John Powell
John Powell
godly thinking yesterday
If you knew me yesterday, please do not think that it is the same person that you are meeting today.
christian exercise genius
The genius of Christian spirituality is to integrate [the] spirit of possession with the spirit of dispossession. The spirit of dispossession implies that all the good and delightful things of this world are never allowed to own, possess, or shackle me. Dispossession implies that I am always free, my own person, liberated from the tyranny that possession can easily exercise over us.
life pieces exciting
Life is something like a remarkable, exciting puzzle. It comes piece by piece in packages marked days.
law reason cases
Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.
past thinking different
If you knew me in the past, please do not think that I am the same person that you are meeting today. I have experienced more of life, I have encountered new depths in those I love, I have suffered and prayed and I am different.
love focus attention
Love demands that I learn how to focus my attention on the needs of those I love.
grace action grace-of-god
We cannot "psychologize" the grace of God. God's actions are outside and above our human sciences.
weekend player want
Playing is much, much harder than composing in my opinion, becoming a player. If you want to be a player for all your life either you decide not to do it professionally and just enjoy it and just do it every weekend, but if you want to be a professional musician- hardest thing I could imagine and I really wasn't capable of doing it.
god lonely heart
God isn't calling us to a lonely, joyless existence with the promise of a delayed reward. God is calling us to live, to love and enjoy the challenge. God's formulas are roadmaps to freedom and peace. God is saying to us: "The only way to live is to be free. So save your heart for love and save your love for persons. Don't ever let any 'thing' own you. Don't let money or fame or power or the pursuit of pleasure put a ring in your nose and lead you around. Love persons and use things." And of course, this is the only way to live, to be free.
poverty seven neighborhood
Blacks are about seven times more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty than whites.
giving-up real people
When Marconi suggested the possibility of wireless transmission of sound (the radio),he was committed to a mental institution. But people like Lincoln, Edison, and Marconi were strongly motivated. So they didn't give up. They somehow knew that the only real failure is the one from which we learn nothing. They seemed to go on the assumption that there is no failure greater than the failure of not trying, and so they continued to try in the face of repeated failures.
learning thinking enough
He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.
education teacher pain
Pain is a teacher from whom we can learn much.
trying should
We must be trying to learn who we really are rather than trying to tell ourselves who we should be.