To keep a vow, means not to keep from breaking it, but rather to devote the rest of one's life to discovering what the vow means, and to be willing to change and to grow accordingly.

To keep a vow, means not to keep from breaking it, but rather to devote the rest of one's life to discovering what the vow means, and to be willing to change and to grow accordingly.

The very fact that faith looks to a power beyond itself means that it is continually subject to loss of control. So if you're looking to get control of all your problems, forget Christianity. If you're looking for success, happiness, or freedom from pain, forget Christ. The way of Christ is the cross, and the cross spells weakness, poverty, failure, death.

How tragic that the very thing that could set us free-playing the fool-is the thing we will not do. When we're afraid to be fools, we end up being afraid to be anything.

Pure suffering has a consciousness, a tongue, a heart all its own and even the memory of it is but a pale unreality when compared with the actual experience.

It is something that is just there, and it is huge, and everything has been built around it, and wherever one happens to be going to the fridge, to bed, to the bathroom, or out the front door - the tree has to be taken into account. It cannot be gone through; it must respectfully be gone around... it is beautiful, unique, exotic: but also. Let's face it, it is at times an enormous inconvenience.

So the best marriages and the deepest relationships with God grow out of the startling discovery that there is nothing one can do to earn love, and even more startling, that there is also nothing one can do to unlearn it, or to keep oneself from being loved. This is a religious awakening that is utterly different from any other religious experience, no matter how profoundly spiritual it may seem.