Following Our Heart Quotes

There was purity and there was the dream, and the adventure, and there was the counterculture aspect. It was like shove society, shove the nine to five, shove the rules ... we're just going to follow our hearts, treat each other well, eat well, and enjoy the ocean. It was not for money and it wasn't for fame ... that's what we're gonna do ... purely because that's what our hearts want to do. That was amazing. ~ Jim Banks

God wants to help us ... He loves us ... we are His children. But He will not force His help on us at any time. He sees us when we struggle and fight and complain our way through things. And I believe it breaks His heart, when all we have to do is ask Him for help. ~ Joyce Meyer

In a 91-part series of sob stories from the laid off and the disgruntled, The NY Times is in the midst of bemoaning 'the downsizing of America' - better known as 'the whining of America.' The cause of all the heartache, in the esteemed newspaper of record's view, appears to be heartless corporate chieftains - as well as capitalism itself. Americans are moving forward, despite shackles. The shackles I am referring to are not NAFTA, not corporations. They are, instead, the barriers imposed by our own government. ~ Rush Limbaugh

The reality is, we can change. We can change ourselves. We can change our minds. We can change our hearts ... and therefore the Universe changes. ~ Richard Gere

The stories of Narnia seem childish nonsense to some. But to others, they are utterly transformative. For the latter group, these evocative stories affirm that it is possible for the weak and foolish to have a noble calling in a dark world; that our deepest intuitions point us to the true meaning of things; that there is indeed something beautiful and wonderful at the heart of the universe; and that this may be found, embraced, and adored. ~ Alister E. McGrath

This week
in live current
events: your eyes.

All power can be
dangerous:
Direct

or alternating,
you, socket to me.
Plugged in and the grid

is humming,
this electricity,
molecule-deep desire:

particular friction, a charge
strong enough to stop
a heart

or start it
again; volt, re-volt--
I shudder, I stutter, I start

to life. I've got my ion
you, copper-top,
so watch how you

conduct yourself.
Here's today's
newsflash: a battery of rolling

blackouts in California, sudden,
like lightning kisses:
sudden, whitehot

darkness and you're
here, fumbling for
that small switch

with an urgent surge
strong enough to kill
lesser machines.

Static makes hair raise,
makes things cling,
makes things rise like

a gathering storm
charging outside
our darkened house

and here I am:
tempest, pouring out
mouthfulls

of tsunami on the ground,
I've got that rain-soaked kite,
that drenched key.

You know what it's for,
circuit-breaker, you know
how to kiss until it's hertz. ~ Daphne Gottlieb

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

We are willing to lose ourselves in another as we exchange fates with one whom we love but on whom our heart is nevertheless impaled. ~ Alexander Theroux

We go through life discovering the truth about who we are and determining who has earned the right to share the space within our heart. And now I simply want to share what I've been given. I want to continue to encourage as many people as I can to open their hearts to life, because if I know anything for sure, it's that opening my heart is what has brought memory greatest success and joy. ~ Oprah Winfrey

La Zona is such a closed area, a dangerous, outlaw area. My time in the Zona was a time outside of society, almost out of the real world. And the girls there had such a sense of irony and sarcasm. They were also really interested in my film. They'd be like, "Thank God we live in Mexico, because our kind of prostitution has a heart. We wouldn't want to sit behind a glass cage or be sold by our own mothers. We have free will." ~ Michael Glawogger

Slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in Carlyle's heart. "We're going through the black air with our arms wide," she called, "and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing waves." Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an eternity before he heard the swift compact sound as she reached the sea. And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious ears that he knew he loved her. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.

Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The true problem of living is to keep our hearts sweet and gentle in the hardest conditions and experiences. ~ Bill Vaughan

I always choose to look, as much as one can, at the supernatural not being something that exists outside of nature, but a deeper, fundamental heart of nature that perhaps humans ... have lost touch with. It's a more primal thing than perhaps we are attuned to in our modern, self-aware way of life. ~ Alan Ball

Crown Of Love

They say it fades if you let it, love was made to forget it. i carved
your name across my eyelids, you pray for rain i pray for blindness.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
i snuffed it out before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the only thing that you keep changin' is your name. my love keeps
growin' still the same, just like cancer, and you won't give me a
straight answer!
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because your hands are not upon me.
i shrugged them off before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the pains of love, and they keep growin', in my heart there's flowers
growin' on the grave of our old love, since you gave me a straight
answer.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
it's not within me.
it's not within me.
you gotta be the one. you gotta be the way. your name is the only
word, the only word that i can say! ~ Arcade Fire

The reason so many believers are struggling is that we have voted in the past asking God to bless our plans rather than casting our votes based on seeking His agenda. We want God to sign off on our decisions rather than us following His. ~ Tony Evans

Can I blame them? they're sick with fear. We've grown too entrenched here, too entwined. Too immersed in the beating heart of this city, this country, this region, We've grown heavy and fat on our our wealth, collective power. We've become addicted to our influence, our mystique. And it's all a myth. An illusion. A crystal tower, standing on sand. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

America's nurses are the beating heart of our medical system. ~ Barack Obama

Siva," I said and my heart broke for this beautiful man. "You once told me that love is hard, painful, and anything but pleasant." I laughed, "I feel that with you, Siva. I love you so much it hurts. I didn't have that with Dev. I loved him, of course, but now… When I look back on our relationship I realize that we were more like best friends. He didn't make my heart speed up like this," I said and placed Siva's hand over my heart. "He didn't make my toes curl with a look, he didn't make me love him and hate him at the same time, and he didn't leave me breathless. I love you. I'm in love with you. You're the one I want. You're the one I choose. You are not second best, Siva, do you hear me? You're not. Even if… even if Dev hadn't died I still think we would've found each other. You're my heart and my soul Siva. I fell for you Siva and I fell hard and I'm okay if I never get up. ~ Micalea Smeltzer

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you're going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That's one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there's a very strange emotional reach. For me - more than books or movies or other things - music is like a mainline to your heart. ~ Matt Berninger

Steve's laugh was brittle. "Sarah, we all have our own wounds. We're all broken in our own way. Mine might look different than yours, but they were deep enough to enlarge my heart. ~ Talena Winters

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation – "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined ~ Frederic Bastiat

The trouble is that the whole 'accept Christ' attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to him. It makes him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting his verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

The problem is not in the food ... The problem lies in the mind. It lies in our lack of awareness of the messages coming in from our body ... Mindful eating helps us learn to hear what our body is telling us about hunger and satisfaction. It helps us become aware of who in the body/heart/ mind complex is hungry, and how and what is best to nourish it. ~ Jan Chozen Bays

Time Heals all our wounds and open a wound at Others ~ Jan Jansen Easy Branches

When we raise one hand to say "bye-bye" we are gesturing that we are going apart from each other, whereas when we join our palms and bow our head, our hearts become closer. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

Again, we are humble because we know we are not the power to change the heart. But we are obedient because we know we are the necessary means ordained by our sovereign God by which the light comes to those in darkness. ~ Mark Dever

The four radiant abodes are loving-kindness, compassion, joy and peace.These abodes are treasured because they are exquisitely simple, the universal expression of an open heart. When our peaceful heart meets other beings it fills with love. When love meets happiness, it becomes joy. ~ Jack Kornfield

If our hearts and minds are not properly transformed, we are like musicians playing untuned instruments, or engineers working with broken and ill-programmed computers. The attunement of the heart is essential to the outflow of grace ... We must aim at building the structures of God's kingdom but recognized that we will only create these through the transformation of our experience. Concentration on reformation without revival leads to skins without wine; concentration on revival without reformation soon loses the wine for want of skins. ~ Richard Lovelace

The ultimate language of yoga is expressed in doing yoga, a practice that transcends words as we open our lives to living more consciously through the infinite wisdom of the heart. ~ Mark Stephens

If your heart is not attuned to God, it will become a catch basin for every device of the devil. Yes, Satan is at work in our world. The Bible is my authority. ~ Billy Graham