where my deep gladness

Word Count: 2,104
Total Word Count: 12,790 (26%)

( Sermon 06: The Family Table )


( 06: Readings )

Word Count: 2,111
Total Word Count: 10,686 (21%)

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I believe in [God] as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Word Count: 2,049
Total Word Count: 8,575 (17%)

( Sermon 04: Morning Starlight. )

( 04: Readings )


( 04: Music )

Word Count: 2,142
Total Word Count: 6,524 (13%)

( Sermon 03: You Get Proud By Practicing. )

( 03: Readings )

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”

“To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.”

“The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman.”

“Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word -- to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tells us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.”

“There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country, a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with all the world.”

“The impulse to love God and neighbor, that impulse is at the heart of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. No question about it — we have much more in common than we have in conflict."

“God's love doesn't seek value; it creates it. It's not because we have value that we are loved, but because we're loved that we have value. So you don't have to prove yourself -- ever. That's taken care of.”

Word Count: 2,249
Total Word Count: 4,380 (09%)

( Sermon 02: The Power in My Right Hand. )

( 02: Readings )

Word Count: 2,127 (04%)

( Sermon 01: November in New England )

( 01: Readings. )

"There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self interest. ...The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet."

"When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart."

"Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too."

"Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world."

"In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all."