"Did you hear what so and so said?" 

"What is a soul?  It would be interesting to record impressions of what comes to mind spontaneously when one hears the word soul.  For many of us, I suspect, the word, to the extent that it conjures up anything at all, produces an image, a very vague one, of some white, semi-invisible, spiritual tissue paper that floats deep inside of us and which takes on stains when we sin and that will separate from the body at the moment of death...  

What is wrong with that conception, though, is that it separates the soul too much from the core of our persons, from our self-conscious identity.  Our soul is not something that we have, it is more something we are." (underline added)

Ronald Rolheiser, Holy Longing:  The Search for a Christian Spirituality


"This experience was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity.  These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self--the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things--and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of my accomplishments.

I am telling you this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.  That is the way Jesus came to reveal his love."

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, describing the effect of ministering and living among the mentally handicapped 

"A disciple asks the rebbe, 'Why does Torah tell us to 'place these words upon your hearts'?  Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?"

The rebbe anwers, "It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts.  So we place them on top of our hearts.  And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in."

from Parker Palmer's, "The Politics of the Brokenhearted" 


"The overall health of any church or ministry depends primarily on the emotional and spiritual health of its leadership.  In fact, the key to successful leadership has much more to do with the leader’s internal life than with the leader’s expertise, gifts or experience."

Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church