Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying “Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.
My mom is a master gardener and I grew up on a farm. I came back to it really late in life and discovered that despite how lazy and inattentive I was as a child, I had managed to accidentally learn quite a bit about gardening.
My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: “I want a spiritual teacher.
Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.
You might get nothing out of it at all except a beautiful, long life where all you did was follow your gorgeous curiosity. And that should be enough too.
I said, “It seems like you have fond feelings toward your ex-wife. Are you two still close?” “Nah,” he said casually. “She thinks I changed my name to Motherfucker.”
Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark.
In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.
I can see how the authorities could not like Todd [ Willingham], because he’s not a person who is going to give you respect if you don’t deserve it just because you say something.
![Elizabeth Gilbert Quote - I can see how the authorities could not like Todd [ Willingham], because he’s not a person who is going to give you respect if you don’t deserve it just because you say something.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/i-can-see-how-the-authorities-could-not-like-todd-.jpg)