Christina Baldwin Quotes

To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against.

Words are how we think; stories are how we link.

Writing bridges the inner and outer worlds and connects the paths of action and reflection.

In the midst of overwhelming noise and distraction, the voice of story is calling us to remember our true selves.

Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen - that journal writing is a spiritual practice.

Spiritual empowerment is evidenced in our lives by our willingness to tell ourselves the truth, to listen to the truth when it's told to us, and to dispense truth as lovingly as possible, when we feel compelled to talk from the heart.

Forgiveness is the act of admitting we are like other people. We are prone to make mistakes that cause confusion, inflict pain, and miscommunicate our intentions ... The only choice we have is to reconcile ourselves to our own flaws and the flaws of other people, or withdraw from the community.

The purpose of life is not to maintain personal comfort; it's to grow the soul.

How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality.

Contact with the sacred occurs in the stillness of the heart and mind. If there is any real destination to the spiritual quest, it is this point of silence, the middle of the spiral, the center of the self. ... The only map that does the spiritual traveler any good is one that leads to the center.

We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.

Story is the mother of us all, for we become who we say we are.

With compassion, we see benevolently our own human condition and the condition of our fellow beings. We drop prejudice. We withhold judgment.

We need a revolution in the West: not violent overthrow, but a willingness to take responsibility for the course of history being set forth in our names. We need a revolution determined to activate broad, inclusive social change.

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

Story is the mother of us all. First we wrap our lives in language and then we act on who we say we are. We proceed from the word into the world and make a world based on our stories.

Writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.

Wonder and despair are two sides of a spinning coin. When you open yourself to one, you open yourself to the other. You discover a capacity for joy that wasn't in you before. Wonder is the promise of restoration: as deeply as you dive, so may you rise.

in writing we live life twice: once in the experience, and again in recording and reflecting upon our experience.

The spiritual journey is what the soul is up to while we attend to daily living.

Every person is born into life as a blank page and every person leaves life as a full book.

Ritual consists of the external practices of spirituality that help us become more receptive and aware of the closeness of our lives to the sacred. Ritual is the act of sanctifying action - even ordinary action - so that it has meaning. I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.

Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through.

Wonder is not a Pollyanna stance, not a denial of reality; wonder is an acknowledgement of the power of the mind to transform, to notice, to decide what experience shall mean.

When you choose to write using yourself as the source of the story, you are choosing to confront all the silences in which your story has been protectively wrapped. Your job as a writer is to respectfully, determinedly, free the story from the silences and free yourself from both.