Unless we can give up the old life, we can never experience the new. In our youth, we lived in the today and looked forward to the future and the challenge it would hold. As we matured, we became hypnotized by repetition and the habits of everyday life, feeling secure in our routine. So many times we find ourselves settling for what is a full cup of yesterdays. If you desire JOY in your life, have the courage to empty the cup of yesterdays so that it might be filled with the newness of today.
A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things -- greater and purer than they are.