require “considerable mental effort to understand”. The subject matter is the relationship between faith and knowledge. Many say there is hardly any relationship at all, that the two are actually in opposition to each other.
But I don’t buy that.
The author then wrapped up his opening section with a C.S. Lewis quote that made me smile…
“God has room for people with very little sense, but He wants everyone to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not, ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever,’ but ‘Be good, sweet maid, and don’t forget that this involves being as clever as you can.’ God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all…. One reason why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.”
I’ll amen that last line, that’s for sure–I hope you’re in the midst of a fascinating education these days.
Joan Chittister on Simplicity
I love this woman. She blesses me richly every time that I sit with her–a woman of God and a woman of wisdom.
One of her books was on a second-hand shelf recently. That purchase needed no debating or justifying. Sold!
To be quite honest, this book (entitled “Becoming Fully Human”) strikes me as a bit of mish-mash of bits of writing that perhaps had no other home, so they were crunched into this piece and bound together with a cover and a title. Despite that, it’s still a a treasure to me.
Her opening chapter is about simplicity, which she admits is anything but simple. In fact, she questions whether much of Christianity’s talk of simplicity has been more accurately talk about deprivation. And to boil down simplicity to nothing grander than deprivation is indeed a terrible trade.
She then unloads several pages of quotes on the topic. For your journey, I bring you the best…
- “Simplicity is a talent for going with the flow in life. When we have to affect our simplicity–plan it, impose it, strategize it–we’re in real trouble.”
- “Life is not simple. There is no controlling it, no shaping it in the style of a slower, calmer, idyllic world–long gone, if ever here. Instead, we need to learn how to deal with our complexities with simplicity.”
- “Simplicity of life is more ‘the habitually relaxed grasp‘ than it is life without gadgets.” (My two cents: If the two happen to coincide with each other, so be it.)
- “Simplicity of life is the ability to handle with single-minded unity of soul and serenity of heart whatever life brings.”
Warning: The next one is a zinger.
- “When we handle our own life schedule very well because we refuse to have our own priorities interrupted by anyone else’s needs, is that simplicity of life?”
- “We live a simple life when we do not pretend to be something we are not.”
- “Simplicity is an attitude of mind that enables us to stand unimpeded by the seductiveness of the unnecessary and the cosmetic.”
- “Simplicity is the openness to the beauty of the present, whatever its shape, whatever its lack. It enables us to be conscious of where we are and to stop mourning where we are not.”
- “There is no simplicity in a heart full of agitation and in a soul too distracted to recognize the one who is among us, yet invisible in chaos.”
There you go. I hope that simplified everything.
Or at least fueled you for another mile.
Curing Hypocrisy
On August 27, 1996, three weeks before his unexpected death, Henri Nouwen wrote these words in his journal…
“We who offer spiritual leadership often find ourselves not living what we are preaching or teaching. It is not easy to avoid hypocrisy completely because we find ourselves saying things larger than ourselves. I often call people to a life I am not fully able to live myself.
I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.”
I’ve bolded the words above because I couldn’t agree more. Part of the call to lead is to lead towards things bigger than yourself–to follow a path that is beyond oneself. I believe that unapologetically, and I agree that it brings out hypocrisy, in some sense.
However, that second bolded portion strikes me as major too. “Hypocrisy” is often a charge leveled at an enemy. I remember hearing this word in heated tones as two sides “opposed” to each other armed themselves with this word-bullet, intent on damaging each other. But I’ve never heard it used from one friend to another, even when every secret has been shared and every inconsistency is known. Somehow, realness diffuses something. And in real community with others, this realness offers healing to any of the planet’s six billion hypocrites who find themselves in need of that.