Last updated: 8 / 10 / 2008
Lovers of
BEAUTY
If you judge people, you have not time to love them.
Mother Teresa
In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
St. John of the Cross
Mother Teresa
In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
St. John of the Cross
Beautiful Moments
Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, and for that one moment's sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice in the tresses of the snow-white rose of Paradise.
Oscar Wilde
Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, and for that one moment's sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice in the tresses of the snow-white rose of Paradise.
Oscar Wilde
Let us abandon everything within the scope of our thoughts and determine to love what is beyond comprehension.
We touch and hold God by Love alone.
The Cloud of Unknowing
The Cloud of Unknowing
Love is bigger than you and I
The heaven within, it may start
in unrequited love but
end in the merging of all beauty.
Michaela Avlund
The heaven within, it may start
in unrequited love but
end in the merging of all beauty.
Michaela Avlund
If you want to be sure of the ground you stand on,
then close your eyes and walk in the dark.
St. John of the Cross
St. John of the Cross
The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars. Every morning I wake up and the beast is howling.
So I have to pray and dedicate that day to God, and then
the beast lays low.
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
Our failures and weaknesses, if used the right way, can give us extraordinary
insights into the pursuit of happiness and
peace and the things that really matter in life.
Gabrielle Kirby
Gabrielle Kirby
Links to other sites:
This world is engaged in a battle between the beautiful and the non-beautiful. But the beautiful will have the final victory.
Love is repaid by Love alone
St John of the Cross
St John of the Cross
In the meantime
It is a curious fact of human nature that we think of embarking on what we really want to do at some time in the future when conditions become more favourable or when we have finalised all our never-ending preparations.
But time passes by relentlessly and our lives are shaped, not by great future unrealised ambitions, but by whatever we decide to do "in the meantime".
It is a curious fact of human nature that we think of embarking on what we really want to do at some time in the future when conditions become more favourable or when we have finalised all our never-ending preparations.
But time passes by relentlessly and our lives are shaped, not by great future unrealised ambitions, but by whatever we decide to do "in the meantime".
Each of us is an expert on our own experience - we can
only know what we have learned through personal experience; if a person discovers what it's like to be in a fulfilling romantic relationship, they will not like the idea
of being alone.
On a deeper level, if someone has a spiritual conversion experience, they will begin to see everything from a spiritual angle, and want to develop a very personal relationship with God.
I think the conversion experience is a kind of journey past a point of no return; nothing can ever be the same again and you know that you want to embrace a life of new possibilities.
And you awaken to the reality that your most profound desire is to love God because that's what you were created to do.
On a deeper level, if someone has a spiritual conversion experience, they will begin to see everything from a spiritual angle, and want to develop a very personal relationship with God.
I think the conversion experience is a kind of journey past a point of no return; nothing can ever be the same again and you know that you want to embrace a life of new possibilities.
And you awaken to the reality that your most profound desire is to love God because that's what you were created to do.
St. Therese
I know of one means only by which to attain to perfection: LOVE. Let us love, since our heart
is made for nothing else. Sometimes I seek another word to express Love, but in this land of
exile the word which begins and ends (St. Augustine) is quite incapable of rendering the vibrations
of the soul; we must then adhere to this simple and only word: TO LOVE.
St Therese of Lisieux
St Therese of Lisieux
LOVE ITSELF
The light came
through the window
Straight from the sun above
And so inside my little room
There plunged
the rays of Love.
In streams of light
I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see
Out of which the
Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.
- Leonard Cohen -
The light came
through the window
Straight from the sun above
And so inside my little room
There plunged
the rays of Love.
In streams of light
I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see
Out of which the
Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.
- Leonard Cohen -
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.
Albert Einstein
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius
Albert Einstein
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius
Let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except he who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should
be taken kneeling, and DOMINE, NON SUM DIGNUS should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
We are beautiful because God, Who Is the source of Love and Beauty, lives within us.
St Therese
Therese Martin must have been an incredible person. The youngest of 9 children
of a French middle-class family, she entered a Carmelite convent at the age of 15 and lived a short but
very inspired life.
Her faith in the God of Love was absolute. For her, the most sublime form of prayer was just to love God without using the words of a prayer, without even saying anything, just being lost in the contemplation of Divine presence.
She had a deep appreciation of the beauty of nature and especially flowers; she liked to consider herself as a "little flower" and the basis of her spirituality was just to live a normal life but to be 100% motivated by Love.
Therese suffered ill health and died of tuberculosus in 1897 at the age of 24. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1925.
A fresh green palm was placed in the hand of St. Thérèse just before closing her coffin for burial on October 4, 1897. When the first canonical exhumation took place on September 6, 1910, her body had disintegrated (as she had foretold in a vision the night before to the Prioress of the Gallipoli Carmel). In her skeleton hand the green palm was found in all its freshness and can still be seen today in the Hall of Relics beside the Carmel Chapel. It is truly remarkable to see.
The Carmelite habit in which she had been buried was still fully intact but, on touch, was at the point of disintegration. (Thanks to V. Rev. Fr. J. Linus Ryan, O. Carm for updated information)
Her faith in the God of Love was absolute. For her, the most sublime form of prayer was just to love God without using the words of a prayer, without even saying anything, just being lost in the contemplation of Divine presence.
She had a deep appreciation of the beauty of nature and especially flowers; she liked to consider herself as a "little flower" and the basis of her spirituality was just to live a normal life but to be 100% motivated by Love.
Therese suffered ill health and died of tuberculosus in 1897 at the age of 24. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1925.
A fresh green palm was placed in the hand of St. Thérèse just before closing her coffin for burial on October 4, 1897. When the first canonical exhumation took place on September 6, 1910, her body had disintegrated (as she had foretold in a vision the night before to the Prioress of the Gallipoli Carmel). In her skeleton hand the green palm was found in all its freshness and can still be seen today in the Hall of Relics beside the Carmel Chapel. It is truly remarkable to see.
The Carmelite habit in which she had been buried was still fully intact but, on touch, was at the point of disintegration. (Thanks to V. Rev. Fr. J. Linus Ryan, O. Carm for updated information)
WHAT IS A SAINT?
A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
- Leonard Cohen -
A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
- Leonard Cohen -
The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere - in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture,
gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No-one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience
the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt
immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while
the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to
glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in
the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the
Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that
this embrace will hold us.
John O Donohue
John O Donohue
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Thanks for photos of St Therese to © Office Central
de Lisieux and to pdphoto.org for the main photo.
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