Guidance

God’s purpose in guidance is not to get us to perform the right actions. His purpose is to help us become the right kind of people.
John Ortberg

Forgiveness

Many of us struggle, not so much with understanding the message of forgiveness, but with living in the reality of it.
John Ortberg

Community and Conversion

“The monks have come to know that their community is constituted by their commitment to conversion. And they know that conversion is turning from themselves to their brethren in community; and to Christ in prayer; and to God in Christ.”
John Main, O.S.B.

The Human Search

I think we can state the message like this: The search of all people in every age has been a search for some ultimate meaning perceptible among all the complexities and paradoxes of life. It is also a search for some ultimate authority in whom and on whom we can place complete reliance and certainty without losing our human self-respect or integrity. Idolatry and mere religiosity have only ever provided temporary satisfaction for this search. Our particular message which we have received by the manifold disclosure of God’s self-revelation that culminates in the person of Jesus is that these ultimate goals of meaning and authority are to be found within the depths of the human soul – within the mystery of our own personhood. It is the treasure buried in the field of our own hearts.
John Main, O.S.B.

Cloud of Unknowing

“The Cloud of Unknowing teaches that we can achieve communion with God only through the Grace of divine Love. To prepare ourselves to receive this gift, we must enter a state of quiet stillness, suspended between heaven and earth. Above – between us and God – lies a mysterious “cloud of unknowing”, which our understanding can never penetrate. Between us and the world, we must create a “cloud of forgetting”, leaving conscious thought and desire below. In this timeless place of forgetting and unknowing, we may begin to hear that for which we are listening.
John Luther Adams

Contemplation

“The essence of contemplative experience is voluntary surrender, purposeful immersion in the fullness of a presence far larger than ourselves.”
John Luther Adams

Perfection

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. “
John Henry Cardinal Newman