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Word Gems exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Quotations on the subject of God
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Thomas Paine: "The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Sri Aurobindo: "[We must not] attach ourselves even to the truths we hold most securely, for they are but forms and expressions of the Ineffable who refuses to limit itself to any form or expression." Calvin & Hobbes cartoon: "It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." Religion through the eyes of children, The National Review, 1996-Dec-31: "The seventh commandment is 'thou shalt not admit adultery.'" "Paul preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage." "One of the opossums was St. Matthew." "Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol." "Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption." "A Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony." "The Jews had trouble throughout their history with the unsympathetic Genitals." "Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night." "Moses went to the top of Mt. Cyanide to get the 10 commandments." "Unleavened bread is bread made without ingredients." "Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines." Bishop Desmond Tutu: "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land." Albert Einstein: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Sir Oliver Lodge: "As William James says: A football team desire to get a ball to a "So also we may say, Good is the end and aim of the Divine Being; but "Yes, there was a real risk in making a human race on this planet. Thomas Merton, Opening the Bible: "Religious thought does not move from question to answer but rather from question to question with each new question opening a larger field of vision." Mahatma Ghandi: "If it weren't for Christians, I'd be a Christian." Thomas Paine: "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst." Archbishop William Temple: I believe in the holy Catholic Church, and I deeply regret that it does not presently exist. Oliver Stone: Religion is for those who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there. Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota, 1999, in an interview with Playboy: "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business." Galileo Galilei: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Will Durant, The Age of Faith: "In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome." William Shakespeare: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (c. 1840-1904): "We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do." Rich Jeni, on reasons for religious wars: "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend." Lord Acton: "Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes." Stewart H. Holbrook: "Almost everyone who has read history in a more than casual manner knows that when the great figure of God appears in a controversy, the shooting cannot be far off." Tom Wolfe: "A cult is a religion with no political power." Voltaire: "If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace." John Heywood: "The nearer to the church, the further from God." Adrian Desmond, Huxley: "Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology." Emerson: "The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates and tyrannizes over a village of God's empire, but it is not the universal immutable law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth." Twain: "A man is accepted into church for what he believes - and turned out for what he knows." "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination." Edward H. Ashment: "I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue between 'proclaimers of truth' (religious and secular ideologues) and 'discoverers of truth' (empiricists). The former tend to debate, the latter tend to discuss." Adrian Desmond, Huxley: On Huxley encountering natives on a remote island... "Untouched people; not necessarily noble savages, but apparently happy ones. They lived in a land of plenty, ready to share their bananas and guavas and coconuts. They were to be envied for their 'primitive simplicity and kind-heartedness'. Where was that 'malady of thought' afflicting industrial England? [Huxley] realized that 'civilization as we call it would be rather a curse than a blessing to them'. Huxley knew the fate in store for them, slamming the 'mistaken goodness of the Stigginses of Exeter Hall, who would send missionaries to these men to tell them that they will all infallibly be damned'." General Slava Borisov: During the Soviet Union's war with Afghanistan, the field commander of the Soviet troops, General Slava Borisov, was in a helicopter that was shot down by rebel fire and crashed. He was a devout atheist upon entering the helicopter, but was a devout believer in God before the helicopter hit the ground. "As my helicopter spun out of control, I cried out to God. And I did it subconsciously, I did it instinctively. And I cried out to Him, 'God save me.' I survived, fortunately, even though I was wounded very severely." Borisov was the only survivor among twelve people in the helicopter when it crashed. This convinced him it was God's intervention that saved him. He continued, "I came to the idea that there is a super power, a super force in the universe - which is God - that can help people in difficult situations when nobody else can help. I turned to this power . . . . I found out how powerful God is and if you pray to Him and have fellowship with Him, He'll help you and He'll never let you down, no matter what kind of circumstances, you are going through." Thomas Jefferson: "I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me." Thomas Jefferson: "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." Thomas Jefferson: "But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: "That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel!" Dr. William James: It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all. Dalai Lama: "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." Sir Oliver Lodge, Raymond: "To sum up: Let us not be discouraged by simplicity. Real things are simple. Human conceptions are not altogether misleading. Our view of the Universe is a partial one but is not an untrue one. Our knowledge of the conditions of existence is not altogether false - only inadequate... Nor let us imagine that existence hereafter, removed from these atoms of matter which now both confuse and manifest it, will be something so wholly remote and different as to be unimaginable; but let us learn by the testimony of experience - either our own or that of others - that those who have been, still are; that they care for us and help us; that they, too, are progressing and learning and working and hoping; that there are grades of existence, stretching upward and upward to all eternity; and that God Himself, through His agents and messengers, is continually striving and working and planning, so as to bring this creation of His through its preparatory labour and pain, and lead it on to an existence higher and better than anything we have ever known." Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction: "...hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say 'grace'." Jean Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762: "But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes." Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, 1893: "But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church - with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility - is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time." James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1784: "The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." Kenneth Woodward, Jan. 13, 2006: "When word went out from Rome recently that the pope's theological advisers were prepared to abandon the idea of Limbo, it was clear that the medieval notion of a place where unbaptized infants, among others, go was as good as dead... The Catholic habit is to let outworn theological idioms disappear through benign neglect. That appears to be what has happened to limbo." Editor's note: It is ironic that institutionalized religion throws in the towel on this one (after centuries of demanding blind obedience) just when a great deal of empirical AfterLife evidence becomes available regarding post-death limbo-like states of existence (albeit temporary in nature) for those of less than sterling character. Dr. Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Meaning Of The Cross: "The worst penalty of sin is that man is separated from God, his spiritual senses dulled, his spiritual desires lessened. Such separation involves progressive deterioration of character, which, if unstayed, may indeed involve such a disintegration of personality that the latter ceases to be recognizable... both our Lord and [Paul] use the word 'dead' ... to describe [this wayward soul]... The words of Jesus about His suffering and death reveal that He willingly committed Himself to some mighty task, costly to Him beyond our imagining, but effecting for all men a deliverance beyond their own power to achieve, and that in doing so He knew Himself to be utterly and completely one with God the Father." John Adams: Near the end of his life, the second President offers a few lines in summation of his spiritual outlook: "Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good: but never presume to comprehend." Elizabeth Fry, testimony from the other side: Fry speaks via Leslie Flint, direct-voice medium: "Christ himself had no intention, no desire, to found any religious organization. This is completely, absolutely, a man-made thing - which over the centuries has misled mankind." Ellen Terry, testimony from the other side: Terry speaks via Leslie Flint, direct-voice medium: "I would say that this [life on our side] is the natural life and yours is the artificial, and that the truly natural life is the spiritual… the material life is only a pale reflection of the reality... Here there is no restriction placed upon expansion of expression; here you assimilate knowledge and experience; here you throw off more and more of the old self and become truly free... It is the narrow confines of earth which prevent individuals from becoming spiritual beings" read more here John Adams, 1780: His leaking ship having made an emergency stop at El Ferrol; crossing the Pyrenees on mule-back en route 1000 miles to Paris; resting in a Spanish village; newly-appointed US Ambassador to France, John Adams, records in his diary: "Nothing [in Spain] appeared rich but the churches, nobody fat but the clergy... We saw the procession of the Bishop and of all the Canons, in rich habits of silk, velvet, silver and gold. The Bishop ... spread out his hands to the people ... [they] prostrated themselves on their knees as he passed. Our guide told us we must do the same, But I contented myself with a bow. The eagle eye of the Bishop did not fail to observe an upright figure amidst the crowd of prostrate adorers: but no doubt perceiving in my countenance and air, but especially in my dress, something that was not Spanish, he concluded I was some travelling heretic and did not think it worth while to exert his authority to bend my stiff knees." Albert Einstein: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." Author unknown: The word "lent" comes from an Anglo Saxon word meaning "lengthen," as in, the days are getting longer - it will soon be spring. In times past, this meant that grain bins were nearly empty, having been depleted by the long winter, and supplies of food were running low. People at this time of year were cutting back in order to conserve what was left. But the coming of spring meant that crops would be planted, with the promise that food might once again be plentiful. Denying oneself now meant plenty for later. Traditional Christianity tells us that Lent is a time of denial and giving something up, but such abstinence was originally based on necessity not design. If we choose to abstain from anything this time of year let it be done in this spirit: abstain from judging others, indulge in God's view of them; abstain from emphasizing differences, indulge in tolerance and the unity of all life; abstain from thoughts of illness, indulge in the healing power of God; abstain from bitterness, indulge in thoughts of forgiveness; abstain from hopelessness, indulge in the joy of this present moment. Victor Zammit: COMMENTARY, April 29, 2011: WORLD CHRISTIAN LEADERS WRONGLY STATE IN THEIR EASTER MESSAGE, "PEOPLE ARE MOVING AWAY FROM GOD." Just because people are no longer going to conservative Christian Church services does not mean they are abandoning 'God.' In a court procedure a lawyer would stand up and call out "OBJECTION - that is an inadmissible statement" because what the Christian leaders are stating is an 'interpretation' not a 'fact'. It can equally be said that people are protesting with their feet because conservative Christianity needs a radical reformation to remove all the absurdities, all the dogmas, all the irrelevant doctrines. This applies especially to the Catholic Church. For example, even today a divorced Catholic woman who remarries is told by the Pope that she will be ETERNALLY DAMNED and spend billions and billions of years in 'fiery hell' if she dies! That is a most absurd doctrine. People these days, especially youth, want MEANING, want EVIDENCE, want RELEVANCE to their life on earth and the conservative Christian Church does not seem to be listening to the people. Somebody has to tell the Pope and the Cardinals that we live in the twenty first century and the essential message of Christianity of love, service to others and belief in an afterlife are being submerged in doctrines that are thousands of years old and totally meaningless. People are absorbing the information and the teachings that come directly from credible afterlife sources because they have value, relevance and meaning to our life on earth here and the afterlife. Editor's note: Compare this to John Heywood's, "The nearer to the church, the further from God." Dr. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: "By the time I was in college, I had become a 'deist' without knowing it. 'Deism' was a theological position that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an accommodation between the Enlightenment worldview and supernatural theism. (It was actually the view of many of our founding fathers, including Washington and Jefferson, despite what the ideologues of the Christian right want us to believe.) I discovered that I was a deist during a Sunday evening religious discussion group when I was a freshman. I offered the opinion that one could reconcile belief in God with modern science by saying that God created the universe in the beginning and that it had run in accord with natural laws ever since. A philosophy professor commented that this was the view held by the deists. I was surprised to learn that there was a name for the position I had articulated, and a little deflated about being so easily pigeonholed. Without knowing it, I was reliving the history of modern thought in my own experience. In my childhood, I lived within a premodern worldview; in high school and college I lived through the Enlightenment. I also find it interesting that deism (both historically and in my own experience) was a halfway house on the way to atheism. There is little difference between a distant and absent God and no God at all." Dr. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: "... I also learned that the problems I had with supernatural theism were not unique to me. Indeed, there were theologians who sharply challenged this notion as an obstacle to being Christian. I recall the excitement with which I read the controversial best-seller Honest to God by John Robinson, a bishop of the Church of England. Robinson argued that the notion of a God 'up there' or 'out there' had become incredible in the modern world. He spoke of 'the end of theism' (by which he meant the end of 'supernatural theism'). He also argued for an alternative way of thinking about God, which he as a Christian and bishop affirmed: rather than God being 'out there' in the heights, God is known in the depths of personal experience. I also read Paul Tillich (commonly regarded as the other most important Protestant theologian of the time, alongside Barth). Tillich attacked the God of supernatural theism by arguing that God was not a being but 'Being-Itself' or 'the ground of being.' He denied that God existed (and affirmed instead that 'God is') by pointing out that 'to exist' means to stand out from the ground of existence as a separate being. 'Things' (stones, stars, people, and so on) exist by being separate things. God does not exist in that sense; rather, God is. Tillich attacked 'the God of theological theism' (supernatural theism) as 'bad theology.' According to Tillich, this point of view is wrong because it sees God as 'a being beside others and as such a part of the whole of reality' But God is not a part of reality but is 'ultimate reality.' Indeed, Tillich even argued that the natural and justifiable consequence of thinking of God as a separate being is atheism. Thus, for Tillich, God is 'the God above God' -- the God who remains when the God of supernatural theism disappears." A Course in Miracles: The summary introduction, which appears in its Text, is quite succinct and brief. It reads: This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic: We are told to believe 'by faith' that Jesus is the Son of God. But when Jesus praised faith and asked for faith he did not mean anything of the kind; he meant trust. ... when Jesus told the woman healed of menorrhagia that her faith had saved her, he meant her "trustful expectancy," a risk which her will power enabled her to take, and which made her fling herself before Christ in an abandonment of committal. 'If I touch but His clothes I shall be made whole.' Let me write a little on this important difference because I think it may help us to cut out some dead wood and silly superstition from our thinking. God has given us our minds and we are to use them. Jesus said that the very first commandment was that we must love God with our minds. No honest mind can exclude doubt, or ignore criticism, or shut its ears against reason. And if we could do these things we should be left, not with faith but with a head-in-the-sand superstition. So, in the field of religion, I would define the faith of the intellect as an attitude of complete sincerity, and loyalty to the trend of all the available evidence, plus a leap in the direction of that trend, beyond the hard road of reason but not beyond the kind of speculation which the nature of God suggests. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic: Unbelief is frowned on by some of the elect as though it were a sin, but no one can make another believe until he can so exhibit the truth that the mind of the would-be believer cannot do other than leap out and grasp it and make it his own. What is sinful is a man's assertion that he does not believe, after truth has authenticated itself in his own mind, or if he refuses to contemplate all the evidence, which one is so prone to do if it is offered by someone who is disliked on other grounds. How wisely Dr. John Oman, late Principal of Westminster College, Cambridge, to whom I owe so much, writes: In the strict sense, we should not even try to believe; for we have no right to believe anything we can avoid believing, granting we have given it entire freedom to convince us. Strictly speaking, also, we have no right to exhort people to believe, and much of that very common type of exhortation is mere distrust of truth and disregard of veracity .... There is only one right way of asking men to believe, and that is to put before them what they ought to believe because it is true; and there is only one right way of persuading, and that is to present what is true in such a way that nothing will prevent it from being seen except the desire to abide in darkness; and there is only one further way of helping these, which is to point out what they are cherishing that is opposed to faith. When all this has been done, it is still necessary to recognize that faith is God's gift, not our handiwork; of His manifestation of the truth by life, not of our demonstration by argument or of our impressing by eloquence; and that even He is willing to fail till He can have the only success love could value--personal acceptance of the truth simply because it is seen to be true. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic: Faith ... is not concerned with believing historical or other propositions on inadequate evidence. It is reason grown courageous, the spirit which inspires martyrs, the confidence that right must eventually triumph, that all things work together for good to those who love God... Let us never think of faith--as the schoolboy defined it -- as 'believing what you know to be untrue.' Let us be content to leave many things in the box of the mind, labeled, 'awaiting further light.' Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. Mother Teresa: "We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...We need silence to be able to touch souls." Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, Einstein: The Life and Times , Ronald W. Clark, page 502: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." Einstein's speech, My Credo, to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262: "Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own." ... "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is." Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." Einstein: A Life, Denis Brian, page 206: Coughlin [of the Los Angeles tabloid Illustrated Daily News, in hot pursuit of asking Einstein a provocative, headline-inducing question] found the right moment while tailing the car that was speeding the couple [the Einsteins] north on the coast road to Pasadena. It had stopped to let Einstein stroll over to a small headland known as Sunset Cliffs, where he stood gazing at the sea and sky. Seizing the moment, Coughlin leaped from his car, the question on his lips, followed by Spang, his camera at the ready. "Doctor," Coughlin said, "is there a God?" Einstein stared at the water's edge some twenty feet below, then turned to his questioner. Coughlin later wrote: "There were tears in his eyes, and he was sniffing. Spang shot the picture as Einstein was hustled away before he could answer me. "Well," I said, "the way he reacted, he believes in God. Did you ever see such an emotional face?" Spang was standing on the edge of the headland, where the great scientist had stood. He looked down, then called me: "Come over here." I looked down and there, caught against the base of the little cliff, was a shark that must have been dead in the hot sun for several days. "Make anybody cry," Spang said." Galileo, quoted by Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography: "I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilisation: "Diderot was staying at the Russian court, where his elegant flippancy was entertaining the nobility. Fearing that the faith of her retainers was at stake, the Tsaritsa commissioned Euler, the most distinguished mathematician of the time, to debate with Diderot in public. Diderot was informed that a mathematician had established a proof of the existence of God. He was summoned to court without being told the name of his opponent. Before the assembled court, Euler accosted him with the following pronouncement, which was uttered with due gravity: a + bn/n = x, donc Dieu existe repondez! Algebra was Arabic to Diderot. Unfortunately he did not realize that was the trouble. Had he realized that algebra is just a language in which we describe the sizes of things in contrast to the ordinary languages which we use to describe the sorts of things in the world, he would have asked Euler to translate the first half of the sentence into French. Translated freely into English, it may be rendered: "A number x can be got by first adding a number a to a number b multiplied by itself a certain number of times, and then dividing the whole by the number of b's multiplied together. So God exists after all. What have you got to say now?" If Diderot had asked Euler to illustrate the first part of his remark for the clearer understanding of the Russian court, Euler might have replied that x is 3 when a is1 and b is 2 and n is 3.... Euler's troubles would have begun when the court wanted to know how the second part of the sentence follows from the first part. Like many of us, Diderot had stagefright when confronted with a sentence in size language. He left the court abruptly amid the titters of the assembly ... and promptly returned to France." H.G. Wells: "At times, in the silence of the night and in rare, lonely moments, I experience a sort of communion of myself with Something Great that is not myself." Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic: "I often think of the prayers offered daily and weekly by millions of loyal subjects for the Queen -- 'grant her in health and wealth long to live' -- but members of the Royal Family do not live any longer than anyone else or enjoy better health. If I have a toothache I do not pray, or ask for prayer. I go to the dentist. Is it logical to pray just because I do not know who can make me well? Sometimes I overhear the angels saying to one another, 'If only they would spend on medical research what they spend on trying to land on the moon, they could prevent cancer as they have prevented plague, and then they would no more pray about a sick body than they pray about a decayed tooth'... God is not going to make of prayer an easy magic, just because we have not used our human resources of money and men in wiser ways." A Knight's Prayer, Chester Cathedral : "My Lord, I am ready on the threshold of this new day to go forth armed with Thy power, seeking adventure on the high road, to right wrong, to overcome evil, to suffer wounds and endure pain if need be, but in all things to serve Thee bravely, faithfully, joyfully, that at the end of the day's labour, kneeling for Thy blessing, Thou mayest find no blot upon my shield. Amen." Abigail Adams, July 4, 1784: On the eighth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, while enduring great hardship and peril crossing the Atlantic to meet her ambassador husband in France, Abigail Adams recorded these words: "Whilst the Nations of Europe are enveloped in Luxery and dissipation; and a universal venality prevails throughout Britain, may the new empire, Gracious Heaven, become the Guardian and protector of Religion and Liberty, of universal Benevolence and Phylanthropy. May those virtues which are banished from the land of our Nativity, find a safe Assylum with the inhabitants of the new world." Major Dick Winters, June 6, 1944, D-Day - the evening of that first incredible day of the liberation of Europe: as depicted in the HBO movie series, Band of Brothers, and based on his own writings: "That night I took time to thank God for seeing me through the Day of Days; and I prayed that I would make it through 'D+1' -- and if somehow I managed to get home again I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land someplace and spend the rest of my life in peace." Fr. Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: "Do not strive for verbosity ... The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart... can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness and thus listen to the voice of God... Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life... Solitude is the furnace of transformation." "Three Fathers used to go and visit blessed Anthony [who had spent much time with the Lord] every year and two of them used to discuss their thoughts ... but the third always remained silent and did not ask him anything. After a long time, Abba Anthony said to him: 'You often come here to see me, but you never ask me anything,' and the other replied, 'It is enough to see you, Father.' This story is a fit ending to this book. By the time people feel that just seeing us is ministry, words such as these will no longer be necessary." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland: The Queen asserts that she is a hundred and one years, five months and one day old. "I can't believe that," said Alice. "Can't you?" said the Queen. 'Try again. Draw a long breath and shut your eyes." Le Roy: "If dogmas formulated absolute truth in adequate terms, they would be unintelligible to us." Sir Julian Huxley, Religion Without Revelation: "I believe that one should be agnostic when belief one way or the other is mere idle speculation, incapable of verification; when belief is held merely to gratify desires, however deep-seated, and not because it is forced on us by evidence; and when belief may be taken by others to be more firmly grounded than it really is, and so come to encourage false hopes or wrong attitudes of mind." Pascal, Pensees: "I am astonished at the boldness with which people undertake to speak of God." C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections: "Consciously, I was religious in the Christian sense, though always with the reservation; But it is not so certain as all that." Goethe: "Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude." Pastor John Robinson, 1620, parting words to the Pilgrim Fathers: "The Lord hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of His Holy word."
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