Quotes about Understanding

We are sons and daughters of the Most High and maturing in tenderness to the extent that we are for others--all others--to the extent that no human flesh is strange to us, to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no others.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. As we glance up, we are astonished to find the eyes of Jesus open with wonder, deep with understanding, and gentle with compassion.

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.

In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.

The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.

When two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.

To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.

We become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. (...) There is a lot of road crossing to do. We are all very busy in our own circles. We have our own people to go to and our own affairs to take care of. But if we could cross the road once in a while and pay attention to what is happening on the other side, we might indeed become neighbors.

Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.

Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.

Love is not based on the willingness to listen, to understand problems of others, or to tolerate their otherness. Love is based on the mutuality of the confession of our total self to each other.