Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
Dag HammarskjoldRead
It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that the path we follow in life often guides us rather than the other way around.
Dag Hammarskjold suggests that instead of actively searching for our purpose or direction in life, it is actually the purpose that finds us. We must remain open and prepared to embrace opportunities as they arise, demonstrating our faithfulness to this path even during times of waiting.
In practice
In a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of being open to life's opportunities.
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
The world cannot live at peace without the United Nations. For this reason: it creates a reasonable guarantee that all this change in the world, these tremendous political and economic developments, can be channelized, kept orderly. The United Nations is a mold that keeps the hot metal from spilling over.
In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.
He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.
I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.
We all - whether naturalists, atheists, Buddhists, or Christians - see the world through the grid of an interpretive framework - and ultimately this interpretive framework is religious in nature, even if not allied with a particular institutional religion.
Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.
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