The Alphabet Of Grace Quotes

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.

A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.

Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!

I have a spiritual journey on earth. Lord anoint and empower me to accomplish my great task on earth.

The world is in pain, and its pain makes strangers of us all and ties my tongue in a lover’s knot.

Come unto me. Come unto me, you say. All right then, dear my Lord. I will try in my own absurd way. In my own absurd way I will try to come unto you, a project which is in itself by no means unabsurd. Because I do not know the time or place where you are. And if by some glad accident my feet should stumble on it, I do not know that I would know that I had stumbled on it. And even if I did know, I do not know for sure that I would find you there. … And if you are there, I do not know that I would recognize you. And if I recognized you, I do not know what that would mean or even what I would like it to mean. I do not even well know who it is you summon, myself. For who am I? I know only that heel and toe, memory and metatarsal, I am everything that turns, all of a piece, unthinking, at the sound of my name. … Come unto me, you say. I, … all of me, unknowing and finally unknowable even to myself, turn. O Lord and lover, I come if I can to you down through the litter of any day, through sleeping and waking and eating and saying goodbye and going away and coming back again. Laboring and laden with endless histories heavy on my back.

I hold my plush monkey over the bannister and let it drop. Its eyes light up when you squeeze its kidneys as whose eyes, I suppose, would not.

Mankind has a divine duty, to be stewardship of the natural resources.

These graces and favors that God grants us without our knowledge may be referred to by the Holy Spirit in the Canticle when he says to the bride: “How beautiful are you, my love, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves' eyes, besides what is hid within.” [110]  As doves' eyes are tearful, the eyes of devout persons, who are accustomed to weep, are compared to them. Such tears come from grace and virtue, especially if they are shed out of desire for our Lord's presence when he is absent; he gives them a secret grace for this of which even they themselves are unaware;

Those who feed upon the Word grow strong and peaceful and are by God’s grace hidden from the strife of tongues.

Let the chief aim of all your tears and prayers and sacrifices and whatever good works you may perform be to induce God to send you his holy grace to make you pleasing to his Majesty, and then ask him for what you most need in order to serve him better.

The chief characteristic of this spiritual exercise is to recollect the heart. This is the highest effect left by grace received by this means in the soul, from which it casts out all superfluous cares and idle thoughts which distract men and drive them outside themselves. Recollection brings them back and calms and pacifies them.

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

The English word Atonement comes from the ancient Hebrew word kaphar, which means to cover. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and discovered their nakedness in the Garden of Eden, God sent Jesus to make coats of skins to cover them. Coats of skins don’t grow on trees. They had to be made from an animal, which meant an animal had to be killed. Perhaps that was the very first animal sacrifice. Because of that sacrifice, Adam and Eve were covered physically. In the same way, through Jesus’ sacrifice we are also covered emotionally and spiritually. When Adam and Eve left the garden, the only things they could take to remind them of Eden were the coats of skins. The one physical thing we take with us out of the temple to remind us of that heavenly place is a similar covering. The garment reminds us of our covenants, protects us, and even promotes modesty. However, it is also a powerful and personal symbol of the Atonement—a continuous reminder both night and day that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are covered. (I am indebted to Guinevere Woolstenhulme, a religion teacher at BYU, for insights about kaphar.) Jesus covers us (see Alma 7) when we feel worthless and inadequate. Christ referred to himself as “Alpha and Omega” (3 Nephi 9:18). Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Christ is surely the beginning and the end. Those who study statistics learn that the letter alpha is used to represent the level of significance in a research study. Jesus is also the one who gives value and significance to everything. Robert L. Millet writes, “In a world that offers flimsy and fleeting remedies for mortal despair, Jesus comes to us in our moments of need with a ‘more excellent hope’ (Ether 12:32)” (Grace Works, 62). Jesus covers us when we feel lost and discouraged. Christ referred to Himself as the “light” (3 Nephi 18:16). He doesn’t always clear the path, but He does illuminate it. Along with being the light, He also lightens our loads. “For my yoke is easy,” He said, “and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). He doesn’t always take burdens away from us, but He strengthens us for the task of carrying them and promises they will be for our good. Jesus covers us when we feel abused and hurt. Joseph Smith taught that because Christ met the demands of justice, all injustices will be made right for the faithful in the eternal scheme of things (see Teachings, 296). Marie K. Hafen has said, “The gospel of Jesus Christ was not given us to prevent our pain. The gospel was given us to heal our pain” (“Eve Heard All These Things,” 27). Jesus covers us when we feel defenseless and abandoned. Christ referred to Himself as our “advocate” (D&C 29:5): one who believes in us and stands up to defend us. We read, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler” (Psalm 18:2). A buckler is a shield used to divert blows. Jesus doesn’t always protect us from unpleasant consequences of illness or the choices of others, since they are all part of what we are here on earth to experience. However, He does shield us from fear in those dark times and delivers us from having to face those difficulties alone. … We’ve already learned that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as Atonement means “to cover.” In Arabic or Aramaic, the verb meaning to atone is kafat, which means “to embrace.” Not only can we be covered, helped, and comforted by the Savior, but we can be “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 1:15). We can be “clasped in the arms of Jesus” (Mormon 5:11). In our day the Savior has said, “Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love” (D&C 6:20). (Brad Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement, pp. 47-49, 60).

I believe without the miracles I have prayed for then; that is what I am explaining. I believe because certain, uncertain things have happened, dim half-miracles, sermons and silences and what not. Perhaps it is the believing itself that is the miracle I believe by. Perhaps it is the miracle of my own life, that I, who might so easily not have been, am; who might so easily at any moment, even now, give the whole thing up, nonetheless by God’s grace do not give it up and am not given up by it.

We cannot make ourselves known to each other; we are not healed and forgiven by each other’s presence. With words as valueless as poker chips, we play games whose object it is to keep us from seeing each other’s cards. Chit-chat games in which “How are you?” means “Don’t tell me who you are,” and “I’m alone and scared” becomes “Fine thanks.” Games where the players create the illusion of being in the same room but where the reality of it is that each is alone inside a skin in that room, like bathyspheres at the bottom of the sea. Blind man’s buff games where everyone is blind.

We know that Moses spoke less after God had talked with him than before, and did not wish to speak on divine matters until an aid was given to speak for him.[1043] He thus gave an example to spiritual men who should say little of their consolations from God, and when they are bound to manifest them, should treat of them as though they referred to others let them give examples of such things from the Scriptures to prevent other people from guessing the truth. The holy child Samuel would not tell Heli the priest what God had said to him without much entreaty and persuasion. [1044] King Ezechiel was much to blame for showing the treasures of his palace and God's house to strangers. This warns you to take advice and keep a prudent silence about both your natural graces and those you acquire through contemplation.   The

The third word bids us to be silent interiorly, saying nothing, not even  “speaking lofty things” as Samuel's mother counseled,[165] for the Lord is the God of knowledge and prefers that men should pray to him dumbly and in spirit and in truth, rather than by speech.[166] In fact, the more silently we beseech him, the more favorably does he listen and answer, as in the case of Moses. The latter said nothing, but prayed mutely, yet the Lord answered as though he had been importuned: “Why do you cry to me?” [167] That God grants the prayers of those who are silent about their longings in his presence is shown in the case of Zachary, who while he was dumb begot  John (whose name means ‘grace’), and did not utter a word until the child was born, though afterwards he spoke better than ever before, having become a great prophet. [168]

No one pours liquid into a cracked and broken vase which can hold nothing. Your heart is divided into as many pieces representing the cares you hold: each care is a broken piece; and do you think that God will pour his grace into such a useless vessel? Ask the wise man, who says: “The heart of a fool is like a broken vessel, and not all wisdom shall it hold.” [47]   God instills this devout and very sweet wisdom of which we speak into the hearts of the righteous, the golden vessels and cups from which he drinks our good desires, symbolized by the goblets from which King Solomon drank which were all gold. A golden vase cannot easily be broken, neither can the heart of the just be divided between different interests without urgent necessity. However, the hearts of unreflecting men are like the ill-baked clay vessels which David was given in the desert when persecuted by Absalom.[48] This clay vessel is broken because the man's exterior and worldly actions are not referred to God nor performed purely for his sake, but some are done to please men, others by the inspiration of the devil, others for pleasure or vainglory, so that his heart being divided, cannot retain the grace of devotion or the sweetness of the heavenly liquor.

The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and not from that of the spectator. "He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the world!" said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above strain. Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and years together, ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to me was love; nor I to him." "Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew—not even my father, though he came nearest knowing—the tongue of the trees and fruits and flowers themselves.

Desire is… " Desire is the glow of bathing lunatics. Starlight is the liquid used to power a whispering machine. Humming is the music of a forest moving in unison with your eyes. * A slip of the tongue and the hummingbird’s empty throne make the acquaintance of the word frenzy, which in turn adopts the phrase: “I am closest to you when we are furthest apart,” and together they follow the anxious doorway that leads far out of the city, where travelers always meet, alone and abandoned with only their mysteries to guide them… and when the sun bleeds out of the dampness of the earth, like pale limbs entwined and exhausted, they all pause in their own fashion to reflect not upon themselves but on the white wolves in the garden shivering like mist, in the mirror hiding your face. * The nature of movement is an image lost between the objects of an eclipse fervently scratched into the face of a sleeping woman when she approaches the liquid state of a circle, wandering aimlessly in search of lucidity and those moments of inarticulate suspicion… when the riddle is only half solved and the alphabet is still adding letters according to the human motors that have not yet arrived, as a species, scintillating in the grass, burning time. Not far from your name there is always a question mark, followed by silent paws… * It is not without the mask of the Enchanter’s dance of unreason, that joy follows the torment of seductive shapes, and sudden appearances in the whisper of long corridors. Tribal veils rising out of fingerprints on invisible entrances in the middle of the landscape, assume the form of her shoulders and the intimacy of her bones making dust, taking flight. * The axis of revolt and the nobility of a springtime stripped of its flowers, expertly balanced with a murmur of the heart on the anvil of chance. Your voice arcing between the two points of day and night, where the oracle of water spinning rapidly above, that is your city of numerology, mixes with the flux of a long voyage more stone-like and absurdly graceful then either milkweed or deadly nightshade, when it acclimatizes the elements of transparency in the host of purity. * The dream birds of a lost language are growing underground in the bed of sorcery. It is all revealed in the arms of your obsession, Arachne, (crawling to kiss) pale Ariadne, (kneeling to feed) in a pool of light that exceeds the dimensions of the loveliest crime. She turns into your evidence, gaining speed and recognition, becoming a brightness never solved, and a clarity that makes crystals. * The early morning hours share their nakedness with those who bare fruit and corset fireflies in long slender bath-like caresses. “Your serum, Sir Moor’s Head, follows the grand figures of the sea, ignites them, throws them like vessels out of fire, raising the sand upwards into oddly repetitive enchantments. Drown me in flight, daughter of wonder…

Not only should you derive love from your own works, but also from those of others, loving him in their blessings, for love is like a bee that sucks honey for its hive from every flower. Additionally, love, solely by its gratitude and pleasure in its neighbor's goods, makes them its own and offers them as its sacrifice to the Lord. Hence Gregory says, “The graces that we cannot imitate but only love in others are ours, as our virtues become the property of those who love them. The envious should reflect upon the power of charity, which, with no labor we perform, makes ours the work of others. With neither effort nor fear, love gives us possession of the goods of others, for in our own good deeds we always feel vain-glory, but not in those of our neighbor. No one should refuse to believe that love for the good works of others makes us their owner, since love for other people's sins makes us sinners.

The all-wise Father, knowing the benefit accruing to his sons through temptations, and being resolved to help them, gives them severe conflicts, casts them down to the depths, gives them bread and straw to teach them self-denial. He visits, raises, and proves them and gives them courage to preserve them against the risings of pride and deceptions and their irritation at their falls. Then do not fear temptation, brother, when you have such a counterweight as God's love for you. He is better served by you when you are tempted, for you suffer for him, but when you are consoled; your work is done for you.   Be sure to turn within yourself and seek God whenever anything happens that annoys you, like the dove that, when pursued by a bird of prey flies away and enters a safe place of refuge. You too should enter the refuge of your heart, where you will find God, and every adverse circumstance will be to you a messenger of grace, as this Letter declares. Then the words of Isaiah will be fulfilled in you. “And a man shall be as when one is hid from the wind, and hides himself from a storm, as rivers of water in drought, and the shadow of a rock that stands out in a desert land.

its own tongue the glory and grace of Jesus while the water which they all drink speaks loudest of all, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). So this beautiful gospel speaks to man, not only in the tenderest words of human language, the most profound discourses of human thought, but it lays under tribute every figure of Hebrew history and the natural world as an alphabet to express in the glowing language of symbol and type the abundant grace of Him who is the First and the Last, both in nature, revelation and His people's hearts and lives.

You must build up or fashion: cleanse, purge and pass through anguish of mind in your work: you must perfect your present actions and your speech and refine your thoughts. For if you become such as you should and must be considering the grace you receive from the Lord, you will find many imperfections in all these things, and if you cast these away and refine all your interior and exterior acts, you will be able to offer God numerous sacrifices in your manner of life, justice and sanctity.

The standard God sets up in our interior ‘nations’ and tendencies is the gift and grace spoken of in the first part of this Letter, which is given to beginners who ask God for it with faith and a firm resolution to seek him. If you have not this gift, brother, beg it of our Lord, who will grant it you at once to incite you to seek and go to him. Do not complain that it is lacking to you; it would be truer to complain that you are lacking in correspondence to it. We fail God, who fails no one who seeks him faithfully,

God gives a man some grace, and the soul, through its extreme desire to understand reason about, and examine it, and know what it is, loses the favor, of which God deprives it. God wishes that with the arms and wings of our soul we should embrace him and what he gives us, and should be so delighted with its possession as to feel no curiosity about it.

The reason that I have said more about meekness than of any other virtue is because it is the most helpful of any natural quality in the spiritual exercise of which the Third Alphabet treats. If you do not possess it, you must seek it before anything else, for it is the greatest preservative of divine grace. It often happens that those who are drawing near to God and who feel his grace in their heart lose it on feeling the slightest anger. They do not know how grace came nor where it has gone. Harsh words have the same effect on the speaker: they disturb the heart and spill the liquor of grace it held.

Some persons are rash enough to say that punishment cannot be rightly dealt except in anger. They quote the words of the prophet: “My indignation itself has helped me”, [184] and the Psalm: “You may be angry and sin not.” [185]   To confute this let them listen to the counsel given by the sage: “Do your works in meekness, and you shall be beloved above the glory of men.” [186] He tells us to finish our works in meekness, because he knows where the danger comes in, for many begin with meekness and gradually grow angry. He tells us that then we shall be beloved above the glory of men, for the meek are angels rather than men.   To those who contradict this, I answer that anger is never good, for natural wrath is painful to him who feels it and causes the loss of the grace of which I have spoken which the Lord vouchsafes to those who please him. Anger which is venial will have a temporal penalty, and doubtless, when mortal, will be punished eternally.

The oil of grace has also the power of filling the souls of contemplatives with joy. Thus David said to God: “You have anointed my head with oil”; [612] that is, the higher part of my soul. Since grace has the quality of engendering men newly to God, Zacharias calls the saints “sons of oil”, that is, of the grace that begot them anew spiritually to the Lord. As oil floats on all other liquids, so grace holds precedence over the rest of the gifts, virtues, blessings, and fruits of the Holy Spirit, for without the grace that makes us pleasing to God we cannot be saved whatever else we have. As, however skilled and practiced a man may be in any art, he cannot practice it without the proper instruments, so whatever other virtues and qualities a man may have, without grace he cannot perform actions worthy of eternal life.

Though, according to the learned, grace is the same as charity, yet Holy Scripture compares it to many things because of the many effects it has on our soul. It is called a new spirit, for it renews man's heart; a fire, for it consumes sins, unction, because it heals spiritual wounds; light, for it illumines the mind; virtue, for it strengthens our weakness; water that quenches the thirst of our soul, and a lighted torch that inflames us with love for God; peace which pacifies and makes peace between sensuality and the intellect, and a ray of light that penetrates the earth from the Sun of Justice.

On this account, preachers, when they ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit before a sermon, though they seem to be begging for the gift of tongues and power of preaching, which are graces gratis datae, must in their heart intend first to pray for the grace that makes them pleasing to God, as well as the grace to preach well which makes them pleasing to men, that they may return it to him as the man who catches the ball returns it to him who threw it. Then they will succeed: otherwise, they will set things in the wrong order.

PEY Pull from Your pouch of justice the lot of grace for me, mercy as right judgment for my iniquity. Let Your unfolding words, as sun and moon, give light to make the simple wise, to keep Your precepts right. Let Your holy face shine on Your servant this day; establish every footfall to keep me in Your way. Rescued from oppression, the hold of evil men; teach me by Your statutes, deliver me from sin. Show me Your testimonies, Your wonders to impart; I pant for Your commands, the longings of my heart. My eyes run like channels for all the things I saw, for the ransomed people who failed to keep Your law. Pull from Your pouch of justice the lot of grace for me, mercy as right judgment for my iniquity.

Some people are anxious to know the source of the thoughts which weary them whether they come from the devil, from the evil desires by which everyone is tempted, from some occasion of sin or danger which they have incurred, or from any of the causes that occur in this world.   Bernard thus answers this difficulty: “Who watches and guards his interior impulses, whether passive or carried into action, so carefully that he can discern in his heart between the infirmity of his soul and the sting of the serpent? I do not think it is possible for any mortal unless, enlightened by the Holy Spirit; he has received the special gift which the Apostle reckons among his other graces, and calls “the discerning of spirits.” [431]

Or I think of breathing - the body in its wisdom taking its sustenance out of the air even when the conscious mind, the will, the hunger both for life and for death, are asleep. I think of the breathing of one who is asleep, how suddenly in some dark passage of the night the breathing becomes a word, the dreamer speaks, and through his word the fragment of a dream passes from inner world to outer world. The visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves.

Holy Scripture often counsels preachers of one thing which they practice little, not because they will not but because they cannot. They are strongly exhorted to make use of contemplation and prayer, and this is the last thing they practice, for they have enough work to do in writing a fine sermon, even if they do not feel dissatisfied and unhappy about it in the end. Oh what vexation of spirit it is when tears come to the eyes, grace to the heart, recollection to the soul, and sighs and sobs to the breast, to be obliged to set them all aside for the sake of study!

Miserable creatures that we are, we complain that grace is wanting because we do not feel it.   Paul tells us to look diligently lest we be wanting to grace, proving that it is always we who fail rather than divine grace,

For Marin, the city had an almost medieval look. The effect was belied by the swarms of hopjets, and Taxi-Airs, and other aircraft, large and small. But his training had sharpened his ability to shut out extraneous material and to see essentials; and so, he saw a city pattern that had a formal, oldfashioned beauty. The squares were too rigid, but their widely varying sizes provided some of the randomness so necessary to achieve what was timeless in true art. The numerous parks, perpetually green and rich with orderly growth, gave an overall air of graceful elegance. The city of the Great Judge looked prosperous and long-enduring. Ahead, the scene changed, darkened, became alien. The machine glided forward over a vast, low-built, rambling gray mass of suburb that steamed and smoked, and here and there hid itself in its own rancorous mists. Pripp City! Actually, the word was Pripps: Preliminary Restriction Indicated Pending Permanent Segregation. It was one of those alphabetical designations, and an emotional nightmare to have all other identification removed and to find yourself handed a card which advised officials that you were under the care of the Pripps organization. The crisis had been long ago now, more than a quarter of a century, but there was a line in fine print at the bottom of each card. A line that still made the identification a potent thing, a line that stated: Bearer of this card is subject to the death penalty if found outside restricted area. In the beginning it had seemed necessary. There had been a disease, virulent and deadly, perhaps too readily and too directly attributed to radiation. The psychological effects of the desperate terror of thousands of people seemed not to have been considered as a cause. The disease swept over an apathetic world and produced merciless reaction: permanent segregation, death to transgressors, and what seemed final evidence of the rightness of what had been done: people who survived the disease . . . changed.

The kingdom of God is within men. We must manifest the glory of God on earth.

God gave man the authority to rule and protect all the animals in the aquatic ecosystems.

May you find grace and power of the Holy Spirit to give you hope for a new life.