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There remains still the pilgrimage, the journey in hope and mutual caring toward the ultimate revelation of eternal Goodness. It is not for nothing that the symbols of hope are a star still blazing in the heavens and a babe, newborn, sleeping in a manger with dumb and innocent animals for guardians.
Morris West in A View from the Ridge, spiritualityandpractice.com/quotes/features/
It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God – the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people – kind, generous, loving, laughing people – no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush…”
Andrew Greeley, “Meanings of Christmas,” www.appleseeds.org/christmas-quotes.htm
Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our Advent experience.
The world is not as just, not as loving, not as whole as we know it can and should be. But the coming of Christ and his presence among us – as one of us – give us reason to live in hope: that light which will shatter the darkness, that we can be liberated from our fears and prejudices, that we are never alone or abandoned.
“May this Advent season be a time of bringing hope, transformation and fulfillment into the Advent of our lives.”
“Life is an Advent Season,” Connections, 11-28-93. www.appleseeds.org
There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it. I often call it Being.
Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now. Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
“The Spiritual Journey: Being and Enlightenment,” by Eckhart Tolle, healthy.net.
…our human role is not about controlling or directing the whole creative enterprise, but listening and attending to the ongoing revelation. Our primary task is not to dominate life, but to celebrate it – in love and justice. The late Karl Rahner suggested that God reveals in accordance with our capacity to receive revealed truth (wisdom). If we ourselves continue to play God, to manipulate the will-to-power totally and solely in anthropomorphic terms, then little wonder that we live in such a godless world. The central religious problem of our time is that most of our religious Gods are false ones, alien to and alienated from the meaning of life and evolution.
Diarmuid O’Murchu, Our World in Transition, p. 154.
