Quotes about Awareness

The woes constitute the most radical criticism, for they are announcements and anticipations of death. The woes of Luke are pronounced against the rich (v. 24), the full (v. 25a), the ones who laugh (v. 25b), and the ones who enjoy social approval (v. 26)—which is to say that the death sentence is upon those who live fully and comfortably in this age without awareness or openness to the new future coming.

The cry that breaks the silence is the sound of bodies becoming fully aware of what the predatory system has cost and being fully aware as well that it can be otherwise.

The shock of such a partner destabilizes us too much. The risk too great, the discomfort so demanding. We much prefer to settle for a less demanding, less overwhelming meeting. Yet we are haunted by the awareness that only this overwhelming meeting gives life.

The poets speak only poetry, not program, not policy, not even advocacy, only poetry. But the poetry exists in order to make available what the ideologues are unable to see and what the policy makers are unable to grasp.

Clearly, human transformative activity depends upon a transformed imagination. Numbness does not hurt like torture, but in a quite parallel way, numbness robs us of our capability for humanity.

Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.

Prophetic preaching is dangerous work, not only because it has a subversive edge but because it requires an epistemological break with the assumed world of dominant imagination. This epistemological break makes us aware of our assumptions we have not recognized or reflected upon.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me.

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer.

Go right on and listen as thou goest.