#religious

Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation. ↗

— Neil Abramson

#religious #sacrifice #strength #strength-through-adversity #inspirational

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم حديث قدسي عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم قال : قال الله عز وجل يا ابن آدم لا تخافن من ذي سلطان ما دام سلطاني باقيا وسلطاني لا ينفذ ابدا يا ابن ادم لا تخش من ضيق الرزق و خزائني ملآنة ، وخزائني لا تنفذ ابدا يا ابن آدم لا تطلب غيري وأنا لك فإن طلبتني وجدتني وإن فتني فتك وفاتك الخير كله يا ابن آدم خلقتك للعبادة فلا تلعب وقسمت لك رزقك فلا تتعب فإن أنت رضيت بما قسمته لك أرحت قلبك وبدنك وكنت عندي محمودا وان لم ترض بما قسمته لك فوعزني وجلالي لأسلطن عليك الدنيا تركض فيها ركض الوحوش في البرية ثم لا يكون لك منها الا ما قسمته لك وكنت عندي مذموما يا ابن آدم خلقت السموات السبع والاراضي السبع ولم اعيي بخلقهن أيعييني رغيف عيش اسوقه لك بلا تعب؟ يا ابن آدم انه لم انس من عصاني ، فكيف من أطاعني وأنا رب رحيم وعلى كل شيء قدير يا ابن آدم لا تسألني رزق غد كما لم اطالبك بعمل غد يا ابن آدم أنا لك محب فبحقي عليك كن لي محبا ↗

— حديث قدسي

#inspirational

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain. The Brothers Karamazov Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#martyrs #prophets #religion #religious-institutions #the-brothers-karamazov

الدين علاقة رأسية بين العبد وربه حولناها إلى علاقة أفقية بين المواطن وأخيه ↗

— جلال عامر

#religious #islam

You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [....] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance. ↗

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#christopher-hitchens #islam #religious-liberalism #islam

I also found that for myself, since I've had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means. ↗

— Barbara Walters

#different #earth #education #found #had

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. ↗

— Evelyn Waugh

#belief #called #clergyman #commit #draws

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#educated #fundamentalists #highly #i #including

For moderns - for us - there is something illicit, it seems, about wasted time, the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls, figures of speech budding and blossoming, articulation drifting like spent petals onto the dark table we all once gathered around to talk and talk, letting time get the better of us. _Just taking our time_, as we say. That is, letting time take us. "Can you say," I once inquired of a sixty-year old cloistered nun who had lived (vibrantly, it seemed) from teh age of nineteen in her monastery cell, "what the core of contemplative life is?" "Leisure," she said, without hesitation, her china blue eyes cheerfully steady on me. I suppose I expected her to say, "Prayer." Or maybe "The search for God." Or "Inner peace." Inner peace would have been good. One of the big-ticket items of spirituality. She saw I didn't see. "It takes time to do this," she said finally. Her "this" being the kind of work that requires abdication from time's industrial purpose (doing things, getting things). By choosing leisure she had bid farewell to the fevered enterprise of getting-and-spending whereby, as the poet said, we lay waste our powers. ↗

— Patricia Hampl

#meditation #religious-life #spirituality #age

But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love--but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation, and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up. ↗

— Yann Martel

#anger