David Steindl-Rast Quotes

As we learn to give thanks for all of life and death, for all of this given world of ours, we find a deep joy. It is the joy of trust, the joy of faith in the faithfulness at the heart of all things. It is the joy of gratefulness in touch with the fullness of life.

It is not happiness that makes us grateful It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. … Whatever life gives to you, you can respond with joy. Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It is the grateful response to the opportunity that life offers you at this moment.

Whatever life gives to you, you can respond with joy. Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It is the grateful response to the opportunity that life offers you at this moment

Meaning springs from belonging.

Nothing is more significant in Jesus’ parables than his appeal to Common Sense. What a pity that this term has been abused to mean no more than sweet reasonableness or, worse, public opinion. Rightly understood, it means the deep awareness that all have in common and from which anything sensible must flow. We could even say that Common Sense is God’s Holy Spirit in the human heart. And here Jesus differs from the prophets. They appealed to the authority of God as standing behind them — 'Thus speaks the Lord God. …' Jesus, in contrast, appeals to Common Sense, to the authority of God in the hearts of his hearers. No wonder the people felt empowered. 'This man speaks with authority,' they said, and they added, 'not like the Scribes' (Mark 1:22), not like the authorities of cultural religion. ... As the very opposite to conventional thinking, Common Sense was, and still is, subversive to authoritarian structures and intolerable to their religious as well as political representatives.

Is the relationship between God and Jesus Christ not unique? Of course it is. But so is yours. The relationship between God and every human being is unique and irreplaceable — in ever-new variations of the Christ theme.

The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves.

True gratefulness is courage to give thanks for a gift before unwrapping it.

If you are striving to be perfect and pure, everything depends on getting the right idea of what absolute purity and perfection mean. We tend to get trapped in the idea of a static perfection that leads to rigid perfectionism. Abstract speculation can create an image of God that is foreign to the human heart. On the level of religious doctrine, it's a God that is totally purged of anything that we call dark. Then we try to live up to the standards of a God that is purely light and we can't handle the darkness within us. And because we can't handle it, we suppress it. But the more we suppress it, the more it leads its own life, because it's not integrated. Before we know it, we are in serious trouble.

The light of love shines “in the darkness” (John 1:5), in suffering, in confusion, in all that we will never understand. Love makes darkness itself shine. This opens altogether new possibilities for dealing creatively with the shadow side of reality. Words can only serve as pointers; we must put this to the test in our own dark hours. Those who have done so, those who have suffered lovingly, have discovered the transformative power of love.

Now think of a situation in which something becomes meaningful to you. What is there to grasp? What is there to keep under control? That is not the idea. You will find yourself using expressions in which you are perfectly passive or at least more passive. “Responsive” is really the word, but you are more passive than in a situation in which you are accomplishing a purpose. You will say, “This really did something to me.

The typical circumstance of a child when seen in public these days is one of being dragged along by a long arm, while whoever is dragging the child is saying, “Come on, let’s go! We don’t have any time. We have to get home (or somewhere else). Don’t just stand there. Do something.” That’s the gist of it. But other cultures — many Native American tribes, for example — had an entirely different ideal for education: “A well-educated child ought to be able to sit and look when there is nothing to be seen,” and “A well-educated child ought to be able to sit and listen when there is nothing to be heard.” Now that’s very different from our attitude, but it is very congenial to children.

At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just wants to sing; it breaks into song. Paradoxically, you could say when the silence finds its fullness, it comes to word.

After all, how could I be a person if Ultimate Reality were impersonal?

The term “peak experience” is a well-chosen term suggesting, for one thing, that it is somewhat elevated above your normal experience. It is a moment in which you are somehow high, or at any rate higher than at other moments. It is a moment, although it may last quite some time; even then that long time, say an hour or so, appears as a moment. It is always experienced as a point in time, just as the peak of a mountain is always a point. Now this may be a high peak or a low peak; the decisive thing is that it comes to a peak. So you look over your day or over your life or over any period of time, you see these peaks sticking out, and they are points of an elevated experience, points of an experience of vision, of insight if you want.