Tranquility, gentleness, and strength
All our action . . . must be peaceful, gentle, and strong. That suggests . . . an immense depth, and an invulnerable steadiness which come from the fact that our small action is now part of the total action of God, whose Spirit, as another saint has said, “Works always in tranquility “
Fuss and feverishness, anxiety, intensity, intolerance, instability, pessimism and wobble, and every kind of hurry and worry-these, even on the highest levels, are signs of the self-made and self-acting soul; the spiritual parvenu.
The saints are never like that. They share the quiet and noble qualities of the great family to which they belong: the family of the sons of God.
If we desire a simple test of the quality of our spiritual life, a consideration of the tranquility, gentleness, and strength with which we deal with the circumstances of our outward life will serve us better than anything that is based on the loftiness of our religious notions, or fervor of our religious feelings.
-Evelyn Underhill in The Spiritual Life
Livin l I I want first of all . . . to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact-to borrow the language of the saints- to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus, when he said, “May the outward and inward man be one.” I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Gift From the Sea
Three basic, quiet acts
The pastors of America have metamorphosed in a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeepers’ concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street. …
Three pastoral acts are so basic, so critical, that they determine the shape of everything else. The acts are praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction. Besides being basic, these acts are quiet. They do not call attention to themselves and are not often attended to. In the clamorous world of pastoral work nobody yells at us to engage in these acts.
-Eugene Peterson
in Working the Angles
Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
