Evelyn Underhill Quotes
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Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not "follow the footsteps of his most holy life" by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.
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When you put aside your preconceived ideas, your self-centered scale of values, and let intuition have its way with you, you open up by this act new levels of the world. Such an opening-up is the most practical of all activities.
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Religion, like beauty, cannot be experienced in cold blood.
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Sometimes I think the resurrection of the body, unless much improved in construction, a mistake!
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Never forget that the key of the situation lies in the will & not in the imagination.
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Worship is the one, total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God.
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The life of prayer is so great and various there is something in it for everyone. It is like a garden which grows everything, from alpines to potatoes.
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Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality ... The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.
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Have you ever noticed that Jesus is never recorded as taking a holiday? He retired for the purposes of his mission, not from it. He was never destroyed by his work; he was always on top of it. He moved among people as the master of every situation. He was busier than anyone; the multitudes were always at him, yet he had time, for everything and everyone. He was never hurried, or harassed, or too busy. He had complete supremacy over time; he never let it dictate to him. He talked of my time; my hour. He knew exactly when the moment had come for doing something and when it had not.
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On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
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The first question here, then, is not "What is best for my soul?" nor is it even "What is most useful to humanity?" But-transcending both these limited aims-what function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God?
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Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.
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Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints.
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As the social self can only be developed by contact with society, so the spiritual self can only be developed by contact with the spiritual world.
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Meditation is a half-way house between thinking and contemplating.
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All artists are of necessity in some measure contemplative.
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The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.
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The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.
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Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer.