This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The true measure of spirituality lies not in having visions of angels, but in the ability to make that unpleasant phone call.
Ability | Angels | Spirituality |
To be still searching what we know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and proportional), this is a golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a Church; not the forced and outward union of cold and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.
Body | Church | Golden Rule | Harmony | Rule | Theology | Truth | Golden Rule |
The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.
Religion is neither theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.
Discipline | Law | Religion | Theology |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty... Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Sacred theology is superior to philosophy, both theoretically and practically; theoretically, because it is more perfect knowledge of God and His creatures; practically, because moral philosophy is insufficient to direct man to God as his last end.
God | Knowledge | Man | Philosophy | Sacred | Theology | God |
Addictive spirituality creates dependence in the practitioner (frequently to authoritarian leaders and their communities), an avoidance of personal responsibility, and loss of individuality through social controls, such as fear, guilt, or greed for power or bliss. It also tends to suppress rational inquiry into the teachings. Healthy spirituality, on the other hand, supports the practitioner's freedom, autonomy, self-esteem, and social responsibility. It is based on experience, rather than belief or dogma; it does not create idols out of spiritual teachers; and it empowers students by emphasizing democratic forms of learning and teaching, rather than the authoritarian model that has dominated spiritual life for millennia.
Belief | Dependence | Dogma | Esteem | Experience | Fear | Freedom | Greed | Guilt | Individuality | Inquiry | Learning | Life | Life | Model | Power | Responsibility | Self | Self-esteem | Spirituality | Loss |
No matter how idealistic our hopes... we eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers, and friends. it is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service.
Awareness | Compassion | Courage | Family | Honesty | Life | Life | Parents | Problems | Service | Spirituality | Awareness | Learn |
To find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the sacred in the profane, sounds appealing in theory... Everyday spirituality requires mindfulness, an alert quality of mind that nonjudgmentally observes what happens in each moment. When mindfulness is present, a deep, penetrating awareness develops that gives insight into the world and ourselves. This penetrating quality of mind enables us to respond to the present with greater spontaneity and freedom.
Awareness | Freedom | Insight | Mind | Mindfulness | Present | Sacred | Spirituality | World | Awareness |
A soul-oriented spirituality begins in a reevaluation of the qualities of soul: subtlety, complexity, ripening, worldliness, incompleteness, ambiguity, wonder.
Ambiguity | Qualities | Soul | Spirituality | Wonder |
Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being... Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.
Awareness | Existence | Life | Life | People | Spirituality | Awareness |
The word God is a theology in itself, indivisibly one, inexhaustibly various, from the vastness and simplicity of its meaning. Admit a God, and you introduce among the subjects of your knowledge a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing ever other fact conceivable.
God | Knowledge | Simplicity | Theology | God |
It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.
Capacity | Distinction | God | Growth | Mind | Nature | Receive | Theology | Thinking | Universe | God |
Georges Florovsky, fully Georges Vasilievich Florovsky
Orthodoxy is summoned to witness. Now more than ever the Christian West stands before divergent prospects, a living question addressed also to the Orthodox world… The ‘old polemical theology' has long ago lost its inner connection with any reality. Such theology was an academic discipline, and was always elaborated according to the same western 'textbooks.' A historiosophical exegesis of the western religious tragedy must become the new 'polemical theology.' But this tragedy must be reendured and relived, precisely as one's own, and its potential catharsis must be demonstrated in the fullness of the experience of the Church and patristic tradition. In this newly sought Orthodox synthesis, the centuries-old experience of the Catholic West must be studied and diagnosed by Orthodox theology with greater care and sympathy than has been the case up to now… The Orthodox theologian must also offer his own testimony to this world—a testimony arising from the inner memory of the Church—and resolve the question with his historical findings.
Care | Church | Experience | Memory | Question | Sympathy | Theology | Tragedy |
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
In our times, religion is a bad word, while spirituality frees us from the horrors of institutionalized religion.
Religion | Spirituality |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Spirituality is rebellion; religiousness is orthodoxy. Spirituality is individuality; religiousness is just remaining part of the crowd psychology. Religiousness keeps you a sheep, and spirituality is a lion's roar.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Spirituality is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practising of virtues -- because if you practise a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practised virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised -- when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.
Question | Spirituality | Virtue | Virtue |
Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
Ours was the first society openly to define itself in terms of both spirituality and of human liberty. It is that unique self-definition which has given us an exceptional appeal, but it also imposes on us a special obligation, to take on those moral duties which, when assumed, seem invariably to be in our own best interests.
Society | Spirituality | Unique | Society |