A Quote by Thomas Keating

You should not take prayer too seriously. There is something playful about God. You only have to look at a penguin ... to realize that He likes to play little jokes on creatures.

Thomas Keating

Quote Topics

About Creatures God Jokes Likes Little Look Only Penguin Play Playful Prayer Realize Seriously Should Something Take Too

Quote Author

Thomas Keating
American - Priest
Born: March 7, 1923

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place.

Henri Nouwen

On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

Seth

The Prophets even express their surprise that God should take notice of man, who is too little and too unimportant to be worthy of the attention of the Creator; how, then, should other living creatures be considered as proper objects for Divine Providence!

Maimonides

I think those that are holier-than-thou don't make jokes. They take themselves too seriously and Peeta doesn't take himself too seriously. This is what I believe in and I'm comfortable with that and I can make a joke here and there.

Josh Hutcherson

This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort.

Steven Weinberg

I'm pretty much a good Catholic girl at heart and I believe in family. I also have a basic belief that God takes care of me. I believe in prayer, even though I'm not that religious. I just have that foundation from my family. I mean when you think that you're just a human being and one of God's creatures, you can't take anything that seriously.

Catherine O'Hara

We take the art seriously. We take communicating it seriously. And maybe we took ourselves a little too seriously in the beginning. Sometimes I watch the videos, and I think, 'Yeah, you could've relaxed a lot in the 'I Alone' video,' you know?

Ed Kowalczyk

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue,... a conversation with God.

Henri Nouwen

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.

Thomas Keating

The Right-wingers everywhere take themselves too seriously, whether in the U.S. or the U.K. And, by the way, so does the Left. The Left can take itself a little too seriously as well.

Dan Aykroyd

When people talk about my charm or looks, it is very flattering. Of course, every woman likes compliments, but I don't take them too seriously.

Ana Ivanovic

When we don’t take God too seriously, others don’t take our leadership too seriously!

Beth Moore

I feel like God gave me the ability to play a game. I try to take it very seriously. I realize it's just a game.

Zach Johnson

People take social media too seriously. It should be something that is fun, something that inspires you, not stresses you out.

Ananya Panday

About halfway through I broke down crying, which I hadn't expected. I was a little ashamed, but only a little;it was her, you see, and she never taxed me with the times that I slipped from the way I thought a man should be...the way I thought I should be, at any rate. A man with a good wife is the luckiest of God's creatures, and one without must be among the most miserable, I think, the only true blessing of their lives that they don't know how poorly off they are.