Julia Sweeney Quotes

Losing my faith was the most spiritual thing that ever happened to me.

The giant step in the walk of faith is the one we take when we decide God no longer is a part of our lives. He IS our life.

I was born a Catholic and now I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm something but I'm not a believer any more.

I believe that the 'dark night of the soul' is a common spiritual experience. I believe, too, that the answer is continued seeking and perseverance. It helps to know that others have endured a loss of faith.

At different times in my life I met God from a different point of view.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

For the majority of mankind, religion is a habit, or, more precisely, tradition is their religion. Though it seems strange, I think that the first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way.

I would really like to hear somebody who is really articulate about the elements of their faith conversion. I'm not.

I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who shall convert me? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?

The momentum of my creative life and intellectual growth is still the momentum of breaking out of fundamentalism. Because of that, I'm very grateful for it. But I'm also grateful that at the center of it was something that I still believe to be true - those fundamentals of faith.

The fact that I didn't believe in God was something that I just didn't consider. And then when I did, it was like, 'Oh yeah, I'm out.'

I don't pass myself off as a Bible scholar or a pastor or someone who knows all the biblical facts cover-to-cover. I'm just a guy whose life was changed by it. And that's about the extent of it. So I'm not easily offended when people struggle about where they're at with their faith at all.

I was wondering if any of my faith was real at all, and I started to let go of a lot of things that I had learned and say, 'Maybe I just need to start over entirely with what I have learned about my faith.' And that's what I did.

What I don't think I knew when I was young was that 'losing your faith' is actually part of the plan for a lot of people - that it's actually maybe the most beautiful and graceful thing that can happen. The mystery of God can handle all of it. It can handle all of your thoughts, all of your doubts, all of your folly. It's all in the game.

God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where He is, so that we may get beyond ourselves.

Brought up a Presbyterian, indoctrinated from the Catechism, and being naturally of an inquiring mind, I fell a ready prey to the logic of infidelity, as soon as I began to think for myself. But that which at first threatened to be the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible was, under God's providence, over-ruled for good, and merely wrecked my confidence in human creed and systems of Bible misinterpretations.

When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.

It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).

To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be madeby the reception of beautiful sentiments.

Salvation is not a divine transaction that takes place because you are morally perfect, but much more is an organic unfolding, a becoming who you already are, an inborn sympathy with and capacity for the very One who created you.

If God changes your heart, be willing to change your plans

What I believe is that we have this extraordinary spirit inside ourselves, which for me is our Buddha nature. I believe we are in the process of opening and getting closer and closer to our Buddha nature and stripping away all that is covering it. I don't think I'm going to end up meeting this one being up there or out there.

Every relationship, every situation is part of a divinely created and highly specific curriculum for your soul growth

As you all become more intimate with Me, with opportunities to come closer to Me, all that is good and bad within you comes out in sparks, as it were . . . all the impressions of the past, the accumulations of past sanskaras - of all illusory things, which includes both good and bad - come out. My proximity, the intimacy with Me, just changes that mass of sanskaras, and sometimes you find sparks of good and bad flying out.

Explore daily the will of God.