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The present moment, the now, is gift. You can choose to receive it or resist it. Receiving is being; resistance is pride.

— Brother Joseph  <link>

Gossip

Gossip is a community killer. It is a cancer. It separates, isolates, and destroys a person. It literally kills something inside, not only for the victim, but those who spread the gossip. In the victim, it kills self-esteem and spreads to other things. In the gossiper, it kills compassion and love, and then spreads to elsewhere. It blackens everyone’s hearts.

It was gossip about God by the snake in the garden that lead Adam and Eve to separation from God and from each other. It literally lead to death for them and for us. Gossip is one of the most subtle and insidious forms of pride.

— Brother Joseph  <link>

As silence is to noise, God is to creation.

— Brother Joseph  <link>

Every human situation, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus once warned, is like a vase with two handles: If you have quarreled with your brother, you can grasp the handle which is the fact that you have quarreled, or you can grasp the handle which is the fact that he is your brother.

— Joseph Bottum, “Judgment of Memory” in First Things, March 2008  <link>