Jean Vanier Quotes

There were now and then, though rarely, the hours that brought the welcome shock, pulled down the walls and brought me back again from my wanderings to the living heart of the world. Sadly and yet deeply moved, I set myself to recall the last of these experiences. It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two of three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.

Prayer is more than thoughts and feelings expressed in words. It is the opening of mind and heart - our whole being to God our Abba Father. It is Divine Union.

Somehow, somewhere, I know that God loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words...God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart. I do believe that He touches me in places that are unknown even to myself.

I firmly believe that usually, the person who hurt you doesn't realize what they've done or how much it hurt you. So, continue to pray for the person or situation that caused your pain and anger. Ask God to give you understanding about why they did what they did.

Meditation on a passage of scripture... led a young boy into a grove of trees to commune with his heavenly Father. That is what opened the heavens in this dispensation

So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it.

God is an experience of supreme love.

People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."

Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.

The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest.

Love sweetens pain; and when one loves God, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage.

Our life is a reflection of what we believe we deserve. As we deepen our acceptance of and open ourselves to the Infinite love of the universe, a new power flows through us, releasing us from the bondage of our old way of life.

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

Nothing compares with the satisfaction of pleasing the heart of our heavenly Father.

The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.

The experience of bliss can be the purest one of all and therefore the closest to God.

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is the Father, Son and Spirit.

I felt my faith was on again off again until I met Paula White, who saw that the Lord had other plans; there was a weightiness to my spirit. She gave me the news that God loved me and wanted his son back. She spoke to the king in me and gave me new hope I could get right with God. The God I had hungered for; the Father I had been missing.

You will not find what you want in the world, only in the Father.

Feel the love of God; then in every person you will see the face of the Father, the light of love which is in all. You will find a magic, living relationship uniting the trees, the sky, the stars, all people, and all living things; and you will feel a oneness with them. This is the code of divine love.

Every human being is loved by God the Father. No one need feel forgotten, for every name is written in the Lord's loving heart.

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God.

A song can be more than words and music ... when sung with soul a song carries you to another world, to a place where no matter how much pain you feel, you are never alone.

We are kept from the experience of Spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas . . . As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our being.

To live as God's child is to know that you are loved by your Maker not because you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but because he wants to be your Father. Nothing more.