This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Detachment of doctrine from devotion, detachment of reason from reverence, of scrutiny from the sense of the ineffable reduces God as a challenge to a logical hypothesis… God is relevant only when overwhelmingly urgent.
Challenge | Detachment | Devotion | Doctrine | God | Hypothesis | Reason | Reverence | Sense | God |
Whatever else religion may be, it is also anthropology - in the sense that it fosters conceptions of human authenticity on whose basis moral codes can be drawn up and the actual behavior of individuals and societies assessed, challenged, and altered. Religion speaks not only of the divine but of the divine intention for the human.
Authenticity | Behavior | Intention | Moral codes | Religion | Sense | Moral codes |
One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime mystery which constantly envelops us. All one need do is to notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling.
Experience | Mystery | Need | Sense | Time |
It’s often said that there are three requirements for a fulfilling life. The first two – a clear sense of personal identity and a strong sense of personal mission – are rooted in the third: a deep sense of life’s meaning. In our time especially, many people are spurred to search for that meaning because they’re haunted by having too much to live with and too little to live for
Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Mission | People | Search | Sense | Time |
If one starts out to dominate the natural world, one cannot stop short at that reputedly “rational animal” who, however rational, is also animal - and by all accounts creation’s most problematic animal. “Man against nature” becomes “man against humanity” in this sense too, that it contains the obvious directive that what is “natural” within the human species must be brought under control.
It is the dimension of time wherein man meets God, wherein man becomes aware that every instant is an act of creation, a Beginning, opening up new roads for ultimate realizations. Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings.
Beginning | God | Man | Sense | Space | Time | Unity | World | God |
Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion
There is an experience of being in pure consciousness which gives lasting peace to the soul. It is an experience of the Ground or Depth of being in the Centre of the soul, an awareness of the mystery of being beyond sense and thought, which gives a sense of fulfillment, of finality, of absolute truth.
Absolute | Awareness | Consciousness | Experience | Fulfillment | Mystery | Peace | Sense | Soul | Thought | Truth | Awareness |
Alister Hardy, fully Sir Alister Clavering Hardy
The very fact that one can conceive [a]… possible solution may save one from being in the pessimistic position of imagining that there can be no possible purpose in the process at all. Such a defeatist loss of all sense of meaning… is one of the tragic outcomes of the materialism of today.
Materialism | Meaning | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Loss |
A person cannot honor that which does not affect his finer sensibilities, his conscience, his sense of meaning.
Conscience | Honor | Meaning | Sense |
A sense of purpose and fulfillment is the single strongest issue flowing out of the quest for meaning… The end of the quest for meaning is the beginning of the journey of faith. Indeed, nothing better illuminates the entire journey of life and faith, and in particular the special challenge of finishing them well, than the issue of purpose.
Beginning | Better | Challenge | Faith | Fulfillment | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Purpose | Purpose | Sense |
Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling.
Awareness | Deeds | Important | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Words | Awareness |
Life is a journey, a voyage, a quest, a pilgrimage, a personal odyssey, and we’re all at some unknown point between the beginning and the end of it… The humanness of life as a journey is something we should all care enough about to seek to make sense of it and to make up our minds for ourselves.
We are living at a time when humankind can face whatever threatens it only if we, by which I mean each of us, manage to revive, with new energy and new ethos, a sense of responsibility for the rest of the world.
Friedrich von Hügel, formally Baron Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hugel
Now there is no doubt that the prayer of quiet, that a certain formless recollection and loving feeding upon the sense and presence of God, as here and now, is a most legitimate prayer.
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
Life is like a tapestry that we view from the wrong side. We see all the strands and knots, and it makes no sense from the back. But there is a different view of the whole things to which we are assured some day we will be privy. In the meanwhile, there are all these knots we have to deal with existentially; the path has been charted – compassion and justice – imbued by vision. And it’s up to the individual.
Compassion | Day | Individual | Justice | Life | Life | Sense | Vision | Will | Wrong |
I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humor.