Spiritual Graduation Quotes

Shine your soul with the same egoless humility as the rainbow and no matter where you go in this world or the next, love will find you, attend you, and bless you.

Death is the Graduation of the Soul

Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs maybe graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point anything can happen.

This is a day of celebration! Today, we are divorcing the past and marrying the present. Dance, and you will find God in every room. Today, we are divorcing resentment and marrying forgiveness. Sing, and God will find you in every tune. Today, we are divorcing indifference and marrying love. Drink, and play that tambourine against your thighs. We have so much celebrating to do!

Mari [Mary Magdalene] possessed a remarkably coherent understanding of what following The Way [Rahasya] meant. She believed that this spiritual philosophy taught that the world represented Man's mystic school from whence each person ultimately graduated by reaching the Enlightened State. Therefore, according to this spiritual discipline, human suffering is very subjective and manifested itself according to every person's personal karma or attitude to life. This meant that every life a person experienced imparted a certain number of spiritual lessons that may not have been experienced before in other lives. Ultimately, every experience could be relived and bring about spiritual growth, assisting the individual to move continually closer to the Enlightened State.

Authentic inspiration endows individuals with mental or spiritual energy which they are then able to transform into positive action. It can make all the difference between a man, woman, or child allowing despair to permanently paralyze any dreams they may have for their lives, or, exercising sufficient strength of will to make those dreams a reality.

I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's.

A graduate can be academically excellent but morally and spiritually bankrupt. We need to consider these dimensions in education as well.

When I pass-away (as each of us must) release a balloon into the sky with ashes attached, to celebrate my graduation... My graduation from this life to the next.

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate.

A student graduates when he learns how to swim, but a master graduates when he learns how to walk on water.

If we watch the interactions between human beings, we will receive a graduate-level education.

I deeply respect doctors, but I want to be very clear on something: at every hospital in the United States, many doctors are doing the wrong things, pushing pills and interventions when an ultra-aggressive stance on diet and behavior would do far more for the patient in front of them. Suicide and burnout rates are astronomical in health care, with approximately four hundred doctors per year killing themselves. (That’s equivalent to about four medical school graduating classes just dropping dead every year by their own hand.) Doctors have twice the rate of suicide as the general population. Based on my own experience with depression as a young surgeon, I think a contributor to this phenomenon is an insidious spiritual crisis about the efficacy of our work and a sense of being trapped in a system

Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.

The Lord prepared Moses for his ministry and took eighty years to do it. He was raised as a prince in Egypt and taught all that the wise men in Egypt knew. Some scholars believe that Moses was in line to be the next Pharaoh. Yet Moses gave all this up to identify with the people of God in their suffering (Heb. 11:24–27). God gave Moses a forty-year “post-graduate course” as a shepherd in the land of Midian, a strange place for a man with all the learning of Egypt in his mind. But there were lessons to be learned in solitude and silence, and in taking care of ignorant sheep, that Moses could never have learned in the university in Egypt. God has different ways of training His servants, and each person’s training is tailor-made by the Lord.

If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss,” as Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross says.

Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduation stops here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on, anything can happen.

When you consider it as a communication tool of your wise self, clearing clutter becomes an opportunity to graduate, spiritually, to the next soul level, and to begin living more fully and authentically.

Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anything threatens it, you will become inordinately scared; if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected. Let me give you an eloquent contemporary expression of what Jesus is saying. Nobody put this better than the American writer David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, bestselling postmodern novelist known around the world for his boundary-pushing storytelling. He once wrote a sentence that was more than a thousand words long. A few years before the end of his life, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.4 Wallace was by no means a religious person, but he understood that everyone worships, everyone trusts in something for their salvation, everyone bases their lives on something that requires faith. A couple of years after giving that speech, Wallace killed himself. And this nonreligious man’s parting words to us are pretty terrifying: “Something will eat you alive.” Because even though you might never call it worship, you can be absolutely sure you are worshipping and you are seeking. And Jesus says, “Unless you’re worshipping me, unless I’m the center of your life, unless you’re trying to get your spiritual thirst quenched through me and not through these other things, unless you see that the solution must come inside rather than just pass by outside, then whatever you worship will abandon you in the end.

The subject of karma is of great fascination to many cultural explorers, philosophers and mystics. Essentially the word karma means 'action' which includes both negative and positive effects. On the positive slant, when you help another, you help yourself. This is cause and effect, from attitudes, motivations and behavior. That which you do, you get back. And so, in the everyday world, when one exercises (action) and builds up muscle tone, this too is karma. Yes, this does not seem so esoteric. Studying is also action, and by focusing on a topic or skill one improves; Mental muscles are built up, and one graduates from the student to become a journeyman, and then an expert, and eventually a teacher.

For most of us enlightenment is not a destination or graduation into a permanent higher state of consciousness, but a moment-by-moment experience constantly fluctuating between degrees of wholeness and limited consciousness. I like to call this “enlightening-ment.

As students in this earth school, some of us may be in the first grade, the sixth grade, or high school, but eventually, with enough education, we will all graduate and leave this school behind. And then there are other schools, higher dimensions or levels where we continue our spiritual progression. But until we all graduate, none of us does, for we are all one. We may come back voluntarily to help other people, or animals, or sentient beings to evolve. Or we may help out from the other side even if we do not incarnate in physical bodies, and there we will continue to work to assist those other souls with whom we have been connected for eons of time. Do not be concerned with how many millennia it takes you to complete your classes. If you are progressing to be a kinder, more loving, less selfish, less violent person, then you are moving in the right direction. The direction is more important than the speed. It makes no difference if this is your first lifetime or your last, or if you have many more to go. Only the end matters. Of

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves. I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford.... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary.

It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming for impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety-hour weeks: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out.

Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen. But

One of the greatest tragedies of our culture is that millions of young people spend many hours, days, weeks and years listening to lectures, reading books and writing papers with a constantly increasing resistance. This has become such a widespread phenomenon that teachers on all levels, from grade school to graduate school, are complimented and praised when they can get the attention of their students and motivate them to do their work. Practically every student perceives his education as a long endless row of obligations to be fulfilled. If there is any culture that has succeeded in killing the natural spontaneous curiosity of people and dulling the human desire to know, it is our technocratic society.

At the present time, political power is everywhere constituted on insufficient foundations. On the one hand it emanates from the so-called divine right of kings, which is none other than military force; on the other from universal suffrage, which is merely the instinct of the masses, or mere average intelligence. A nation is not a number of uniform values or ciphers; it is a living being composed of organs. So long as national representation is not the image of this organization, right from its working to its teaching classes, there will be no organic or intelligent national representation. So long as the delegates of all scientific bodies, and the whole of the Christian churches do not sit together in one upper council, our societies will be governed by instinct, by passion, and by might, and there will be no social temple. ...We are beginning to understand that Jesus, at the very height of his consciousness, the transfigured Christ, is opening his loving arms to his brothers, the other Messiahs who preceded him, beams of the Living Word as he was, that he is opening them wide to Science in its entirety, Art in its divinity, and Life in its completeness. But his promise cannot be fulfilled without the help of all the living forces of humanity. Two main things are necessary nowadays for the continuation of the mighty work: on the one hand, the progressive unfolding of experimental science and intuitive philosophy to facts of psychic order, intellectual principles, and spiritual proofs; on the other, the expansion of Christian dogma in the direction of tradition and esoteric science, and subsequently a reorganization of the Church according to a graduated initiation; this by a free and irresistible movement of all Christian churches, which are also equally daughters of the Christ. Science must become religious and religion scientific. This double evolution, already in preparation, would finally and forcibly bring about a reconciliation of Science and Religion on esoteric grounds. The work will not progress without considerable difficulty at first, but the future of European Society depends on it. The transformation of Christianity, in its esoteric sense would bring with it that of Judaism and Islam, as well as a regeneration of Brahmanism and Buddhism in the same fashion, it would accordingly furnish a religious basis for the reconciliation of Asia and Europe.

arrived in Cambridge, and made an appointment to meet the formidable Krister Stendahl, a Swedish scholar of fierce intelligence, now to be my first adviser. We met in his office. I was nervous, but also amused that this tall and severe man, wearing a black shirt and clerical collar, looked to me like an Ingmar Bergman version of God. After preliminary formalities, he abruptly swiveled in his chair and turned sternly to ask, “So really, why did you come here?” I stumbled over the question, then mumbled something about wanting to find the essence of Christianity. Stendahl stared down at me, silent, then asked, “How do you know it has an essence?” In that instant, I thought, That’s exactly why I came here: to be asked a question like that—challenged to rethink everything. Now I knew I had come to the right place. I’d chosen Harvard because it was a secular university, where I wouldn’t be bombarded with church dogma. Yet I still imagined that if we went back to first-century sources, we might hear what Jesus was saying to his followers when they walked by the Sea of Galilee—we might find the “real Christianity,” when the movement was in its golden age. But Harvard quenched these notions; there would be no simple path to what Krister Stendahl ironically called “play Bible land” simply by digging through history. Yet I also saw that this hope of finding “the real Christianity” had driven countless people—including our Harvard professors—to seek its origins. Naive as our questions were, they were driven by a spiritual quest. We discovered that even the earliest surviving texts had been written decades after Jesus’s death, and that none of them are neutral. They reveal explosive controversy between his followers, who loved him, and outsiders like the Roman senator Tacitus and the Roman court historian Suetonius, who likely despised him. Taken together, what the range of sources does show, contrary to those who imagine that Jesus didn’t exist, is that he did: fictional people don’t have real enemies. What came next was a huge surprise: our professors at Harvard had file cabinets filled with facsimiles of secret gospels I had never heard of—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Truth—and dozens of other writings, transcribed by hand from the original Greek into Coptic, and mimeographed in blue letters on pages stamped TOP SECRET. Discovered in 1945, these texts only recently had become available to scholars. This wasn’t what I’d expected to find in graduate school, or even what I wanted—at least, not so long as I still hoped to find answers instead of more questions

Dr. Enoch Ngo'ma, said, "Your spiritual battle that has nothing to define your capabilities. May the favour of the Lord overshadow you at this time.

We pray for all the people of Your world, our sisters and brothers whose names we may not know but whose lives are ultimately precious in Your sight. With all our hearts, we pray for all Your children everywhere—yes, everywhere,” he said, emphatically stressing the last word. After praying for others, he turned the prayers to himself and to the graduates: “And finally we offer our strengths and our weaknesses, our joys and our sorrows to Your never-ending care. Help us to remember all through our lives that we never need to do difficult things alone, that Your presence is simply for the asking and our ultimate future is assured by Your unselfish love. In our deepest gratitude we offer this prayer. Amen.

All our opinions are false and don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We live ,we die. We as individuals don’t matter in this world ,we will be a memory if anyone does remember us. We will be lucky.But soon , our memory will die with them and maybe someone will utter our name in passing in this age of technology ,as a footnote to something that grabbed more of their attention. Ultimately in this world our lives do not matter. So why do we feel we are in a one man play? Why do we want to accomplish so much just to be bellowed as heroes or heroines, to be adored or thought highly of by other people who do not even have favorable opinions of themselves? You see the truth is that the trace we leave In this world do not matter in this world, the track we leave in this world is what matters in the afterlife and it will be mirror in the memory of your future. Everything we do today is either for our own comforts or to avoid discomfort we are living in a perpetual state of pleasing ourselves , self gratification and being busy bodies for the momentarily exhalation of relief that will almost always follow up with a crisis. No one will have a continuous state of bliss as the pendulum swings up it will eventually come down before it comes back up again, yet we act surprised and devastated. This life is a perpetual test to try to develop and polish your outlook and inner life so you may be the lucky ones to develop the acuteness to see this world for what it is, and not lose that vision. An illusion of forms presenting the beauty and ugliness of our souls to us on a platter and tempting us to forget we are mortal. You don’t finish school when you graduate with that degree. You finish school when you die.

parallel to all other ages, not a chronological series of events. Indeed, one of the great marvels of God’s gracious activity toward us is that it occurs in real time without being prejudiced in favor of any particular age. Just because we are the latest does not mean we are the best. The effects of sin prevent any age—including ours—from being “golden,” at least in the spiritual sense. Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It reveals important truths about the end times. But it is also last in another important sense—it calls on all the hermeneutical courage, wisdom, and maturity one can muster in order to be understood properly. In many ways it serves as a graduation exercise for the NIV Application Commentary Series, an opportunity to fully apply the many lessons we have learned in the Bridging Contexts sections of previous volumes. God’s time is his, not ours. The story of God’s gracious activity on our behalf will be fulfilled in a great and glorious conclusion. But all Christians, everywhere and at all times, have equal access to the time. That access has been and is made possible by God’s message in the book of Revelation. Terry C. Muck Author’s Preface AS A NEW CHRISTIAN recently converted from atheism, I eagerly hurried through Paul’s letters, reaching Revelation as soon as possible. Once I reached it, however, I could hardly understand a word of it. I listened attentively to the first few “prophecy teachers” I heard, but even if they had not contradicted one another, over the years I watched as most of their detailed predictions failed to materialize. Perhaps six years after my conversion, as I began to read Revelation in Greek for the first time, the book came alive to me. Because I was now moving through the text more carefully, I noticed the transitions and the structure, and I realized it was probably addressing something much different from what I had first supposed. At the same time, I catalogued parallels I found between Revelation and biblical prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. I also began reading an apocalypse contemporary with Revelation, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), to learn more about the way Revelation’s original, first-century audience may have heard its claims. Yet even in my first two years as a Christian, Revelation and other end-time passages proved a turning point for me. As a young Christian, I was immediately schooled in a particular, popular end-time view, which I respectfully swallowed (the

Given the opportunity of 'Earth-School' enrollment - some are humble enough to learn and grow, stubborn enough to fail and repeat, and wise enough to graduate and never return.

From its ancient roots to its modern application, the practical utility of the Enneagram has been appropriated by the CIA to profile world leaders, written about in The Paris Review, Newsweek, Forbes, and CNN.com, and taught in graduate courses at several academic institutions, including Stanford University. The Enneagram is even used to explain leadership styles and decision making styles in the workplace.

Why Is a Path Important? We all know people who make a lot of money, but hate their work. We also know people who do not make a lot of money and hate their work. And we all know people who just work for money. A classmate of mine from the Merchant Marine Academy also realized he did not want to spend his life at sea. Rather than sail for the rest of his life, he went to law school after graduation, spending three more years becoming a lawyer and entering private practice in the S quadrant. He died in his early fifties. He had become a very successful, unhappy lawyer. Like me, he had two professions by the time he was 26. Although he hated being a lawyer, he continued being a lawyer because he had a family, kids, a mortgage, and bills to pay. A year before he died, I met him at a class reunion in New York. He was a bitter man. “All I do is sweep up behind rich guys like you. They pay me nothing. I hate what I do and who I work for.” “Why don’t you do something else?” I asked. “I can’t afford to stop working. My first child is entering college.” He died of a heart attack before she graduated. He made a lot of money via his professional training, but he was emotionally angry, spiritually dead, and soon his body followed. I realize this is an extreme example. Most people do not hate what they do as much as my friend did. Yet it illustrates the problem when a person is trapped in a profession and unable to find their path.

finance, family, society, physical, emotional and spiritual health. You have to consciously maintain a balance.

The church has lost its ability to lament!” This heartfelt cry came from a seminary student as she prayed with other graduate students, faculty and staff who gathered together to seek God for racial justice and reconciliation throughout our nation. As we cried and prayed together we realized that our theology and spiritual formation hadn’t given us sufficient permission, language or tools to adequately sit with the despair and sadness of recent racial injustices, senseless acts of gun violence and social unrest taking place in the world around us. We even saw this on social media where people also seemed paralyzed and helpless to know what to do and how to respond. Sincere, well-meaning Christian people asked, “What should we do?” while people who were fed up with the seeming indifference of those around them expressed their outrage through a hashtag that proclaimed “Silence is Violence!

Since seminary tends to academize the faith, making it a world of ideas to be mastered (I will write about this at length later in this book), it is quite easy for students to buy into the belief that biblical maturity is about the precision of theological knowledge and the completeness of their biblical literacy. So seminary graduates, who are Bible and theology experts, tend to think of themselves as being mature. But it must be said that maturity is not merely something you do with your mind (although that is an important element of spiritual maturity). No, maturity is about how you live your life. It is possible to be theologically astute and be very immature. It is possible to be biblically literate and be in need of significant spiritual growth.

there are 6 spokes of life – finance, family, society, physical, emotional and spiritual health. You have to consciously maintain a balance.

Between 50 and 75% of entering freshmen at large Catholic universities typically identify themselves as believing and practicing Catholics. Only 25-50% of graduating seniors do the same.

Desiring to match my lover, I designed a ‘Twin’ costume that was based on a similar idea to Gabrielli’s ‘Happy and Sad’ theme; ‘Twins’ was an over-sized costume which could easily accommodate two people when worn. It was black in front and white at the back. The sides were ombre shades of grey, graduating from black to white and vice versa. It is true that all colors merged to become black or white; ‘Twins’ was therefore representational of all beings connected as one and one as all. It was a Yin and Yang concept I didn’t realize I had created at the time. Forty years had passed and I now realize this process was a part of an unconscious spiritual evolution: morphing from adolescent to adulthood.

One study examining young adults who drop out of church found that 18 percent of youth group graduates who remain connected to the church had five or more adults invest in them spiritually and personally between ages fifteen and eighteen.

Sadly the majority of kids today are forsaking their church and faith after they graduate from high school. This is primarily the result of poor fathering. When dads lead spiritually, studies suggest that kids are up to twenty times more likely to stay in church long-term than when moms are the spiritual leaders at home.7

The plan that was set up by GOD and the Godforce to remedy this descent into forgetfulness and Spiritual sleep was “Reincarnation”! GOD and the Godforce created five races on the five continents on the Earth! A white, black, brown, yellow and red race! The different skin colors were not because one was better than another, but was because of the different climate conditions! The plan that was created was that all those souls who had fallen asleep would reincarnate over and over again until the seven levels of initiation were completed in a balanced and integrated manner so liberation from the wheel of rebirth and/or graduation would be achieved! The idea was that having time on the inner plane between lives would give souls time to remember who they were, and give them time to introspect and reflect before incarnating again!

So the novelist David Foster Wallace, not long before his suicide, spoke these words to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough… Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you… Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is… they’re unconscious. They are default settings.16

Where I live, on the West Coast, most churches tend to be small and to have little influence in the culture. Stark and Finke explain, “A major reason for the lack of church membership in the West is high rates of mobility, which decrease the ability of all voluntary organizations, not just churches, to maintain membership. That is, people move so often that they lack the social ties needed to affiliate with churches.”25 To address this problem, one of the most effective church-planting networks in the United States began in Tacoma, Washington, by using a method of developing intensive community in neighborhoods. Soma Communities fosters deep and intense relationships by teaching church planters to get closely involved in their neighborhoods, opening their homes to neighbors, gathering friends together on a regular basis, and forming “missional communities” focused on discovering and meeting the needs of neighbors and the community. It is these relational bonds that make someone unfamiliar with Christianity want to try it out. Rick Richardson, who directs the evangelism and leadership program at Wheaton College Graduate School, argues that “belonging comes before believing.” He contrasts older methods of evangelism that focused on asking individuals to make a set of commitments. Today, asserts Richardson, presenting four spiritual laws and inviting people to make decisions for Christ is less effective. “Evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can come to believe. So our communities need to be places where people can connect before they have to commit.”26 The idea is held up by social science research showing that converts tend to sign on to a new faith only after their social ties become stronger to those in the new faith than to others outside it. “This often occurs before a convert knows much about what the group believes.

STEP 11  –  Spiritual Awareness We pray and think about ourselves, praying only for the strength to do what is right. We have always been a People of prayer. In our old ways, we prayed when the sun came up, we prayed when we picked the herbs that became our medicine, we prayed for a good harvest, and we prayed when the buffalo or deer was taken so our people might live. We are still a People of prayer. Something inside of us becomes alert when an Elder prays before a gathering. At home, there is prayer before a basketball game or a graduation. Step 11 is about re-awakening our gift of prayer and using it for sobriety, recovery and especially on the Wellbriety journey that will last our whole life. Many

I have graduated to the extent of not asking what is happening in my life because I trust the maker(God).

Thank God #EVEN# #THOUGH# in bad times not only in your good; this is a graduated form of gratitude.

Spiritual learners too slowly graduate like students of normal education. If you are mentally elevated, you can grasp and appreciate complex teachings.

This ancient story is good and exemplary for boys. But what about girls? What is the modern story of a Prodigal Daughter? I picture her as an honor-roll high-school graduate turned wild party-girl expelled from college. Abandoned by her first love after an abortion, she sedated herself in a downward spiral of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity. She bounced from one job to another, had an affair with a married man, and then left the country to escape disappointment and loss. Years later, lonely, weak from an eating disorder, and painfully aware of her emotional, physical, and spiritual bankruptcy, she returned to her father’s home to ask for forgiveness.6

1.​YOUR LOVE RELATIONSHIP. This is the measure of how happy you are in your current state of relationship—whether you’re single and loving it, in a relationship, or desiring one. 2.​YOUR FRIENDSHIPS. This is the measure of how strong a support network you have. Do you have at least five people who you know have your back and whom you love being around? 3.​YOUR ADVENTURES. How much time do you get to travel, experience the world, and do things that open you to new experiences and excitement? 4.​YOUR ENVIRONMENT. This is the quality of your home, your car, your work, and in general the spaces where you spend your time—even when traveling. 5.​YOUR HEALTH AND FITNESS. How would you rate your health, given your age, and any physical conditions? 6.​YOUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE. How much and how fast are you growing and learning? How many books do you read? How many seminars or courses do you take yearly? Education should not stop after you graduate from college. 7.​YOUR SKILLS. How fast are you improving the skills you have that make you unique and help you build a successful career? Are you growing toward mastery or are you stagnating? 8.​YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE. How much time do you devote to spiritual, meditative, or contemplative practices that keep you feeling connected, balanced, and peaceful? 9.​YOUR CAREER. Are you growing, climbing the ladder, and excelling? Or do you feel you’re stuck in a rut? If you have a business, is it thriving or stagnating? 10.​YOUR CREATIVE LIFE. Do you paint, write, play musical instruments, or engage in any other activity that helps you channel your creativity? Or are you more of a consumer than a creator? 11.​YOUR FAMILY LIFE. Do you love coming home to your family after a hard day’s work? If you’re not married or a parent, define your family as your parents and siblings. 12.​YOUR COMMUNITY LIFE. Are you giving, contributing, and playing a definite role in your community?

A part war drama, part coming-of-age story, part spiritual pilgrimage, Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is the story of a young woman who experienced more hardships before graduating high school than most people do in a lifetime. Yet her heartaches are only half the story; the other half is a story of resilience, of leaving her lifelong home in Germany to find a new home, a new life, and a new love in America. Mildred Schindler Janzen has given us a time capsule of World War II and the years following it, filled with pristinely preserved memories of a bygone era. Ken Gire New York Times bestselling author of All the Gallant Men The memoir of Mildred Schindler Janzen will inform and inspire all who read it. This is a work that pays tribute to the power and resiliency of the human spirit to endure, survive, and overcome in pursuit of the freedom and liberty that all too many take for granted. Kirk Ford, Jr., Professor Emeritus, History Mississippi College Author of OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance, 1943-1945 A compelling first-person account of life in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. A well written, true story of a young woman overcoming the odds and rising above the tragedies of loss of family and friends during a savage and brutal war, culminating in her triumph in life through sheer determination and will. A life lesson for us all. Col. Frank Janotta (Retired), Mississippi Army National Guard Mildred Schindler Janzen’s touching memoir is a testimony to God’s power to deliver us from the worst evil that men can devise. The vivid details of Janzen’s amazing life have been lovingly mined and beautifully wrought by Sherye Green into a tender story of love, gratitude, and immeasurable hope. Janzen’s rich, post-war life in Kansas serves as a powerful reminder of the great promise of America. Troy Matthew Carnes, Author of Rasputin’s Legacy and Dudgeons and Daggers World War II was horrific, and we must never forget. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a must-read that sheds light on the pain the Nazis and then the Russians inflicted on the German Jews and the German people. Mildred Schindler Janzen’s story, of how she and her mother and brother survived the war and of the special document that allowed Mildred to come to America, is compelling. Mildred’s faith sustained her during the war's horrors and being away from her family, as her faith still sustains her today. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a book worth buying for your library, so we never forget. Cynthia Akagi, Ph.D. Northcentral University I wish all in the world could read Mildred’s story about this loving steel magnolia of a woman who survived life under Hitler’s reign. Mildred never gave up, but with each suffering, grew stronger in God’s strength and eternal hope. Beautifully written, this life story will captivate, encourage, and empower its readers to stretch themselves in life, in love, and with God, regardless of their circumstances. I will certainly recommend this book. Renae Brame, Author of Daily Devotions with Our Beloved, God’s Peaceful Waters Flow, and Snow and the Eternal Hope How utterly inspiring to read the life story of a woman whose every season reflects God’s safe protection and unfailing love. When young Mildred Schindler escaped Nazi Germany, only to have her father taken by Russians and her mother and brother hidden behind Eastern Europe’s Iron Curtain, she courageously found a new life in America. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is her personal witness to God’s guidance and provision at every step of that perilous journey. How refreshing to view a full life from beginning to remarkable end – always validating that nothing is impossible with God. Read this book and you will discover the author’s secret to life: “My story is a declaration that choosing joy and thankfulness over bitterness and anger, even amid difficult circumsta

You see me shining today,haha.. it where I'm coming from the pit of fire that shaped me to glowing graduate me on who i was previous.The pain, day and night tears fearness,low self esteem,being unknown mat for everyone, rejected, victim of rape, from zero,hopeless,called by names.I'm trying to say worse then you know God take me from ashes to the Kings table give him all the Glory that what he can do for you if you give him your heart. I didn't choose him but he does axctually i used to curse him but his grace doesnt pass me by,I'm sure you need him too before sunset.

You know why everybody run away from you when you going through in tough situations? Yes they say friends are few when days are dark Because God prepare the table by invite your enemies to watch you enjoy your dinner with him in upsent of your friends bonusly he judge your friends frienship finally graduate you from unknowing him to following his ways hope you ready for that.Guess what, the moment situations loadshape your world, yes Jesus Christ is Independent main light to rescue you.Who friend like him?He's rocks dude.

…[RVA graduates] have been at the forefront of the “global village” phenomenon…But that role has not always come cheaply. Like their peers of one hundred years ago, today’s RVA students have seen poverty and human suffering virtually unimaginable in the West. Many have had to wrestle with the hosts of crises linked to the trauma of social and cultural transitions. Still others have witnessed disillusioning hypocrisy from the words and actions of their missionary parents or teachers. A few have felt the loneliness and anger that they would have felt in their “home cultures” exacerbated by the boarding experience. And thus, having been deeply damaged by their TCK experience, some have floundered for a lifetime, isolated by their unique experiences from the healing experience of faith and friendship. And yet for many, the difficult experiences of poverty, hypocrisy, separation and cross-cultural interaction have produced dynamic and emotionally healthy individuals…Like membership in a family, whether it is healthy or unhealthy, emotional ties to the RVA community last a lifetime; and the individuals who make it up have the potential to understand and support each other in a way that few others can…Those who have chosen to view the atmosphere of isolation negatively have easily found in RVA an ever-shrinking community, where the sense of cultural claustrophobia is only eclipsed by the feeling of forced conformity. When they have recoiled against the perceived legalistic constraints of the community, they have done so within the confines of a relational and intellectual fishbowl. As a result, they have often had to live with a feeling of self-imposed ostracism, merciless gossip and public judgment – without the hope of escape. The reality is that over its one hundred year history as an institution, RVA has permitted the growth of a culture of gossip and has had to endure more than its share of Phariseeism…Yet…over the years, many have viewed that same atmosphere of isolation in a far more positive light. Where some have felt instrusive judgmentalism, others have found accountability and spiritual encouragement. Where some have found a community of life-minded lemmings, others have thrived and grown because of the deep sense of intimacy and mutual understanding… for some the irony is that that healthy experience has made the transition from RVA to their home culture all the more difficult. p213-216

Major life changes—anything from moving across country to graduating from college New relationships—either in personal or professional work Challenges and difficulties—from sickness to strife to struggle Goals attained and milestones achieved—losing weight, learning a new skill, gaining financial freedom Travel—a visit to a new city or state or country or a journey that brought new insight Spiritual experiences—encounters with grace, growth experiences, new awareness and understanding Special serendipitous blessings—divine encounters that especially encouraged us

If I know how something ends, and that it ends well, I have a totally different experience watching it or living it. There’s no reason to be anxious. The ref makes a terrible call? That’s frustrating, but not really, because I know how it ends. And Jesus’ words assure us that he knows how it ends. Death is the ultimate weapon of our spiritual enemy, but two thousand years ago, it was disarmed. God is ultimately going to take care of us. Plus, he said, worries don’t help, so what’s the point? Worrying about tomorrow just makes today miserable.

A good father provides shelter—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. If you’re a wise father who loves your children, you will shelter them. You will protect them. You will shield them. You will filter the world for them. You will do your best to know what and who is influencing them, even if it means inconvenience to you or feeling like you’re the only parent on the block who might care.

The book, The Holy Longing, resulted from that conversation. And Eric Major’s instincts were correct; there was a crying niche for that kind of book. The book found a huge audience, inside of all Christian denominations. But while The Holy Longing is a solid book, one that offers a certain basic foundation in Christian spirituality, it remains precisely that, a foundational book, a needed Spirituality 101 course, but not a graduate or final course. The Holy Longing is a book that is intended to help us “get our lives together,” to help us achieve an essential discipleship. But where do we go from there? What lies beyond the essentials, the basics? Where do we go once some of the basic questions in our lives have been answered, or at least brought to enough peace that our focus can shift away from ourselves to others? Where do we go once the basic questions in our lives are no longer the restless questions of youthful insecurity and loneliness? “Who am I?” “Who loves me?” “How will my life turn out?” Where do we go once the basic questions in life become: “How can I give my life away more purely, and more meaningfully?” “How do I live beyond my own heartaches, headaches, and obsessions so as to help make other peoples’ lives more meaningful?” The intent of this book is to try to address exactly those questions: How can we live less self-centered, more mature lives? What constitutes deep maturity and how do we reach that place? And, not unimportantly, what constitutes a more adult, Christian discipleship? What constitutes a truly mature following of Jesus? This book will try to answer those questions. It will try to be true to what its subtitle promises: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity.

the paradigm for teaching that I absorbed in graduate school was disastrous when it came to actually teaching young people. The notion of teaching that I had imbibed was actually allergic to formation, to the notion that I might have a sense of what students ought to be. So the “heresy” I began to entertain was a historic notion of the faculty in loco parentis (“in place of parents”). I was a heretic precisely because I started to entertain the thought that good teaching might actually be paternalistic. In the environs of educational progressivism, this would be seen as just plain loco.

was interested in learning more about the possible mechanisms of synchronicities and manifestation. In graduate school I realized that it didn’t matter if an exercise, such as writing your intentions down, actually worked magically or worked through fine-tuning your brain’s attention on your goals—all that mattered was that it worked and could help you direct your life in an effective way.

A concept Fred likely learned in his graduate studies in child development, sublimation is the process by which socially unacceptable behaviors are channeled—sublimated—into more socially acceptable ways.

When you consider it as a communication tool of your wise self, clearing clutter becomes an opportunity to graduate, spiritually, to the next soul level, and to begin living more fully and authentically

Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing.

For a number of years after graduating from the university, Osho taught philosophy. The fact-oriented mind labels him “a former philosophy professor,

Your Ultimate Conception happened in no time and no space. You separated from your Ultimate Creator, and you shall remain separated until you are able to reach your Ultimate Graduation. And if you accomplish that, it will be up to you to decide if you want to merge again with your Ultimate Creator. It is your choice, and only your choice. It is The Ultimate Choice, by Internal Self Helper Kamaláska.

After returning to the physical, I thought about what happened. I finally understood Robert Monroe’s observation about chunks of the Infinite Sea of Bonded I-There Clusters disappearing from time to time. Those are spiritual beings completing their Ultimate Graduation, and who have decided to leave both the material and the spiritual worlds and return to unity with the Ultimate Creator, by Jozef.

Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.

Spirituality This above was spoken by someone still here. All spirit does not progress at the same pace. Also, all spirit does not come into beingness at the same time (within the confines of the one holy moment which encompasses our eternity) There is a constant breath in the universe as the individual “Sparks of God” manifest not only into the physical universe but also into the multiverse. There is a constant coming and going. Creation wasn’t all in one orgasmic burst trillions of years in the past. It is ongoing. Those of us still here haven’t graduated yet. Those that aren’t, have. It may appear that we are a vast majority and that only a tiny few “get out” This is not necessarily the case. There has always been a road out and people have always been taking it, quietly, without fan fare.

It was Dr. McFarland, Fred’s mentor in child development from his graduate studies, who noted that Fred was more connected to his childhood than anyone else she knew, that he hadn’t “shed” the vestiges of childhood as most of us have.

Human beings are susceptible to pride, especially if they have college educations and are part of a strong organization. This is what any Bible-college graduate is up against, especially if he is ordained by a denomination to be a pastor, or if they are ordained as any form of spiritual leader in the church. Mix this with the pride that goes on with the teachers of a business-run Bible college in a big denomination, and you have the recipe for disastrous Christian leaders who think more highly of the denomination and the leaders within it than they think of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we do decide to enact liturgy and symbols in our community to address race, we do so in very limited ways: write letters, issue joint statements, maybe sing an African American spiritual in worship (poorly), and then bring in one of our African-descent rostered leaders or non-rostered leaders to preach or give a talk. How many times have you sung “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at your church or at a synod event? Has anyone every taken the time to explain to you the rich history of that song? Has anyone ever told you that it is the “Negro national anthem”? I had to learn it to graduate sixth grade; my class was required to learn it, study it, and sing it at our final assembly. Did you know that black folks have been singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at public events since before it was common practice to sing the national anthem at public events? If you are reading this and you have sung that hymn at your church and your pastor didn’t take the time to teach you that first, that’s just one example of the ways our church has failed to properly contextualize our symbols and liturgies.

Mark DeVries observed that the church had become the place where teenagers “are most segregated from the world of adults.”2 Churches had unwittingly cultivated an environment where teenagers were being cut off from the very adult relationships that would sustain them through the turbulence of the adolescent years and by which they could learn about mature Christian faith. We were, in effect, nurturing in teenagers an appetite for a youth group from which they would soon graduate, while weaning them from involvement in the broader church life that would sustain their spiritual growth as adults.