QuakerQuotes

“The book will perish, and the steeple will fall; and the Light will be shining at the end of it all.”

“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”

“His gentleness was uncompromising; because he would not compete for dominance, he was indomitable.“

“…our Lord showed me spiritually in a vision how intimately he loves us. I saw that he is everything that is good and comforting and helpful to us. He is our clothing that enwraps us and enfolds us, embraces us and wholly encloses us, surrounding us out of tender love, so that he can never leave us. And so in this vision, as I understand it, I saw truly that he is everything that is good.”

I wasn’t sure about that quote, so I looked it up, and it’s a fairly accurate paraphrase of what Adams actually said:

Do You believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything for a purpose?

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Wait, I just had an idea.

“The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.”