Clergy

"The day was wet, the rain fell souse Like jars of strawberry jam, a sound was heard in the old henhouse, A beating of a hammer."

"There was once a young man of Oporta, Who daily got shorter and shorter, The reason he said Was the hod on his head Which was filled with the heaviest mortar."

"What may I do?" at length I cried, Tired of the painful task. The fairy quietly replied, And said "You must not ask."

"As you have invited me, I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all invitations; but I will come the next day."

"But surely you trust God! Do you think He would let you come to harm? To be afraid is to distrust."

""And at last we've got to the end of this ideal racecourse! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z." "Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?" "Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you, 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see." "Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your notebook, please. We will call it (E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?" "I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone."

"If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics – it does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, so long as there is enough of them."

"I charm in vain; for never again, All keenly as my glance I bend, Will Memory, goddess coy, Embody for my joy Departed days, nor let me gaze On thee, my fairy friend!"

"To Her, whose children's smiles fed the narrator's fancy and were his rich reward: from the Author."

"The `Why?' cannot, and need not, be put into words. Those for whom a child's mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child's smile, would read such words in vain: while for any one that has ever loved one true child, no words are needed. For he will have known the awe that falls on one in the presence of a spirit fresh from GOD's hands, on whom no shadow of sin, and but the outermost fringe of the shadow of sorrow, has yet fallen: he will have felt the bitter contrast between the haunting selfishness that spoils his best deeds and the life that is but an overflowing love--for I think a child's first attitude to the world is a simple love for all living things: and he will have learned that the best work a man can do is when he works for love's sake only, with no thought of name, or gain, or earthly reward. No deed of ours, I suppose, on this side the grave, is really unselfish: yet if one can put forth all one's powers in a task where nothing of reward is hoped for but a little child's whispered thanks, and the airy touch of a little child's pure lips, one seems to come somewhere near to this."

"You have no mind to be unkind," Said echo in her ear: "No mind to bring a living thing To suffering or fear. For all that's bad, or mean or sad, you have no mind, my dear."

"The White Knight must not have whiskers; he must not be made to look old."

"The Master once referred to the Hindu notion that all creation is "leela" — God's play — and the universe is his playground. The aim of spirituality, he claimed, is to make all life play. This seemed too frivolous for a puritanical visitor. "Is their no room then for work?" "Of course there is. But work becomes spiritual only when it is transformed into play.""

"What's behind this phenomenal success? Very simply, it is a manifestation of the hunger for the spiritual spreading around the world. It's a hunger with very special characteristics. People aren't buying set formulas any more, or pius platitudes redolent of an era gone by; beaten tracks that did not succeed in bringing people to a spiritual awakening. There is an anguished search, sometimes confused in its direction, for a more liberal outlook. Modern man mired in profound cultural change first wants to know who he is, what imprisons his soul, what stands in the way of spiritual progress. He wants to rediscover the God beyond all that has been identified through the years with the name of God: laws, norms, doctrines not made flesh, words stranged from life. That is why Tony de Mello said that "our violent spirituality has created problems for us", that "Jesus Christ has got a bad name because of what is said of Him from pulpits" and that "it is very difficult to recognise a saint because he looks like the rest of us". In short, what Tony de Mello is telling us is that if we want to make Christianity credible we need to plumb the depths of the human spirit, to reach beyond our present frontiers."

"I must confess that I feel grateful for the banning, or the temporary withdrawal, of de Mello's books. I had heard of him, but never read his writings. Excommunication, somehow, has far more news value than beatification. So also the suppression of a book attracts greater publicity than its publication."

"The books of Father Anthony de Mello were written in a multi-religious context to help the followers of other religions, agnostics and atheists in their spiritual search, and they were not intended by the author as manuals of instruction of the Catholic faithful in Christian doctrine or dogma."

"Consistent with what has been presented, one can understand how, according to the author, any belief or profession of faith whether in God or in Christ cannot but impede one's personal access to truth. The Church, making the word of God in Holy Scripture into an idol, has ended up banishing God from the temple. She has consequently lost the authority to teach in the name of Christ. With the present Notification, in order to protect the good of the Christian faithful, this Congregation declares that the above-mentioned positions are incompatible with the Catholic faith and can cause grave harm."

"He considers Jesus as a master alongside others. The only difference from other men is that Jesus is "awake" and fully free, while others are not. Jesus is not recognized as the Son of God, but simply as the one who teaches us that all people are children of God."

"Never complain about what you permit."

"All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river."

"The master was never impressed by diplomas or degrees. He scrutinized the person, not the certificate. He was once heard to say, 'When you have ears to hear a bird in song, you don't need to look at its credentials.""

"A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.""

"Mostly the discontent that you feel comes from not having enough of something — you are dissatisfied because you think you do not have enough money or power or success or fame or virtue or love or holiness. This is not the discontent that leads to the joy of the kingdom. Its source is greed and ambition and its fruit is restlessness and frustration. The day you are discontented not because you want more of something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart of everything you are pursuing so far and you are sick of the pursuing itself, then your heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that will cause you mysteriously to delight in everything and in nothing."

"It is the desire for "the more" that prevents clear thinking, whereas if we are discontent, not because we want something, but without knowing what we want; if we are dissatisfied with our jobs, with making money, with seeking position and power, with tradition, with what we have and with what we might have; if we are dissatisfied, not with anything in particular but with everything, then I think we shall find that our discontent brings clarity. When we don't accept or follow, but question, investigate, penetrate, there is an insight out of which comes creativity, joy."

"If you search within your heart, you will find something there that will make it possible for you to understand: a spark of disenchantment and discontent, which if fanned into flame will become a raging forest fire that will burn up the whole of the illusory world you are living in, thereby unveiling to your wondering eyes the kingdom that you have always lived in unsuspectingly."

"To find the kingdom is the easiest thing in the world but also the most difficult. Easy because it is all around you and within you, and all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. Difficult because if you wish to possess the kingdom you may possess nothing else. That is, you must drop all inward leaning on any person or thing, withdrawing from them forever the power to thrill you, or excite you, or to give you a feeling of security or well-being. For this, you first need to see with unflinching clarity this simple and shattering truth: Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy. The moment you see that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another, one place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intesity, then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them."

"If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom."

"Ideas kill people."

"One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego."

"Isn't there such a thing as social liberation?" "Of course there is," said the Master. "How would you describe it?" "Liberation from the need to belong to the herd.""

"I seek the meaning of existence." said the stranger. "You are of course, assuming." said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is — not as you think it is — you will discover that your question has no meaning."

"My life is like shattered glass." said the visitor. "My soul is tainted with evil. Is there any hope for me? "Yes," said the Master. "There is something whereby each broken thing is bound again and every stain made clean." "What?" "Forgiveness" "Whom do I forgive?" "Everyone: Life, God, your neighbor — especially yourself." "How is that done?" "By understanding that no one is to blame," said the Master. "NO ONE."

"People who want to rise above a well-cooked meal and a well-tailored garment, are out of their spiritual minds."

"What can I do to see Reality as it is?" The master smiled and said, "I have good news and bad news for you, my friend." "What's the bad news?" "There's nothing you can do to see — it is a gift." "And what's the good news?" "There's nothing you can do to see — it is a gift."

"Said the self-righteous preacher, "What, in your judgment, is the greatest sin in the world?" "That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master."

"A religious belief… is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating — these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers."

"The master made it his task to systematically destroy every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying: "When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.""

"The Master persistently warned against the attempt to encompass Reality in a concept or a name. A scholar in mysticism once asked, "When you speak of BEING, sir, is it eternal, transcendent being you speak of, or transient, contingent being?" The Master closed his eyes in thought. Then he opened them, put on his most disarming expression, and said, "Yes!""

"A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.""

"You can will an act of service but you cannot will love."

"The best things in life cannot be willed into being."

"When God means you to be a healer he sends you patients; when he makes you a teacher he sends you pupils; when he destines you to be a Master he sends you stories."

"The master enjoined not austerity, but moderation. If we truly enjoyed things, he claimed, we would be spontaneously moderate. Asked why he was so opposed to ascetical practices, he replied, "Because they produce pleasure-haters who always become people-haters — rigid and cruel.""

""What is my identity?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master."

"My commitment is not to consistency but to the Truth."

"What is the secret of your serenity? Said the Master "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

""Tell me," said the atheist, "Is there a God — really?" Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer." Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered. "Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master. "So you are an atheist?" "Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it."

"Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all — they are attempting nothing new."

""When you speak about Reality," said the Master, "you are attempting to put the Inexpressible into words, so your words are certain to be misunderstood. Thus people who read that expression of Reality called the Scriptures become stupid and cruel for they follow, not their common sense, but what they think their Scriptures say." He had the perfect parable to show this: A village blacksmith found an apprentice willing to work hard at low pay. The smith immediately began his instructions to the lad: "When I take the metal out of the fire, I'll lay it on the anvil; and when I nod my head you hit it with the hammer." The apprentice did precisely what he thought he was told. Next day he was the village blacksmith."

"You will seek for God in vain till you understand that God can't be seen as a "thing"; he needs a special way of looking — similar to that of little children whose sight is undistorted by prefabricated doctrines and beliefs."