OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
The Sparks of God’s Brilliance
All living beings are, so to speak, sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance. These sparks mere from God like rays of the sun.”
– Hildegard of Bingen
Join us at Santa Sabina Center for a Writing Retreat with Kim Stafford: “Your Archive of the Unspoken,” from April 20 – 23, 2023. To learn more and/or register, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Before Spring
There is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.
– Parker Palmer
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Transforming Hatred to Love
May those whose hell it is to hate and hurt be turned into lovers bringing flowers.
– Shantideva
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Who Am I?
Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these two banks the river of my life flows.
– Nisargadatta Maharaj
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
For Ash Wednesday
Untouchable Beauty
You flowers and trees, you hills and streams, you fields, flocks, and wild birds, you books, you poems, and you people, I am utterly alone in the midst of you. I am solitary and helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. And God, who is the only one who can be loved for His own sake alone, remains invisible and unimaginable and untouchable, beyond everything else that exists. He is mirrored in all things like sunlight in clean water; but if I try to drink the light that is in the water I only shatter the reflection.
– Thomas Merton, Journal Entry, Lent 1949
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Starting the Day
We can start our day with the happiness of a smile and the aspiration to dedicate ourselves to the path of love and understanding. We are aware that today is a fresh, new day, and we have twenty-four precious hours to live.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Love Earth
This is what you should do:
Love the Earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people…
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.
– Walt Whitman, Excerpt from Preface to 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Pray to Love
Do not be small minded. Do not pray for gourds and pumpkins from God, when you should be asking for pure love and pure knowledge to dawn within every heart.
– Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
Redeemed by Love
I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
– Wendell Berry
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
The Measure of Love
The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members, a heart of grace, and a soul generated by love.
– Coretta Scott King
To learn about and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
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