This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Serving God is the way to gain knowledge of Him. God is the source of life, knowledge – everything – and gaining a close, intimate knowledge of God through our service to Him is the ultimate experience. He is the ultimate mystery – and the ultimate discovery.
Discovery | Experience | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Service | God |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Whosoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.
Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
What is called sympathy, kindness, mercy, goodness, pity, compassion, gentleness, humanity, appreciation, gratefulness, and service - in reality, it is love.
Appreciation | Compassion | Gentleness | Humanity | Kindness | Love | Mercy | Pity | Reality | Service | Sympathy |
There are an infinite number of ways to serve. Each of the ways is equally important... No matter what our personal path to God, service is always a necessary step on the path.
All men seek one goal: success or happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Ends | Means | Men | Money | Service | Society | Success | Wisdom |
Man’s dwelling place, who could found you on reasoning, or build your walls with logic? You exist, and you exist not. You are, and are not. True, you are made out of diverse materials, but for your discovery an inventive mind was needed. Thus if a man pulled his house to pieces, with the design of understanding it, all he would have before him would be heaps of bricks and stones and tiles. he would not be able to discover therein the silence, the shadows and the privacy they bestowed. Nor would he see what service this mass of bricks, stones and tiles could render him, now that they lacked the heart and soul of the architect, the inventive mind which dominated them. For in mere stone the heart and soul of man have no place. But since reasoning can deal with only such material things as bricks and stones and tiles, and there is no reasoning about the heart and soul that dominate them and thus transform them into silence - inasmuch as the heart and soul have no concern with the rules of logic or the science of numbers - this is where I step in and impose my will. I, the architect; I, who have a heart and soul; I, who wield the power of transforming stone into silence. I step in and mold that clay, which is the raw material, into the likeness of the creative vision that comes to me from God; and not through any faculty of reason. Thus, taken solely by the savor it will have, I build my civilization; as poets build their poems, bending phrases to their will and changing words, without being called upon to justify the phrasing of the changes, but taken solely by the savor these will have, vouched by their hearts.
Civilization | Design | Discovery | God | Heart | Justify | Logic | Man | Mind | Power | Reason | Science | Service | Silence | Soul | Understanding | Vision | Will | Words | Discovery |
Love is the doorway thru which the human soul passes from selfishness to service and from solitude to kinship with all mankind.