5 Quotes by John Philip Newell

It was Roland who taught us that there are two types of prayer. One, he said, is the dozing pussycat prayer, purring by the warm fire of God’s presence. The other is the yappy dog prayer, scratching at the door of heaven, imploring God’s help in our lives.

We have become so accustomed to seeing compassion as a duty, almost as a burden, she says, that we fail to see it essentially as a benediction.12 Compassion can free us from the prison of the ego, whether our individual ego or that of our family, community, or nation. To want to bear responsibility for the needs.

Too often in the past our approach to truth has been to assume that we have it and others do not. Consequently, we have thought that our role is to tell people what to believe. We are being invited instead into a new humility, to serve the holy wisdom that is already stirring in the hearts of people everywhere, the growing awareness of earth’s interrelatedness and sacredness.

Humanity’s great wisdom traditions are given not to compete with each other but to complete each other. We need each other as much as the species of the earth need one another to be whole. Rebirthing will happen within our Christian household when we reverently approach the heart of other traditions. It is what Griffiths in his work in India calls the “marriage of East and West,” a conjoining of what has been tragically torn apart.8.

Bede Griffiths says of the way of relationship with other faiths that we need to stop living from only “one half of our soul.”4 We need to open to the treasure of wisdom in traditions other than our own. Not only have they much to teach us, but they also hold the key to unlocking depths within our own religious inheritance that we know nothing of as yet.5 Jesus says, “You must be born anew.” Rebirth means letting go of the cords of confinement so that newborn vision may emerge.