Quotes about Progression

St. Bonaventure (1221—1274) taught that to work up to loving God, start by loving the very humblest and simplest things, and then move up from there.

Responding to John the Baptist's hard-line approach, Jesus maintains both sides of this equation when he says, "No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptizer, yet the least who enters the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Matthew 11:11). Is that double-talk? No, it is second-half-of-life talk.

Higher stages always empathetically include the lower, or they are not higher stages!

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Ken Wilber described the later stages of life well when he said that the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian. Always!

Life moves first toward diversity and then toward union of that very diversity at ever higher levels. It is the old philosophical problem of "the one and the many

First of all, you can only see and understand the earlier stages from the wider perspective of the later stages. This is why mature societies were meant to be led by elders, seniors, saints, and "the initiated." They alone are in a position to be true leaders in a society, or certainly in any spiritual organization. Without them, "the blind lead the blind

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months,The months will add themselves and make the years,The years will roll into the centuries,And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

To make it really clear and simple, let's call this movement across history we see in passages like the ones we just looked at from Exodus and Deuteronomy clicks. What we see is God meeting people at the click they're at, and then drawing them forward. When they're at F, God calls them to G. When we're at L, God calls us to M. And if we're way back there at A, God meets us way back there at A and does what God always does: invites us forward to B.

What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Leadership success is measured by the success of your successor.