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The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
Arnold Bennett, http://www.goodreads.
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.
