Wake Up Already!

In our own place and time, we have made a science of escape and sleep. Rather than live at that sharp edge of life, awake and alert, we pretend that we have no sin. There…

Today’s One-Liner (#169)

To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that. –Saint Teresa of Avila, quoted in Eknath Easwaran, Love Never Faileth: The Inspiration of Saint Francis, Saint. Augustine, Saint Paul, and Mother…

By Little and Little

If you do not overcome small, trifling things, how will you overcome the more difficult? Resist temptations in the beginning, and unlearn the evil habit lest perhaps, little by little, it lead to a more…

First Things First

If men used as much care in uprooting vices and implanting virtues as they do in discussing problems, there would not be so much evil and scandal in the world, or such laxity in religious…

Today’s One-Liner (#167)

No one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. –René Girard, Maxim #22, in All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings, edited by Cynthia L. Haven

Today’s One-Liner (#165)

These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the restIs prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action. –T. S. Eliot, Dry Salvages

Bearing Fruit

Rus­sian lit­er­a­ture might almost be described as the lit­er­a­ture of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts…

Today’s One-Liner (#163)

My approach to the Beshtian  movement is influenced by what I have taken from it, namely, the need and obligation to love the Jewish people, and, through it, all people who need compassion in a…

Start Right Now

A man must not delay his start in the right direction until the next day. Do not say: ‘To-morrow I will commence to serve the Lord properly; to-morrow I will begin to worship from the…