“ One of the functions of leadership is to lead, and weak managers may simply check and check and check with others because they are not capable of leading when it is required of them to lead. Benedict… Joan D. Chittister
“ Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what you are expecting in life. Joan D. Chittister
“ Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. Joan D. Chittister
“ We fail to move beyond what is safe, we abandon our dreams in favor of what is sure rather than strive for what is best for us. Joan D. Chittister
“ The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us. Joan D. Chittister
“ Everywhere I looked, hope existed - but only as some kind of green shoot in the midst of struggle. It was a theological concept, not a spiritual practice. Hope, I began to realize, was not a state of… Joan D. Chittister
“ Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and… Joan D. Chittister
“ To pray in the midst of the mundane is simply and strongly to assert that this dull and tiring day is holy and its simple labors are the stuff of God's saving presence for me now. To pray simply becau… Joan D. Chittister
“ Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. Joan D. Chittister
“ Life is not about age, about the length of years we manage to eke out of it. It is about aging, about living into the values offered in every stage of life. As E. M. Forster wrote, We must be willing… Joan D. Chittister
“ Most significant of all, perhaps, is that, of the 613 laws in the Torah, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, not one uses the word obey. God, the rabbi says, does not impose the intractable on Isra… Joan D. Chittister
“ This compulsion to look back, to explain to myself, to others, why I did what I did—or, worse, to justify why I didn’t do something else—is one of the most direct roads to depression we have. Our thou… Joan D. Chittister
“ Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself be… Joan D. Chittister
“ Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Pray… Joan D. Chittister
“ Friendship is the call out of isolation and selfishness in order to teach me how to love and how to serve. But without stability, friendship - real soul-searing friendship, the kind that makes us choo… Joan D. Chittister
“ War within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad j… Joan D. Chittister
“ Silence is a frightening thing. Silences leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear, then, the angers that need to be cooled. We hear the emptiness… Joan D. Chittister
“ It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day… Joan D. Chittister
“ Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all. Joan D. Chittister
