Miscellaneous Religious Quotations

These are brief quotations from various sources I have found over the years.

Invocation

Lord, overlook these three errors that are due to our human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but we worship thee here.
Thou are without form, but we worship thee in these forms.
Thou hast no need of prayers and sacrifices, yet we offer thee these prayers and sacrifices.
Lord, overlook these three errors that are due to our human limitations.
Reformed Druids of North America, Carleton College, c. 1965

The Mystery (Song of Amergin)

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billow,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of knowledge,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the God who created in the head the fire,

Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun?

If not I--

Old Irish. Translated by John Messenger (There are many other translations).

"Have you wept at anything during the past year? Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty? Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die? More often than not do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak? Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you should suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself?....If your answer to all or most of these questions is No, then chances are that you're dead."
Frederick Buechner, Now and Then

"The world exists, not for what it means, but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms; wine is in order to be wine: Things are precious before they are contributory. It is false piety that walks through creation looking only for lessons which can be applied somewhere else. To be sure, God remains the greatest good, but for all that, the world is still good in itself. Indeed, since He does not need it, it's whole reason for being must be in it's own goodness; He has no use for it; only delight.
Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper Of the Lamb

"Blind faith is no faith. It is blindness." David Frangquist

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Jaroslav Pelikan

A man was passing a small courtyard and heard voices murmuring. He went in and saw an altar with a large zero in the middle and a banner that said 'NIL.' White-robed people were kneeling before the altar chanting hymns to The Great Nullity and The Blessed Emptiness. The man turned to a white-robed observer beside him and asked, ... "Is Nothing Sacred?

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