Many / One

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Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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In Silence: Why We Pray
Donald Spoto, Ph.D.

1 "'I believe in the sun even when it is not shining', a Jewish prisoner wrote on the wall of a concentration camp. 'I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God, even when He is silent.'"

2 "God is at work every moment, sustaining everything in being – and therefore, He is at the center of every human being."

3 "We come from and live within the Ultimate Reality, God Himself."

4 "God attends, heeds, listens to and provides for us in our particularity: our existence is somehow significant to Him, and even our casual steps are known to and guided by Him."

5 "'Selflessness emphasizes relationships through recognition of the interdependency of all things', as one contemporary Zen master has said."

6 "Jesus proclaimed the single, essential, transforming reality: God really is, and He is here, near and within."

7 "God's action penetrates every atom of your body; indeed, into the very marrow of your bones." Jean-Pierre de Caussade

8 "Providence arranges everything, so all is right in the end."

9 "God is indeed the Ultimacy toward which everything that is yearns."

10 "Prayer is not about having wishes granted by a remote Being. It is about becoming more and more alert to the One Who sustains us in love and awakens us each day to the reality of His presence, if only we give Him a chance."

11 "Your unfailing Providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live." The Book of Common Prayer

12 "All the world, and all who are in it, are bound together in a love we cannot define or describe. But we know that somehow nothing is more real than this."

13 "Prayer contributes to the evolution of our collective consciousness concerning the power of good in this world."

14 "Amid the unimaginable suffering of a Nazi death camp, Corrie ten Boom could still claim, 'No matter how deep our darkness, God is deeper still.'"

15 "Prayer is an encounter, a dialogue with One Who has first addressed me; hence it begins with attentive listening."

16 "In one, all things are harmonized." Cleanthes (d. 232 bce)

17 "Prayer is not an occupation for a certain time, but a permanent state of the spirit." Theophan the Recluse, 19th century Russian Orthodox bishop

18 "The very idea of the sacred and our connection to it is an element in the structure of consciousness."

19 "Creator, Maker, Giver of breath – how manifold are your works, O sole God, whose powers no other possesses. You created the earth according to your heart." Egyptian hieroglyphic prayer, ca. 2000 bce

20 "As Julian of Norwich wrote, all will be well; everything will, at last, be well."

21 "Teach us to respect the essence of all religions, and lead us to the One Ultimate Reality." Japanese prayer

22 "By the 4th millennium b.c., humans had certainly developed a sense of a divine being – and they associated this being with creation and with characteristics their cultures held to be good. It is at least tenable (and probably quite correct), to say that the sense of the divine is an innate human perception – not an invented projection, but rather the acknowledgment of a primal certainty."

23 "Everything in the universe is under the mysterious and benevolent control of a providential Power."

24 "The world's Creator is the source of the love that will finally triumph. And the evidence for that living, driving, reasonable expectation is the existence and the force of effective goodness in the world. It does not give up; it does make a difference."

25 "God, in me and through what He has made, addresses me; in and through my experience, through everything that I am and everything that happens, God somehow speaks."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite