• We should always say the Jesus prayer wherever we are; not just in the morning or at night. When we walk, we should not waste our free time, but instead take advantage of it and repeat the prayer. When we are working in a busy place and it is difficult for us to concentrate on praying, we can quietly chant without disturbing others.

    —Saint Paisios

  • “Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again.”

    —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  • “Much can be said without much being spoken.”

    —Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

  • A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire so that when it is really needed it can offer warmth and light to lost travelers. Nobody expressed this with more conviction than the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh:

    “There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passersby only see a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way.  Look here, now what must be done?  Must one tend the inner fire, have salt in oneself, wait patiently yet with how much impatience the hour when somebody will come and sit down–maybe to stay? Let him who believes in God wait for the hour that will come sooner or later.”

    Vincent van Gogh speaks here with the mind and heart of the Desert Fathers. He knew about the temptation to open all the doors so that passersby could see the fire and not just the smoke coming through the chimney. But he also realized that if this happened, this fire would die and nobody would find warmth and new strength. His own life is a powerful example of faithfulness to the inner fire. During his life nobody came to sit down at his fire, but today thousands have found comfort and consolation in his drawings, paintings, and letters.

    —Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

  • There was another remarkable thing about John. If anyone came to borrow something from him, he did not take it in his own hands and lend it, but said, ‘Come in, take what you need.’ When a borrower brought anything back, John used to say, ‘Put it back where you found it.’ If a man borrowed something and did not bring it back, John said nothing to him about it.

    The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
    Benedicta Ward

  • A hermit said, ‘If you lose gold or silver, you can find something as good as you lost.  But the man who loses time can never make up what he has lost.’

    The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
    Benedicta Ward

  • “Once when I was talking to some brothers for the good of their soul they became so drowsy that they could not even keep their eyelids open. I wanted to show them that this was the devil’s work, so I started gossiping: and at once they sat up and began to enjoy what I was saying.”

    —Saint John Cassian

  • Maybe you think that you are more tempted by arrogance than by self-rejection. But isn’t arrogance, in fact, the other side of self-rejection? Isn’t arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself? Isn’t arrogance, in the final analysis, just another way of dealing with the feelings of worthlessness? Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain. I know too well that beneath my arrogance there lies much self-doubt, just as there is a great mount of pride hidden in my self-rejection. Whether I am inflated or deflated, I lose touch with my truth and distort my vision of reality.

    —Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

  • We come to realize that what previously seemed so important for our lives, loses its power over us. Our desire to be successful, well liked, and influential becomes increasingly less important as we come closer to God’s heart. To our surprise, we even may experience a strange inner freedom to follow a new call or direction as previous concerns move into the background of our consciousness.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life