When I speak in Christian terms or Buddhist terms I'm simply selecting for the moment a dialect. Christian words for me represent the comforting vocabulary of the place I came from hometown voices saying more than the language itself can convey about how welcome and safe I am what the expectations are and where to find food. Buddhist words come from another dialect from the people over the mountain. I've become pretty fluent in Buddhist it helps me to see my home country differently but it will never be speech I can feel completely at home in. . Mary Rose OReilley
About This Quote

In this quote, the speaker touches on the idea that the culture of a region can have a significant impact on the words that are used to describe it. If you’re from a particular place and your culture is quite distinct from the rest of the world, it’s possible you’ll find yourself using different terms to describe your home. You might even express yourself in a way that is distinct from those who live in other regions. The fact that these two different cultures share no common language means they also don’t share many of the same customs and traditions as well as how you speak to one another.

Source: The Barn At The End Of The World: The Apprenticeship Of A Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you. - Steve Maraboli

  2. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. <span style="margin:15px;... - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  3. The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity. - Friedrich Nietzsche

  4. The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-, ’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to... - Mary Daly

  5. What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. - Unknown

More Quotes By Mary Rose OReilley
  1. I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less...

  2. One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I...

  3. On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked...

  4. I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as -...

  5. I was only beginning to enter into the infinite subtlety of Gregorian chant. It was - and remains - the only public prayer I have ever been able to engage in without feeling like a phony and a jackass. But then, one day in 1965...

Related Topics