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Religion is
more like a response to a friend
than it is like obedience to an expert.
Austin Farrer |
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I
would not say I believe. I know! I have had the
experience
of being gripped by something that is stronger
than myself,
something that people call God. |
Carl
Jung |
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Religious
faith is not a
storm cellar to which men
and women can
flee
for
refuge from the storms
of life. It is, instead,
an
inner spiritual strength
which enables them to face
those storms with hope
and serenity.
Religious
faith has
the miraculous
power to lift ordinary
human beings
to
greatness
in seasons of stress.
Sam J. Ervin, Jr.
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Ernest Martin Hopkins
The enduring value of
religion is in its challenge
to aspiration and hope in
the mind of people. |
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| Thomas Moore
(contemporary)
I think many of the
troubles we run into are due to our treating the sacred
as something abstract. This attitude is part of
what allows us to do great harm
to nature and ourselves.
If our religion is completely ethereal, we may
become numb
to the consequences of, for example, building
a chemical plant that could be toxic
to children in the
community. Not only that, but restricting religion
to a high-in-the-sky
place tends to make people polemical
about their own moral positions--to the degree
that they
can justify harming others who disagree with them. We've
seen this
phenomenon take place in country after country.
I think we would be able to live
in this world more
peaceably if our spirituality were to come from looking
not just
into infinity but very closely at the world
around us--and appreciating its depth and divinity. |
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"Religion"
can no more be equated with what goes on in churches than
"education"
can be reduced to what happens in
schools or "health care" restricted to what
doctors
do to patients in clinics. The vast
majority of healing and learning goes on
among parents
and children and families and friends, far from the
portals
of any school or hospital. The same is true
for religion. It is going on
around us all the time.
Religion is larger and more pervasive than churches.
Harvey Cox |
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You think religion is what's
inside a little building
filled with pretty lights from
stained glass windows.
But it's not. It's
wings! Wings!
Dorothy Canfield Fisher |
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Martin
Buber |
The historical
religions have the tendency to become ends
in themselves,
and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place,
and,
in fact, there is nothing that is so apt
to obscure God's
face as a religion. |
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Our
religious institutions have far too often become
handmaidens of the status quo,
while the genuine
religious experience is anything but that. True
religion is by nature
disruptive of what has been, giving
birth to the eternally new.
Marianne
Williamson |
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I am for
religion, against religions.
Victor Hugo |
If your religion does not change you,
then you had better change your religion.
Elbert Hubbard |
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If I
should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment
I could never stay there five minutes. But why come
out?
The street is as false as the church.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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If
your religion is of the kind that can be
easily hidden,
it can be easily lost.
Martha
Lupton
If
you hold your religion lightly you are sure to let it
slip. |
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If we submit everything to reason, our religion
will have nothing in it
mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of
reason, our
religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
Blaise Pascal |
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Religion
is to be used as a stepping stone
to God but it must never be used as a tower
to hold one aloft from others. We are all cells
in the body of humanity. When anyone
attempts to isolate another, they
only isolate themselves more.
Peace
Pilgrim |
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When
people ask the Dalai Lama, "Is Buddhism a religion?" he
answers,
"Yes, it is." Then they ask, "What kind of
religion is it?" He responds,
"My religion is kindness."
You might think, "Everyone's is."
Everyone's is. That's true. It's not complicated to
describe the goal
of a spiritual life. It's easier than you think to explain it.
It's more difficult than you can imagine to do it.
Sylvia
Boorstein |
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The
religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so,
but it demands a teaching which can be understood.
Slowly an
apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing
among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while
application of that power—in the improvement of the world.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
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Every major religion has
similar ideas of love, the same goal of benefiting through
spiritual practice, and the same effect of making its followers into
better
human beings. All religions teach moral precepts for perfecting
the functions
of the mind, body, and speech. All teach us not to lie or steal
or take others' lives,
and so on. The common goal of all moral precepts laid down by
the great
teachers of humanity is unselfishness. Those teachers wanted to
lead their
followers away from the paths of negative deeds caused by ignorance
and to introduce them to paths of goodness. All religions can
learn from
one another; their ultimate goal is to produce better human beings who
will be more tolerant, more compassionate, and less selfish.
The
Dalai Lama |
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The religious
searcher should be a diver through the deeps of ancient wisdom,
seeking to bring up to the surface those concepts that can illuminate
life today.
Not all truth will be discovered in what is to come;
some must be recalled from what has been forgotten.
David J. Wolfe |
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Many people conceive of
religion as something apart from
everyday affairs of the world. They think of it in terms of
ceremony or ritual or sermons and often it strikes them as
being dull or not particularly interesting. Religion may be
described in many ways. I like to think of it as a
medicine,
a healing medicine for the mind.
Norman Vincent Peale |
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There
are many religions seeking to bring comfort and happiness to humanity,
just as there are many treatments for a particular disease. All
religions
endeavor to help living beings avoid misery and find happiness.
Although we
may prefer one religious perspective to another, there is a much
stronger
case for unity, stemming from common desires of the human heart.
Each religion works to lessen suffering and contribute to the world;
conversion is not the point. I do not think about converting
others to Buddhism
or merely furthering the Buddhist cause. Instead, I try to think
of how I
as a Buddhist can contribute to the happiness of all living beings.
unattributed |
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A
religious person is one who holds God and people in
one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm
done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion,
whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
Abraham
Joshua Heschel |
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