A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.

It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.

It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting.

God's heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small.

To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Resentments cannot be held with the same tenacity when we enter his gracious light.

Overconsumption is a "cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals." It cuts the heart right out of our compassion. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask moral questions. For example, just because we have the economic muscle to buy up vast amounts of the world's oil, does that give us the right to do so? When the poor farmer of India is unable to buy a gallon of gasoline to run his simple water pump because the world's demand has priced him out of the market, who is to blame?

One remarkable feature of the devotional masters is the incredible sense of uniform witness in the midst of such diverse personalities... and the necessity of Christian simplicity is one of their most consistent themes.