This Holy Ground Quotes

I vow on this holy ground that when this is all over, I'm going to bend you over the first available surface and fuck you sideways. Got it? ~ Kerrigan Byrne

Cruz made the sign of the cross over them. He hefted his rifle onto his shoulder and walked away. His warriors followed, blessed by the Lord, reconciled, holy in this day He had made, and ready to shoot. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

That's what I was struggling out of nightmares to reach, to seize. Joy. But where can I seize this holy grail of joy? I look back down to the page. Was this the clue to the quest of all most important? Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo - the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long ... wondering ... is it that simple? ~ Ann Voskamp

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him. ~ A.W. Tozer

It all seems 'real,' but as it is constantly changing, it is not Real. Due to this maya mentality (the illusion that the world is Real),
people do not look beyond the veil of illusion to Me, the unchanging consciousness, the Absolute Reality beyond all the worldly; they do not see beyond to Me, the very basis of it all.
"This curtain of illusion (maya) is hard to see through, Arjuna. Only those who love and depend completely on Divinity are eventually able to see through it.
"Those who are unable to see beyond the veil cannot, in effect, discriminate between Real and not-Real. Oblivious to the Reality of their own higher nature (the True Self Within), they sink to their lower nature and do evil deeds, committing acts that turn them away from Divinity. Not knowing the holy from the unholy, they are of course not devoted to Me, Divinity. ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

An educator's most important task, one might say his holy duty, is to see to it that no child is discouraged at school, and that a child who enters school already discouraged regains his self-confidence through his school and his teacher. This goes hand in hand with the vocation of the educator, for education is possible only with children who look hopefully and joyfully upon the future. ~ Alfred Adler

Gone, at least for the moment, was his view of the Holy One as a man swatting flies or trapping rats in the stable or flying into a temper as savage as any Assyrian king's. Gone too was the notion of the Holy One keeping score so exactingly that not even the angels could escape the severest penalties. In place of all this, at least for as long as it took him to go back into the house, he thought about how the Holy One, blessed be he, wishes the world and its creatures nothing but well. He thought also how, though never condoning the shadows that dwell in the human heart, he is forever dispatching angels of light to deal with them mercifully. ~ Frederick Buechner

It is always easier to take the words of a Jesus, a Gandhi, a Marx, or a Confucius as constituting Holy Writ. This involves less reading, less study, less thought, less conflict, and less independent searching, but it also means less growth toward maturity. ~ William Coperthwaite

Each of us can discuss God inasmuch as he has known the grace of the Holy Spirit; for how can we think of or discuss what we haven't seen, or haven't head of, or don't know? The saints say that they have seen God, but there are people who say that there is no God. Clearly, they say this because they haven't known God, but this does not at all mean that He is not. The saints speak of that which they have truly seen and know. ~ Silouan The Athonite

On any given morning, I might not be able to list for you the facts I know about God. But I can tell you what I wish to commit myself to, what I want for the foundation of my life, how I want to see. When I stand with the faithful at Holy Comforter and declare that we believe in one God . . . I am saying, Let this be my scaffolding. Let this be the place I work, struggle, play, rest. I commit myself to this. ~ Lauren F. Winner

I exhort and entreat you all, disregard what this man and that man thinks about such things, and inquire from the Holy Scriptures all these things. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

Let us never forget that an age prospers or dwindles in proportion to its devotion to the Holy Eucharist. This is the measure of its spiritual life and its faith, of its charity and its virtue. ~ Peter Julian Eymard

The holy mystery of the day of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, is to be understood in the following manner: the spirit of man must be completed and perfected by the Holy Spirit, that is, it must be sanctified, illuminated, and divinized by the Holy Spirit. This holy mystery is realized continually in the Church of Christ and because of this the Church is really a continuous Pentecost ... From Holy Pentecost, the day of the Holy Spirit, every God-like soul in the Church of Christ is an incombustible bush which continuously burns and is inflamed with God and has a fiery tongue within it. ~ Justin Popovic

XIV. Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life. By other men's labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt32 with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters? ~ Giordano Bruno

Jesus lived as a supernatural man. Although He is God, He divested himself of His own power and authority and operated under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, just as we do. Our goal is to become like Him. It is the relationship we have with Christ in the Spirit that opens us up to the revelation and experiences of the supernatural. It is only the transforming presence and power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to walk like Jesus did. To walk in the Spirit is to have a relationship with Him. This is why I believe relationship is preferable to realm in thinking about the kingdom of God. ~ Praying Medic

I cannot drive hundreds of miles with a total stranger," I said. "It's a fuck of a lot safer than driving alone." "Not if you're a serial killer!" "Look who's talking. You're the one who decapitated a U.S. president." I couldn't help but laugh. This situation was seriously insane. "Holy shit, Princess, is that a laugh at your own expense, I see? ~ Penelope Ward

Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins is an essential covenant to make with the Lord. Faith and repentance precede this ordinance. Confirmation and the gift of the Holy Ghost follow baptism. Acceptance of these first principles and ordinances may obtain for us a remission of our sins and assure our salvation. In the ordinance of the sacrament, we regularly renew this and other covenants, and by complying with our part of the covenant, we receive the Spirit of the Lord to be with us. ~ A. Theodore Tuttle

An Act for establishing religious Freedom.

Section 1

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their person ~ Thomas Jefferson

The priests say the new dawn will be like the rain that fertilizes the soil before we begin to plant our corn. It will renew the natural cycle of life. The Mayan people will once again flourish. I believe in this very strongly. The holy men say we are entering a period of clarity. We are rediscovering our Mayan values. ~ Rigoberta Menchu

But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and the ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil--wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole, of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind.
Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. ... I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words stronger than steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.
And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot out of its box of flesh to understand as you have done, the wit of eternity; it's gift of unhinged release through the darkness of its knell. ~ Toni Morrison

But that is the nature of true grace and spiritual light, that it opens to a person's view the infinite reason there is that he should be holy in a high degree. And the more grace he has, and the more this is opened to view, the greater sense he has of the infinite excellency and glory of the divine Being, and of the infinite dignity of the person of Christ, and the boundless length and breadth and depth and height of the love of Christ to sinners. And as grace increases, the field opens more and more to a distant view, until the soul is swallowed up with the vastness of the object, and the person is astonished to think how much it becomes him to love this God and this glorious Redeemer that has so loved man, and how little he does love. And so the more he apprehends, the more the smallness of his grace and love appears strange and wonderful: and therefore he is more ready to think that others are beyond him. ~ Jonathan Edwards

As far as this life is concerned, [Jesus] was born of Mary and of Elohim; he came here as an offspring of that Holy Man who is literally our Father in heaven. He was born in mortality in the literal and full sense as the Son of God. He is the Son of his father in the same sense that all morals are the sons and daughters of their fathers. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

Holy shit! I think this man has an insatiable oral fixation and I am the grateful recipient! ~ Adler And Holt

There is a fear of God that adoration enfolds with arms of thanks. It acknowledges the absolute power of the Creator and the inconsequence of man. This holy and reverent fear is the beginning of wisdom, for it is wise to know one's place in this world...and in the next. ~ Cheryl Zelenka

America is not big enough to shake her fist in the face of a holy God and get away with it, and as I read this I want to explain something. I'm going to read this and then I want to explain something. As America has permitted homosexuality to establish itself as an alternate lifestyle, it is also reeling from the frightening spread of sexually transmitted disease. Sin begets its own consequence, both on individuals and nations. ~ Reggie White

Ananda, an attendant of the Buddha, passed by a well near a village. A young low-caste woman, Pakati, was fetching water. He asked her for a drink.
Pakati said: "I am low caste and therefore may not give you water. Please ask nothing from me in case I contaminate your holy state with my low-caste status."
Ananda said, "I am not interested in caste. It is water I am after."
Pakati's heart leaped joyfully. She gave him water to drink, and when he left she followed him at a discrete distance. Finding out that he was a disciple of the Buddha, she went to the Buddha and said, "Please accept me and let me live in this place where your disciple Ananda dwells, so that I may see him and supply him with what he needs. For I find that I love Ananda."
The Buddha understood what was going on in her feelings and he said gently, "Pakati, your heart if full of love but you don't understand your own emotions. It is not Ananda that you love, but his kindness. Accept the kindness that he has shown to you and in your turn practice it toward other. You have been born low caste, but in time you will outshine the glory of kings and queens. ~ Anne Bancroft

If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will. ~ Teresa Of Avila

He asked me innocently, what then had brought me to his home, and without a minutes hesitation I told him an astounding lie. A lie which was later to prove a great truth. I told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopedia in order to meet people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than the encyclopedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I could say.

It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the city of Bayonne, this is it. I owe you a great deal, because after that lie I told you, I left your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by The Encyclopedia Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretenses, even if is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve.

I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people and if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something, I will invite him in and say "Why are you doing this?" and if he says it is because he needs to make a living I will offer him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death, it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death jams another cog in the aut ~ Henry Miller

Every year before the Days of Awe, the Ba-al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, held a competition to see who would blow the shofar for him on Rosh Hashanah. Now if you wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov, not only did you have to blow the shofar like a virtuoso, but you also had to learn an elaborate system of kavanot - secret prayers that were said just before you blew the shofar to direct the shofar blasts and to see that they had the proper effect in the supernal realms.

All the prospective shofar blowers practiced these kavanot for months. They were difficult and complex. There was one fellow who wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov so badly that he had been practicing these kavanot for years. But when his time came to audition before the Ba-al Shem, he realized that nothing he had done had prepared him adequately for the experience of standing before this great and holy man, and he choked. His mind froze completely. He couldn't remember one of the kavanot he had practiced for all those years. He couldn't even remember what he was supposed to be doing at all. He just stood before the Ba-al Shem in utter silence, and then, when he realized how egregiously - how utterly - he had failed this great test, his heart just broke in two and he began to weep, sobbing loudly, his shoulders heaving and his whole body wracking as he wept.

All right, you're hired, the Ba-al Shem said.

But I don't understand, the ma ~ Alan Lew

Marian consecration basically means giving Mary our full permission (or as such permission as we can) to complete her motherly task in us, which is to form us into other Christs. Thus, by consecrating ourselves to Mary, each of us is saying to her: Mary, I want to be a saint. I know that you also want me to be a saint and that it's your God-given mission to form me into one. So, Mary, at this moment, on this day, I freely choose to give you my full permission to do your work in me, with your Spouse, the Holy Spirit. ~ Michael Gaitley

Most men seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others;
They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honor, and pleasures of this life, as if they supposed that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy;
But, alas, what false delusive dreams are these!
And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all out happiness consists in loving thee and being holy as thou art holy. ~ Arthur Bennett

I think we need some new Christmas carols with a more modern approach. Of course, I wouldn't abandon the religious theme completely. How about "Holy Christ, the Christmas Tree's on Fire"? Or "Jesus, can you Believe It's Christmas Again?" This ought to get the ball rolling; I'm hoping you people will take it from here. ~ George Carlin

If Christians realized that God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit really dwells within our bodies, we would be far more careful about what we eat, drink, look at, or read. No wonder Paul said, "I beat my body and make it my slave" [1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV]. This should drive us to our knees in confession. ~ Billy Graham

We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, "It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home." Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Last-Minute Message For a Time Capsule


I have to tell you this, whoever you are:
that on one summer morning here, the ocean
pounded in on tumbledown breakers,
a south wind, bustling along the shore,
whipped the froth into little rainbows,
and a reckless gull swept down the beach
as if to fly were everything it needed.
I thought of your hovering saucers,
looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,
so it wouldn't be lost forever - -
that once upon a time we had
meadows here, and astonishing things,
swans and frogs and luna moths
and blue skies that could stagger your heart.
We could have had them still,
and welcomed you to earth, but
we also had the righteous ones
who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.
When you go home to your shining galaxy,
say that what you learned
from this dead and barren place is
to beware the righteous ones. ~ Philip Appleman

It is not obedience to a standard that matters to God, but the fulfillment of the highest standard by the Spirit that is within. Holiness and purity are not obedience to an actual law, but the unconscious natural characteristics of the indwelling Holy Spirit. No one can imitate either. This is why so many who have never experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit are so stern and unchristlike, and such sticklers for obeying the letter of the truth. These carnal Christians are not spiritual in God's sight. ~ Oswald Chambers