#ritual

Sometimes you don’t choose greatness, it chooses you. And when it does, it requires a certain level of understandin', courage and a degree of blind hope. ↗

— Jay Grewal

#inspirational #motivational #spiritual #courage

People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost. We kill to eat, we cut down trees to build our homes, we exploit other people and the earth. Sacrifice - of nature, of the interests of others, even of our earlier selves - appears to be an inescapable part of our condition, the unavoidable price of all our achievements. A successful ritual is one that addresses both aspects of our predicament, recalling us to the shamefulness of our deeds at the same time it celebrates what the poet Frederick Turner calls "the beauty we have paid for with our shame." Without the double awareness pricked by such rituals, people are liable to find themselves either plundering the earth without restraint or descending into self-loathing and misanthropy. Perhaps it's not surprising that most of us today bring one of those attitudes or the other to our conduct in nature. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#humanity #nature #ritual #sacrifice #attitude

I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me. ↗

— Jane Goodall

#spirituality #nature

Disciples and devotees…what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea! ↗

— Wei Wu Wei

#disciples #form #forms #religion #religious

Ah well, I suppose that's the problem with trying to make others follow your own beliefs: what starts out as spiritual ardor too often becomes arrogance and bigotry. ↗

— Persia Woolley

#religious-extremism #spirituality #religion

Verily I say unto you all: Arise and shine forth, that thy light may be a standard for the nations. ↗

— Doctrine and covenants

#religion #spiritual #uplifting #religion

God is not a Christian. ↗

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

#god #religion #spirituality #religion

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity? ↗

— Mark Twain

#spirituality #religion

Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the ‘truth’ with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us … that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it. ↗

— Peter Rollins

#orthodoxy #religion #spirituality #love

John 8:6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. ↗

— Anonymous

#biblical #jesus #religion #silence #spiritual