Sacred Practice Quotes

[Prayer] takes no time, but it occupies all our time.

Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.

Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man.

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love.

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.

We may learn by practice such things upon earth as shall be of use to us in heaven. Piety, unostentatious piety, is never out of place.

A pair of hands clasped in earnest prayer is the best means we have this side of heaven to hang onto Jesus for dear life.

Prayer is - not just bowing your head a few times a day, it pervades all of life.

Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it.

Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us.

I had a longing for ritual, something I could cling to, a routine to make me feel well and contented. I hoped that reading Bible commentaries and theological critiques would nudge me closer to some kind of absolute that I could hold up as a torch to light my way.

Prayer is a serious thing. We may be taken at our words.

Prayer is as necessary as the air, as the blood in our bodies, as anything to keep us alive-to keep us alive to the grace of God.

I wouldn't say that I'm overly religious, but I have a pretty good relationship with my spiritual being.

Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.

The most holy and important practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God - that is, every moment to take great pleasure that God is with you

Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite.

Prayer must not be our chance work but our daily business, our habit and vocation.

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

I can write about prayer, you can read about prayer, but sooner or later you have to fall to your knees and just plain pray. Then, and only then, will you begin to operate in the vein of God's miracle-working ways.