Quotables
A collection of words which offer windows into the dynamic relation between faith, vocation, and culture, from friends near and far, young and old.
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"...We live by mercy if we live. To that we have no fit reply But working well and giving thanks, Loving God, loving one another, To keep Creation’s neighborhood ..." |
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"...Everything done in the world is done by hope ..." |
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"...There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough ..." |
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"...I ask that the Church should use a decent humility before the artist, whose calling is as direct as that of the priest, and whose business it is to serve God in his own technique and not in somebody else’s ..." |
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"...At crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over ..." |
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"...Love God and do what you will ..." |
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"...Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go, My daily labour to pursue; Thee, only thee, resolved to know, In all I think, or speak, or do. The task thy wisdom hath assigned, O let me cheerfully fulfil; In all my works thy presence find, And prove thine acceptable will. ..." |
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"...The point is that if we stay away from secular culture to protect ourselves from its temptations, we cannot live and witness in the real world. We can’t even understand it ..." |
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"...Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now. |
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"...The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labor without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a "spirituality" of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that "beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up..." |
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"...Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation -- as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on -- feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbor and of humanity as a whole..." |
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"...Great offices will have Great talents. The Task, "The Winter Evening," lines 788-797..." |
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"...When I use the word "vocation," I must interpret that. We tend to use the word "vocation" in our everyday parlance as though it is synonymous with occupation. From the Biblical standpoint, the Bible talks about vocation as a calling from God, a calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Your occupation is what you work at. You decide that occupation and the character by which you work in that occupation grows out of your sense of vocation. You are a disciple of Jesus Christ. This is why I am saying that we do not separate the sacred from the secular. Christian faith is not simply a sacrament that you engage in at the eleven o'clock hour on Sunday morning. All of life becomes sacred; all of life is a sacrament; all of life is to be lived in the will of God; all of life is to be an expression that we have been reconciled to God and now we are out to reconcile others to know what it means to fellowship with Him. To say then that vocation as a Christian holds the sacred and the secular together means that there is no area of life in which you and I are not responsible to bring to bear upon that area of life the higher values of the Christian faith..." |
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"...For many of us who work, there exists an exasperating discontinuity between how we see ourselves as persons and how we see ourselves as workers. We need to eliminate that sense of discontinuity and to restore a sense of coherence in our lives..." |
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"...I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness..." |
