Odilia Carmen Chirica

"I was a neurotic for years. Anxious, depressed, selfish. And everyone kept telling me to change. And I resented them, and agreed with them, and wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my closest friend kept urging me to change. So I felt powerless and trapped. One day he said “Don’t change. I love you as you are.” Those words were music to my ears: “Don’t change. Don’t change. Don’t change... I love you as you are.” I relaxed. I came alive. And, suddenly, I changed! Now I know that I couldn’t really change till I found someone to love me whether I changed or not. Is this how you love me, God?" from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

"Uwais, the Sufi, was once asked: “What has Grace brought you?”  He replied:  “When I wake in the morning I feel like a man who is not sure he will live till evening.”  Said the questioner:  “But doesn’t everyone know this?”  Said Uwais: “They certainly do. But not all of them feel it.”  No one ever became drunk on the word wine. "   from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

"The Seeker approached the Disciple and asked respectfully, “What is the meaning of human life?”  The Disciple consulted the Works of his Master and confidently replied: “Human life is nothing but the expression of God’s exuberance.  “When the Seeker addressed the same question to the Master himself, the Master said, “I do not know.”  The Seeker says, “I do not know.” That takes honesty. The Master says, “I do not know.” That takes a mystic’s mind that knows things through non-knowing. The Disciple says, “I know.” That takes ignorance in the form of borrowed knowledge." from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

" The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe.  “Why aren’t you out fishing?” said the industrialist.  “Because I have caught enough fish for the day.”  “Why don’t you catch some more?”  “What would I do with it?”  “Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats... even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.”  “What would I do then?”  “Then you could really enjoy life.”  “What do you think I am doing now?”  Which would you rather have: a fortune or a capacity for enjoyment?" from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

"Each time the guru sat for worship with his students the ashram cat would come in to distract them, so he ordered them to tie it when the ashram was at prayer. After the guru died the cat continued to be tied at worship time. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought into the ashram to make sure that the guru’s orders were faithfully observed at worship time. Centuries passed and learned treatises were written by the guru’s scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed."   from the book " Song Of The Bird " by Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

"The village priest was distracted at his prayer by the children. To get rid of them he said, “Hurry to the river and you will see a monster breathing fire through his nostrils.”  Soon the whole village had heard of this monstrous apparition and was rushing to the river. The priest too joined the crowd. As he panted his way through four solid miles, he kept saying to himself, “It is true I invented the story. But you never can tell I”  A good way to believe in the gods we have created is to convince others of their existence."   from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

"A mother could not get her son to come home before sunset. So, she told him that the road to their house was haunted by ghosts who come out after dusk. By the time the boy grew up he was so afraid of ghosts that he refused to run errands at night. So she gave him a medal and taught him that it would protect him. Bad religion gives him faith in the medal. Good religion gets him to see that ghosts do not exist." from the book  "Song Of The Bird"  by  Anthony de Mello ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen

THEREFORE YOU ALSO MUST BE READY; FOR THE SON OF MAN IS COMING AT AN HOUR YOU DO NOT EXPECT. -MATTHEW 24:44 " Sooner or later there arises in every human heart the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears mystics speak of a divinity all around them that is within our grasp, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. People have some sort of a vague idea as to what this thing is and they read books and con­sult gurus, in the attempt to find out what it is that they must do to gain this elusive thing called Holiness or Spirituality. They pick up all sorts of methods, techniques, spiritual exercises, formulas; then after years of fruitless striving they become discouraged and confused and wonder what went wrong. Mostly they blame themselves. If they had practiced their tech­niques more regularly, if they had been more fervent or more generous, they might have made it. But made what? They have no clear ide

  YOUR EYE IS THE LAMP OF YOUR BODY; WHEN YOUR EYE IS SOUND, YOUR WHOLE BODY IS FULL OF LIGHT; BUT WHEN IT IS NOT SOUND, YOUR BODY I S FULL OF DARK NESS. -LUKE II:34 "We think the world would be saved if only we could generate larger quantities of goodwill and tolerance. That's false. What will save the world is not goodwill and tolerance but clear thinking. Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong? That isn't tol­erance but condescension. That leads not to union of hearts but to division, because you are one up and the others one down. A position that can only lead to a sense of superiority on your part and resentment on your neighbor's, thereby breeding further intolerance. True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. For truth is essen­tially mystery. The mind can sense but cannot grasp it, much less formulate

NO ONE WHO PUTS HIS HAND TO THE PLOW AND LOOKS BACK IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD.   -LUKE 9:62 "God's kingdom is love. What does it mean to love? It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one. For ex­clusion can only be achieved through a harden­ing of oneself, through closing one's doors. And the moment there is a hardening, sensitivity dies. It won't be hard for you to find examples of this kind of sensitivity in your life. Have you ever stopped to remove a stone or a nail from the road lest someone come to harm? It does not matter that you will never know the person who will benefit from this gesture and you will receive no reward or recognition. You just do it from a feeling of benevolence and kindness. Or have you felt pained at the wanton destruction in another part of the world, of a forest that you will never see and never benefit from? Have you gone to some trouble to help a

TRULY, I SAY TO YOU, UNLESS YOU TURN AND BECOME LIKE CHILDREN, YOU WILL NEVER ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. -MATTHEW 18:3 " The first quality that strikes one when one looks into the eyes of a child is its innocence: its lovely inability to lie or wear a mask or pretend to be anything other than what it is. In this the child is exactly like the rest of Nature. A dog is a dog; a rose, a rose; a star, a star; everything is quite simply what it is. Only the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another. When grown-ups punish a child for telling the truth, for revealing what it thinks and feels, the child learns to dissemble and its innocence is destroyed. Soon it will join the ranks of the numberless people who say helplessly, "I do not know who I am," for, having hidden the truth about themselves for so long from others, they end up by hiding it from themselves. How much of the innocence of childhood do you still re­tain, is there anyone today in whose

BUT YOU ARE NOT TO BE CALLED RABBI, FOR YOU HAVE ONE TEACHER, AND YOU ARE ALL BRETHREN. -MATTHEW 20:8 " You can get someone to teach you things me­chanical or scientific or mathematical like alge­bra or English or riding a cycle or operating a computer. But in the things that really matter, life, love, reality, God, no one can teach you a thing. All they can do is give you formulas. And as soon as you have a formula, you have reality filtered through the mind of someone else. If you take those formulas you will be imprisoned. You will wither and when you come to die you will not have known what it means to see for yourself, to learn. Look at it this way: There have been mo­ments in your life when you had an experience that you know you will have to carry with you to your grave because you are quite unable to find words with which to communicate the ex­perience to anyone. As a matter of fact there simply are no words in any human language to communicate exactly what you experienced