Quote – Page 2 – Grits and Grains

In chaotic times

March 19, 2013March 20, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

I know that leaders today are faced with enormous challenges, most of them not of their own doing. As times grow more chaotic, as people question the meaning (and meaninglessness) of this life, people are clamouring for their leaders to save and rescue them…. People press their leaders to do anything to end the uncertainty, to make things better, to create stability. Even leaders who would never want to become dictators, those devoted to servant leadership, walk into this trap. They want to help, so they exert more control over the disorder. They try to create safety, to insulate people from the realities of change. They try to give answers to dilemnas that have no answers.

Today is the inauguration of Pope Francis’s papacy. We pray for him. This quote on the temptations and spirituality of leadership in times of chaos (all times) is from Meg Wheatley’s Finding our Way. It struck me as helpful on a day when many will be thinking through issues of leadership.

About Grace

January 17, 2013March 20, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

Do we know what it means to be struck by grace?

It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the Bible contains the truth. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.

It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual . . . It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Paul Tillich.

quoted by Holloway, Richard (2012-03-01). Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Kindle Locations 1668-1674). Canongate Books. Kindle Edition.

Our errors

November 27, 2012 David Herbert3 Comments

“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.”
William James

Sacred places

July 16, 2012March 21, 2013 David HerbertLeave a comment

There are no unsacred places
There are only sacred places
and desecrated places

from Wendell Berry How to be a poet

Merton on sanity

May 2, 2012 David HerbertLeave a comment

We can no longer assume that because a man is “sane” he is therefore in his “right mind.” The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless…

And so I ask myself: what is the meaning of a concept of sanity that excludes love, considers it irrelevant, and destroys our capacity to love other human beings, to respond to their needs and their sufferings, to recognize them also as persons, to apprehend their pain as one’s own? Evidently this is not necessary for “sanity” at all.

The worst error is to imagine that a Christian must try to be “sane” like everybody else, that we belong in our kind of society.

A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann by Thomas Merton in Raids on the Unspeakable.

Overcommitment

April 22, 2012March 24, 2013 David Herbert5 Comments

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralises his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Thomas Merton in Confessions of a Guilty Bystander