True Discipline

“Discipline is not punishment – What is discipline? Look at the word; there is no hint of punishment in it. A disciple is a follower, and discipline is the state of the follower… He who would draw disciples does not trust to force; but to these three things:
To the attraction of his doctrine
To the persuasion of his presentation
To the enthusiasm of his disciples;
So the parent has teachings of the perfect life which he knows how to present continually with winning force until the children are quickened with such zeal for virtue and holiness as carries them forward with leaps and bounds.”

Source Unknown

Empathy

I experience an accurate, empathic understanding of the person’s world as my own, but without ever losing the “as if” quality. This is empathy. To understand the person’s feelings, never in doubt about what the person means; my remarks fit in just right with the person’s mood and content, and my tone of voice conveys the complete ability to share the person’s feelings.

Carl Rogers

Unconditional Positive Regard

An acceptance of and caring for the person as a separate person, with permission to have their own feelings and experiences.

Carl Rogers

Congruence (Humility?)

I am exactly who I am not a façade, or a role, or a pretense, but an accurate matching of experience with awareness in the moment.

Carl Rogers

St. Bonaventure on Contemplation

“If you wish to know how such things [contemplation] come about, consult grace, not doctrine; desire, not understanding; prayerful groaning, not studious reading; the spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity. Consult not light but the fire that completely inflames the mind and carries it over to God and transports a fervor and blaze of love. This fire is God…. Christ starts the flame with the fire and heat of his intense suffering…. Whoever loves this death may see God, for this is beyond doubt true: ‘No man sees me and still lives' [Ex. 33:20]. Let us die, then, and pass over into the darkness.”

St. Bonaventure

Prophets

The Word of God comes to a person and makes that person a prophet. The prophet in turn discloses the Word received. The prophet, under the power of the Word, names ways of living that must be changed. The prophet announces the particular behaviors that are required right now as a response to a new age that is promised. And the new age is proclaimed in fantasized images of considerable particularity.

Bernard J. Lee S.M. Jesus and the Metaphors… p. 116

Modes of Revelation

It is a scholastic dictum that “whatever is received is received according to the nature of the receiver.” If I want to address a friend at a great distance, and the friend has only a shortwave receiver, it does me no good to speak into the telephone. God’s initiatives are always incarnated in the operational modes of those for whom he cares. The caring of God is an actual event, and like all events, it has a structure. The caring of God is partly determined by God’s own free decisions about the ways in which God will bestow love. But it is also determined by the historical configurations of those who are to be the recipients of that love.

Bernard J. Lee S.M. Jesus and the Metaphors of God