Quotes about Relationships

Why do we judge Jesus' criterion for authentic discipleship irrelevant? Jesus said the world is going to recognize you as His by only one sign: the way you are with one another on the street every day.

Prayer is simply relaxing and delighting in Jesus with no agenda except celebrating the deep affection between you. This interpersonal encounter deepens the sense of our own belovedness and alters our relationships with others.

The main question is "Do you own your pain?" As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.

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.

Often love is offered to you, but you do not recognize it. You discard it because you are fixed on receiving it from the same person to whom you gave it.

There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.

Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you.

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.

The Father's love does not force itself on the beloved.

We will never believe that we have anything to give unless there is someone who is able to receive.

Marriage is not that two people love each other so much that they can find God in each other, but that God loves them so much that they can discover each other as living reminders of God's presence.

The return to the Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name allows me to let my dad be no less than the good, loving, but limited human being he is, and to let my heavenly Father be the God whose unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger and makes me free to love beyond the need to please or find approval.