Disillusionment

“This was to give me one of the greatest lessons of my life. I had built up an ideal, which had very little relation to reality, and as soon as I arrived I realized that I had made a mistake. The life had none of the attraction which I had expected. It was not that there was anything wrong with the life itself, but simply that I had been beguiled by my imagination. I realized then that what I was seeking was a fantasy under which my own self-will was disguised. I realized then that the will of God was not to be found in following my own desires, however spiritual they might seem, but in seeking to adapt myself to those circumstances in which by divine providence I actually found myself.”

Bede Griffiths

Poetry

“… poetry is the means by which the feelings and the imagination are educated and their powers developed.”

Bede Griffiths

Resurrection

“A community which trusts in God rather than in the righteousness of its “cause” can always be crushed, but from that crushing will come resurrection. There is a hidden strength in being vulnerable, open, and non-violent, in being a people of the resurrection, knowing that we are loved and that God is guiding us, in all our fragility and littleness.”
Jean Vanier

Sexuality

“[D. H. Lawrence] taught me what I believe is the only true solution to the problem [of sexuality], namely that sex is essentially a ‘holy’ instinct. It is not merely good in itself… but it is something ‘sacred.’ The evil of immorality in sex is not merely that of self-indulgence, but the profanation of something sacred, the desecration of a holy instinct which arises from the depths of our unconscious being and is the bearer of life or death. I think that Lawrence first made me begin to see that the evil of our civilization lay in this, that it had desecrated the sources of life. Primitive man might often be immoral and cruel and superstitious, but he retained a sense of ‘holy’; he was still in contact with the inner sources of life, and therefore there were beauty and dignity in his life. We, with all our science and reason and morality had lost this sense of the ‘holy’ and therefore all our works were ugly and our minds were sterile.”

Bede Griffiths

Kinds of Truth

“There was, of course, something one-sided in all this. [The Priority of imagination over reason.] I was oblivious of every aspect of truth except that which appealed to me. But at the same time I grasped a truth of great importance. I had realized the danger of abstract thought when it loses touch with the concrete realities of life, and I had discovered the truth of experience, which is mediated through the imagination, and which often gives a deeper insight into reality than abstract thought.”

Bede Griffiths

The Human Vocation

“The human being is an animal who has received the vocation to become God.”

Basil the Great

Desire

Desire for vision: Faith.
Desire for Possesion: Hope.
Desire for love: Charity.
By expectation, God increases desire.
By desire, he empties out souls.
In emptying them out, he makes them more capable of receiving him.”

Augustine, Commentary on 1 John

Eucharist

What you see...is bread and a cup. This is what your eyes report to you. But your faith has need to be taught that the bread is the body of Christ, the cup the blood of Christ.... If, then, you wish to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle as he says to the faithful “You are the body of Christ and His members”.... You reply “Amen” to that which you are, and by replying you consent. For you hear “The body of Christ,” and you reply “Amen.” Be a member of the body of Christ so that your “Amen” may be true.... Be what you see, and receive what you are.

(Augustine, Sermon 272)