Longing is a compass that guides us through life. We may never get what we really want, that's true, but every step along the way will be determined by it.
Interpretation
Longing serves as a guiding force in our lives, shaping our journey even if we don't achieve our desires.
This quote by Joan D. Chittister highlights the significance of longing in our lives. It suggests that while we may never fulfill all our desires, the feelings of yearning and aspiration play a crucial role in directing our paths. Longing acts as a compass, influencing our choices and experiences, emphasizing the importance of the journey rather than just the destination.
In practice
During a motivational speech on pursuing dreams, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of aspirations.
Feminism without spirituality runs the risk of becoming what it rejects: an elitist ideology, arrogant, superficial and separatist, closed to everything but itself. Without a spiritual base that obligates it beyond itself, calls it out of itself for the sake of others, a pedagogical feminism turned in on itself can become just one more intellectual ghetto that the world doesn’t notice and doesn’t need.
We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.
Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step towards dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.
The question is not, do we go to church; the question is, have we been converted. The crux of Christianity is not whether or not we give donations to popular charities but whether or not we are really committed to the poor.
It is a pathetic moment in the history of the human condition when the outside world tells us who and what we are - and we start to believe it ourselves. Then, bent over from the weight of the negativity, we start to wither on the outside.
To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God.
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
I'm not afraid to die - it's just that I had so much left to do in this world.
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing...is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.
Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
Greed's worst point is its ingratitude.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.