1“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23, 24)
2“It is according to the laws of order that no one ought to be persuaded about truth in a moment, that is to say, that truth should be so confirmed in a moment as to leave no doubt whatever about it” (Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 7289)
3“If anyone thinks within himself, or says to another, ‘Who can have that internal acknowledgment of truth which is faith? I cannot,’ I will tell him how he may have it: Shun evils as sins, and approach the Lord, and you will have as much as you desire”(Emanuel Swedenborg, Doctrine of Faith 12)
4“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”(Mahatma Gandhi)
5Lost
"Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you."
(David Wagoner)
6“Life is a luminous pause between two great mysteries, which themselves are one.” (Carl Jung)
7“A thousand years are like a single day.” (Psalm 90:4)
8“To hold anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable.” (Richard Rohr)
9“Only into a humble heart can the Divine flow; because so far as you are in humility, so far are you removed from self, and thus from the love of self.” (Emanuel Swedenborg, New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine 129)
10“Every unity has its existence from variety for a unity that is not the result of variety is not anything.” (Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell 56)
11"I am in the father and the father is in me." (John 14:11)
12"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:39)
13"And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"(Mark 8:36)
14Jesus came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
(John 13:6-9)
15"It is of Divine order that you should act from freedom according to reason, since to act from freedom according to reason is to act from oneself. Nevertheless these two faculties, Freedom and Reason, are not your own, but are the Lord's within you; and so far as you are human, they are not taken away from you, since without them you cannot be reformed; for without them you cannot do the work of repentance, you cannot fight against evils, and afterwards bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. Now, since you have freedom and reason from the Lord, and you act from them, it follows that you do not act from yourself, but as from yourself." (Emanuel Swedenborg, Doctrine of Life 101)
16“Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking … which takes us somewhere we wouldn’t be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.” (Nanette Sawyer)
17“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.” (Soren Kierkegaard)
18“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” (Carl R. Rogers)
19"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”(Tony Schwartz)
