檳榔嶼

- "As a woman and a lover, however, I am moved by the sight of my Beloved. Where He is, I want to be. What He suffers, I want to share. Who He is, I want to be: crucified for love." - SAINT TERESA OF AVILA
- Living life in touch with divine spirit lets us see the light of love in all living beings.
  - A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening.
    - on the surface it appears that we has gone so far down the road of secular individualism, worshiping the twin gods of money and power, worshiping the twin gods of money and power, that there seems to be no place for spiritual life.
- Erich Fromm, <<The Art of Loving>>
  - The principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible.
  - Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
- The cultural emphasis on endless consumption deflects attention from spiritual hunger. We are endlessly bombarded by messages telling us that our every need can be satisfied by material increase.
  - Because we are spiritually empty we try to fill up on consumerism. We may not have enough love but we can always shop.
- Our national spiritual hunger springs from a keen awareness of the emotional lack in our lives. It is a response to lovelessness.
  - Organized religion has failed to satisfy spiritual hunger because it has accommodated secular demands, interpreting spiritual life in ways that uphold the values of a production-centered commodity culture.
  - Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.s, <<Strength to Love>>
  - When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
- Thomas Merton, <Love and Need>
  - Love is, in fact an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life. ... Life curves upward to a peak of intensity, a high point of value and meaning, at which all its latent creative possibility go into action and the person transcends himself or herself in encounter, response, and communion with another. It is for this that we came into the world - this communion and self-transcendence. We do not become fully human until we give ourselves to each other in love.
- The teachings about love offered by Fromm, King, and Merton differ from much of today's writing. There is always an emphasis in their work on love as an active force that should lead us into greater communion with the world. In their work, loving practice is not aimed at simply giving an individual greater life satisfaction; it is extolled as the primary way we end domination and oppression. This important politicization of love is often absent from today's writing.
  - Much as I enjoy popular New Age commentary on love, I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community.
- Parker Palmer, <<The Active Life: Wisdom for Work, Creativity, and Caring>>
  - To be fully alive is to act. ... I understand action to be any way that we can co-create reality with other beings and the Spirit. ...  Action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power. But as we act, we not only express what is in us and help give shape to the world; we also receive what is outside us, and reshape out inner selves.
- A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act.
- Spiritual life is first and foremost about commitment to a way of thinking and behaving that honors principles of inter-being and interconnectedness.
  - When I speak of the spiritual, I refer to the recognition within everyone that there is a place of mystery in our lives where forces that are beyond human desire or will alter circumstances and/or guid and direct us.--> Divine Spirit.
- When we choose tolead a spirit-filled life, we recognize and celebrate the presence of transcendent spirits.
- A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we embrace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our true destiny. 
  - Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love.
  - Life-threatening nihilism abounds in contemporary culture, crossing the boundaries of race, class, gender and nationality. At some point it affects all our lives.
- Spirituality and spiritual life give us the strength to love. It is rare for individuals to choose a life in the spirit, one that honors the sacred dimensions of everyday life when they have had no contact with traditional religious thought or practice.
- When the environment you live in and know most intimately does not place value on loving, a spiritual life provides a place of solace and renewal.
- Significantly, the gaining of knowledge about spirituality is not the same as a commitment to a spiritual life.
  - Jack Kornfield : "In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: We must make certian our path is connected with our heart. In beginning a genuine spiritual journey, we have to stay much closer to home, to focus directly on what is right here in front of us, to make sure that our path is connected with our deepest love."
  - Learning to embrace our suffering is one of the gifts offered by spiritual life and practice.
- Spiritual practice does not need to be connected to organized religion in order to be meaningful.
  - I began to speak more openly about the place of spirituality in my life when witnessing the despair of my students, their sense of hopelessness, their fears that life is without meaning, their profound loneliness and lovelessness.
- All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.