alissa writes

How do we know that we are not deluding ourselves, that we are not selecting those words that best fit our passions, that we are not just listening to the voice of our own imagination?…Who can determine if [our] feelings and insights are leading [us] in the right direction?

Our God is greater than our own heart and mind, and too easily we are tempted to make our heart’s desires and our mind’s speculations into the will of God. Therefore, we need a guide, a director, a counselor who helps us to distinguish between the voice of God and all other voices coming from our own confusion or from dark powers far beyond our control.

We need someone who encourages us when we are tempted to give it all up, to forget it all, to just walk away in despair. We need someone who discourages us when we move too rashly in unclear directions or hurry proudly to a nebulous goal. We need someone who can suggest to us when to read and when to be silent, which words to reflect upon and what to do when silence creates much fear and little peace.

- from “Reaching Out” by Henri Nouwen

“[Henri Nouwen] was fond of saying that God calls us to be fruitful, not productive. To be productive is to accomplish many things through our own efforts, and of course there is a place for productivity. But to be fruitful is to receive and then to pass on God’s presence, God’s infinite love and mercy. When we are fruitful, we feel grateful and are happy in a way that is independent of our successes and failures, independent of our mood swings. It is not that we think about being fruitful, we simply are. People around us are healed into new dimensions of vitality and creativity.” - Robert A. Jonas

“Faith is not only belief: faith

embraces even its own shadow, which is doubt. Liturgical expressions

of faith and hope in the face of death should consequently leave room

for the radical sense of anxiety and loss which the mourners

experience. They should also enable, rather than deny, the grief

process about which so much has been learned in recent years. On the

other hand, Christian funerals should not become unrelieved

expressions of anguish and despair: there is a time for thanksgiving

even in the midst of mourning.”

- The Book of Alternative Services, page 566

“We may imagine that before we came to Earth, our souls, our Breath, our Light, stood before the great Creator and volunteered for this Mission. And God and we, together, chose what that Mission would be and what particular gifts would be needed, which He then agreed to give us, after our birth. Thus, our Mission was not a command given peremptorily by an unloving Creator to a reluctant slave without a vote, but was a task jointly designated by us both, in which as fast as the great Creator said, “I wish” our hearts responded, “Oh, yes.” As mentioned in an earlier Comment, it may be helpful to think of the condition of our becoming human as that we became amnesiac about any consciousness our soul had before birth — and therefore amnesiac about the nature or manner in which our Mission was designed.
Our searching for our Mission is therefore searching to recover the memory of something we ourselves had a part in designing.”
- Richard N. Bolles

“The more His we become, the more ourselves we become.” - anon.