Vocational Holiness and Marketplace Spiritual Formation

This course for STM-TEE will be held over two weekends in June/July 2017 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Vocational Holiness and Marketplace Spiritual Formation

Committed Christians are often concerned about discovering God’s will for their lives in terms of what occupation to take up or who to marry. The deeper question will be to discern what is God’s calling. Another concern is how they are to live and have their being in their workplace and marketplace. There are always questions on how to maintain the vitality of their spiritual life and growth in the modern lifestyle that is extremely hectic and exhausting. This course will deal with Christian discernment or decision-making and the theology of God’s calling and vocation. It will examine Ignatian, Quaker, Puritan and Wesleyan approaches to discernment. The issue of hectic and busy lifestyles will be examined and approaches developed to nurture the spiritual life. The concepts of Missio Dei and Sabbath in their vocations will be developed. Central to this course is how followers of Jesus Christ live out their Christian lives that is glorifying to God in their workplace.

Suitable for people who wants to know more about making important life choices, about Godly decision-making and God’s calling; about Christian discernment; about spiritual maintenance and growth in busy and stressful lifestyles.

Speaker

Dr Alex Tang is a paediatrician, medical educator, practical theologian, spiritual director, author, preacher, Bible teacher, hospital administrator and grandfather. He regards being a grandfather as one of his more important vocations. Alex practice paediatrics at a private hospital and is associate professor of paediatrics in Monash University clinical school in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Aside from a busy preaching and teaching schedule in different churches he also lead retreats in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. He is adjunct professor to East Asia School of Theology (EAST), Singapore and several other seminaries. His areas of research are Christian spiritualities, spiritual formation and biomedical ethics. He is married with two grown children and two growing grandchildren.

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Conversation with my Grandson about Education

Hello little boy,

You look so grown up in your new school uniform and cute school bag. You are so happy that you are now allowed to follow your Jie Jie up the school bus to go to school. Was it only a year ago when you drag your bag following your Jie Jie to the school bus and were upset because they did not allow you on? You were too young then. Now you are big enough. Grampa is very proud and happy that you are starting your formal learning which is a small part of your life-long learning. Formal learning is what you do in school. Life-long learning should be part of who you are, little one.

You have learnt much since you were a little bundle of joy. Well not too little as you were a big baby but a bundle of joy nevertheless. You are still learning. Grampa and Por Por are very impressed by you as you demonstrates new skills every time we see you. You have a long journey ahead of you in your formal schooling – nursery, kindergarten, primary, secondary, junior college, and university. All these are essential if you are to be equipped to be literate and earn a degree for employment. Big people called this schooling an education.

Big people with big titles proudly tell you that this education will teach you not to think inside a box but outside it. Grampa is not impressed with them or their boxes. What Grampa wants for you is to be able to think without a box! Why should you be limited by other big people’s narrow thinking? What Grampa hopes that in these years in school you will develop critical thinking skills and to love learning. This will be more valuable that all the degrees and professional certificates that you earn along the way. The world you grow up into will be different from the world today. Your first degree may get you into your first job. Then you will have to retrain for your next one.

Little one, learn to think critically and love to learning new things, skills and challenges. People has always asked why Grampa and Por Por did not send your Mummy and Ah Yee to be educated in Singapore. Singapore has one of the best schooling system in the world. Grampa and Por Por believed that while in Malaysian school, your Mummy and Ah Yee can learn to think and grow with more freedom. They did not turn out too badly, you will agree. Grampa is very proud of your Mummy and Ah Yee. They have turned out to be very clever people, much cleverer than your Grampa.

Little one, Grampa is boring you with this talk about thinking inside or outside the box. The only box you are interested in is a small one in which you can put in and take your toys; or a bigger one in which you can climb into and pretend you are driving a car. That works too. Grow well in your schooling. Do not let them conform you to their mould, but be transformed in your mental development by good teachers and facilities. Grampa will be helping you as long as Grampa is able.


Dear God,
Thank you the opportunity for this little one to start school. May his education be holistic and may he develop and refine his thinking skills. May he develop a love of books and of learning. May his pursue of knowledge leads to wisdom. May his questing leads to You.
Amen


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Preventing Empty Souls

Gordon MacDonald, writing in Leadership Journal Winter 2016 in an article entitled The Day I Hit a Wall coined the word 'empty souls' as when busy Christians run on empty because of their busyness. I like what he writes about preventing this:

Over time I have comprised a bulleted list of the insights that resulted from that December day so many years ago. I include them not because I have mastered them, but because they represent the direction in which I like to walk each day.

• My allocation of time and energy must begin by inserting Sabbath pauses into my calendar before work begins … not after work ends. Because ministry work never ends. 

• I have come to appreciate the importance of searching events and personal encounters for the embedded messages of wisdom and discernment that God offers. 

• I have tried to be sensitive to the various ways God makes his presence felt: in creation's beauty and art, in suffering, in study, in various forms of private and corporate worship, in the wonderful stories of Jesus. 

• I have gathered a small cadre of personal friends who know my heart (and I, theirs) and who are not reluctant to either encourage me or rebuke me when necessary. 

• I have pursued the discipline of intercessory prayer for my family and friends, for the church in the world, for global leaders, for those who suffer. 

• I have treasured the insights that come from the biographies of great men and women of God who have lived through the centuries 

• I have come to love the Bible, to draw from its pages the thoughts and purposes of God. 

• I have understood the importance of readily repenting when I am wrong and quickly forgiving when others have hurt me. 

• I have made it a priority to move toward those who are weak and vulnerable with words of hope … as Jesus did. 

• I have sought to discipline my lifestyle: to keep free of clutter, to downsize, to keep simple, to accept the obscurity that comes with the aging life. 

• I have heard the call of God in my older years to be a spiritual father to any younger people who want to welcome me into their experience. 

• I have determined to daily return to the cross and reaffirm my conversion and call to follow Jesus.

  We need to avoid 'empty soul' syndrome and Gordon gives very good advice.  


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Advent 2015 reflection

Waiting for the Light: Mastery Inactivity

Advent 2015 reflection

In clinical medicine, there is a very powerful treatment called mastery inactivity. An experienced clinician knows that there are times in the management of a patient with a serious medical condition that the best treatment is not to do anything but allow time for nature to take its course. This is the hardest treatment to prescribe because it involves the physician not doing anything. The default mode is to do something. Order some form of treatment. Perform some form of surgery. Our hearts are restless and we associate activity with progress. Not to act is a sign that we are negligent or indifferent.

This is also what happens when we are hit with some catastrophes in our lives. In such situation, we are full of an urgency to act. An urgency to do something to get us out of the situation. Anything at all, even though the action may not be beneficial or at times may cause harm. An alternative option is to sit idly by and ride out the storm. Judy Brown creates a scenario in which we are caught in a stormy sea and where inaction may be more beneficial than reactive action.

Trough

There is a trough in waves,

A low spot

Where horizon disappears

And only sky

And water

Are our company.

And there we lose our way

Unless

We rest, knowing the wave will bring us

To its crest again.

There we may drown

If we let fear

Hold us within its grip and shake us

Side to side,

And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there

In the trough,

Are silent,

Being with

The low part of the wave,

Keeping

Our energy and

Noticing the shape of things,

The flow,

Then time alone

Will bring us to another

Place

Where we can see

Horizon, see the land again,

Regain our sense

Of where

We are,

And where we need to swim.

The Sea Accepts All Rivers, Judy Brown

This is what I called mastery inactivity. It takes knowledge and wisdom to discern when to act and when not to act. It requires mastery over our emotions as the default mode is to do something. It also requires faith. The sailor in the storm has faith based on her knowledge of the waves. We need to have faith that our catastrophes will blow over, that we need to remain calm in the eye of the storm. And we need to have faith in Him who is able to calm the storm and walk on water.

There are an ebb and flow in the rhythm of our lives; a time to act and a time to cease from action; a time to do and a time to rest; and a time to stress and a time to distress.  That is the only way to ride a storm. This is what Advent is all about. It is a time of inaction, rest and reflection. It is a flashback to more than two thousand years ago when the whole of creation kept still and held its collective breath, and waited for the Light. We live in a broken world, at the bottom of the cesspool, in the trough of pain and suffering. Let us wait together. Wait for a glimpse of the sky. Wait for the Light and then lean into it.

Soli Deo Gloria

12 November 2015

Trough: The Sea accepts All Rivers

There is a trough in waves,

A low spot

Where horizon disappears

And only sky

And water

Are our company.

And there we lose our way

Unless

We rest, knowing the wave will bring us

To its crest again.

There we may drown

If we let fear

Hold us within its grip and shake us

Side to side,

And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there

In the trough,

Are silent,

Being with

The low part of the wave,

Keeping

Our energy and

Noticing the shape of things,

The flow,

Then time alone

Will bring us to another

Place

Where we can see

Horizon, see the land again,

Regain our sense

Of where

We are,

And where we need to swim.

The Sea Accepts All Rivers, Judy Brown

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes 

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Elijah, the imperfect broken superhero (part 2)

Elijah, the imperfect broken superhero (part 2)

While Elijah reveals much of his humanity that we recognized that he is just like us, his life also reveals how God takes care of his servants. There is this interesting passage in 1 Kings 19 when Elijah went to Mount Horeb. This is a familiar passage to us.

1 Kings 19:9–14 (NKJV)

⁹ And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ So he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

¹¹ Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

¹³ So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁴ And he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

Our emphasis on reading this passage is often how God speaks to us. God speaks to us not in the wind, earthquake, fire or but in a still small voice. Yes, this is true. God can but does not usually uses the forces of nature to talk to use. He talks to us as one person to another.

What does God says? He asked Elijah what he is doing there (v.9). It is not as if God does not know, but God wants Elijah to articulate why he is there. And Elijah answered by pouring out his anguish.

“I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” (v.10).

Note that Elijah starts with “I” rather than your humble servant and this “I” is defined by what he did for the Lord. Then he said ‘the children of Israel’ as if he is not part of them. It is a distancing of himself and the people of God – your people broke the covenant, your altars and killed your prophets. Then it reverts back to “I” as being special and in danger. These are the words of a man who is having a meltdown in his ministry. Nowadays we call it burned-out.

God’s answer is revealing about him, not in the noisy and turmoil wind, earthquake or fire, but in a soft whisper. What did God whisper? Surely words of encouragement and healing.

God then asked Elijah the same question as in v.9, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (v.12). Elijah answered with the exact words as in his earlier reply to God (v.10, 14)! What does this mean? It seems that between the first and second question with the divine encounter in between, Elijah was not aware of something miraculous have happened. He did not receive the proffered healing.

Instead of smiting him and throwing him aside as a failed prophet, God directed him to put into place his succession process. Elisha is to take over his ministry. God even sent a whirlwind to bring Elijah to him (2 Kings 2:11). This is a compassionate God who understands our frail human nature that breaks under strain. Instead of condemnation, he brings us to a place of rest in heaven. Psalm 23 is a wonderful metaphor of our final rest. God, who is the Lord of the Sabbath understands the rhythm of work and rest. Elijah was given rest so that he will be ready for his role in the Transfiguration.

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Elijah, the imperfect broken superhero (part 1)

Elijah, the imperfect broken superhero (part 1)

Of all the many prophets in the Old Testament, Elijah is the most likable. He is the one most like us. There are major feats of great power in his ministry – drought and power encounter on Mt. Carmel. There are also human failings – fear, depression, suicidal and self-centredness. Other prophets seem to be made of stronger stuff. Jeremiah is able to endure deprivations, humiliation, and sorrows. Isaiah deals with kings and their political lackeys. Ezekiel was high with his fantastic visions.  Like the superheroes of our modern mythology (courtesy of Marvel and DC Comics), Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel is like Batman, Superman, and Dr. Strange respectively. Elijah like is the Peter Parker Spiderman- full of self-doubts and brought down by numerous domestic and social problems. In spite of his problems, Peter Parker still put on his superhero costume to battle super villains. Elijah dons his prophet mantle to face a corrupted political social regime and spiritual warfare. Imperfect people to the best of their ability to perfect a broken world.

Yet of all the prophets, only Elijah did not die. He was taken up to heaven by a whirlwind which is archetypical of Christ being taking upon to heaven on his ascension. And according to Jewish tradition, Elijah is their most beloved prophet and is expected to come back to earth again as a harbinger for the Christ’s coming. Why is Elijah so beloved? It is Elijah is so like us. We are also imperfect people. We are complicated. We are capable of great feats of human kindness, but we are also responsible for some of the most despicable feats that one human can do another. We are both light and darkness. Our hearts may be full of love and compassion yet there is darkness inside of us; darkness, if left unchecked, will consume us. We long for perfection and building a utopia but often end up building a hell either in our mind or out of our environment. In other words, we are imperfect.

Yet God seems to like imperfect people. Jesus love to dine with sinners and tax collectors to the consternation of pious law-abiding citizens and members of the religious establishment. He takes delight in bursting the bubble of self-righteous perfect people. Jesus realizes that imperfect people are the sick. And only the sick needs a doctor. So Jesus spent a lot of time in his three years ministry breaking down people, which think they are perfect to their basic state of imperfection. Awareness of our imperfections is the first step towards spiritual growth – a process of becoming perfect in Christ.

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Holes in Our Souls

 We need holes in our lives. Our lives are often likened to fire that brings light in the darkness. Too often our fire flicks and dies out long before we do. We are called to be living sacrifices but what we end out as burnt offerings instead. What is wrong in our spiritual life that we cannot be beacon lights that drive back the darkness until dawn? This poem about Fire gives us some insight.

FIRE ~ Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned

to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

If the logs are packed too tightly, without space for air, the log fire often dies. It is the same with our spiritual life. We need space in our lives if we want our spiritual fire to have fuel. Hectic too tightly packed lives preclude this. Our bodies follow certain biological rhythms that require periods of activities and periods of rest. We challenge and disrupt these rhythms to our own perils. In the Genesis records, God worked for six days and rested on the seventh thus setting the rhythm for our lives. There working time and there is non-working time. Note that whenever we consider the Sabbath, we start with working time then non-working time. In the Jewish custom, Sabbath starts on a Friday night where there is dinner, sleep and then Saturday, which is non-working. It starts with rest for our bodies, then rest for our souls. In our work-oriented culture, we seem to have reversed that. We think of work first, then rest. And often our ‘rest’ is more work rather than non-work.

Is it any wonder then that we have no space in our lives? Like a fire in which the logs are packed too tightly, we burn out before our time. Our lives need to have holes, spaces for non-work. Our souls need to be holey in order to be wholly.

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Entering the Kingdom of God

When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he was not prophesying about some easy, danger-free perfection that will someday appear. He was talking about a state of being, a way living at ease among the joys and sorrows of our world. It is possible, he said, to be as simple and beautiful as the birds of the sky or the lilies of the field, who are always within the eternal Now. This state of being is not something alien or mystical. We don't need to earn it. It is already ours. Most of us lose it as we grow up and become self-conscious, but it doesn't hard in order to find it. The rich especially have a hard time reentering this state of being; they are so possessed by their possessions, so entrenched in their social power, that it is almost impossible for them to let go. Not that it is easy for any of us. But if we need reminding, we can always sit at the feet of our young children. They, because they haven't yet developed a firm sense of past and future, accept the infinite abundance of the present with all their hearts, in complete trust. Entering the kingdom of God means feeling—as if we were floating in the womb of the universe—that we are being taken care of, always, at every moment.

Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen Mitchell

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes 

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An Empty Mind

An Empty sort of mind is valuable for finding pearls and tails and things because it can see what's in front of it. An Overstuffed mind is unable to. While the Clear mind listens to a bird singing, the Stuffed-Full-of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness mind wonders what kind of bird is singing. The more Stuffed Up it is, the less it can hear through its own ears and see through its own eyes. Knowledge and Cleverness tend to concern themselves with the wrong sorts of things, and a mind confused by Knowledge, Cleverness, and Abstract Ideas tends to go chasing off after things that don't matter, or that don't even exist, instead of seeing, appreciating and making use of what is in front of it…

Let’s consider Emptiness in general for a moment. What is it about a Taoist landscape painting that seems so refreshing to so many different kinds of people? The Emptiness, the space that's not filled in. What is it about fresh snow, clean air, pure water? Or good music? As Claude Debussy expressed it, "Music is the space between the notes." ...

Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day. Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness. Everything has to be filled in, it seems—appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots—but when all the spaces are filled in, the Loneliness really begins.

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoffbegins.

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes page

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Movie Review on Mr. Holmes

Mr Holmes (2015)

In my opinion, Sherlock Holmes (a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) is the greatest detective in the world, second only to Batman (another fictional character). Using pure logic, Sherlock Holmes has solved numerous mind boggling mysteries in various medium of books, movies and fanzines. This movie poses the ultimate problem for Sherlock Holmes. Based on Mitch Cullin's 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, the victim of the crime is Sherlock Holmes himself. The crime is senility or Alzheimer’s Disease. How will Holmes solve a crime that robs him of his logic and his memories and will ultimately his selfhood. This is an existential question that this movie attempts to answer. Who are we as a person when we begin to lose our mental faculties and our memories? Do we still remain ‘us’ or become something or someone else?

Ian McKellan gives a superb performance as an aging 93 years old Sherlock Holmes. The year is 1947. Holmes is living in retirement in a picturesque English country cottage, looked after by a war-widow, Mrs Munro and her son, Roger. Holmes has taken up bee keeping as a hobby. He is fragile, subjects to falls, and is plagued by his inability to remember significant parts of his past. Using his remarkable deductive skills which seems to be intact, Holmes try to remember the details of two cases from the past. One involved the suicide of a young wife and the other, the reason why a young man would abandon his family and disappear. This happens in an atmosphere of growing antagonist between his housekeeper and him as he becomes more and more dependent on her but resenting it, and his growing friendship with Roger, the housekeeper’s precocious son. He uses a technique of recovering memories by writing a fictional story involving himself and allows Roger read it. The story unfolds with numerous flashback showing a younger, smartly dressed Holmes, as the older Holmes recover the pieces of the puzzle that were missing from his memories.

Growing old is a common condition to everyone. Most of us fear growing old. Using the number of years to define old may be relative and cultural bound. Living to the 80s and 90s is relatively new to us Asians and we have yet come to terms with an aging population that live longer than our ancestors. In truth, most of us do not fear aging but what accompanies aging – loss of self-esteem, income and privileges after we retire, our bodies falling apart and we become host to aches and pain, chronic diseases, heart problems and cancers. What is more fearful is the onset of Alzheimer’s  when we first begin to lose our recent memories, then logical thinking, emotional control until we became a chaotic mess of fearful uncontrolled emotions in an aged body. In the Gospel of John, Jesus made a rather cryptic statement to Peter about when Peter was young, he can go wherever he wants. When he became old, people will use his belt to tie his hand and lead him to where he does not want to go. The statement often reminds me of Alzheimer’s.

What happens to us when Alzheimer’s robs us of our memories, our emotional control, our reasoning and finally of our self-awareness. This is where I struggle with my evangelical theology. St. Paul advise us to grow spiritually by not conforming to the world but by renewing our minds. By that I assume using our cognitive abilities to choose a life of discipleship. What happens when we no longer have our minds such as in the late stages of Alzheimer’s? I have seen gracious compassionate pious Christian being transformed to sly nasty Gollum as Alzheimer’s take its toll. I wonder what St.Paul will say to that?

[spoiler alert!] The movie does have a happy ending, if we can call that a happy ending. In recovering his memories, Holmes come to understand is own life more. He even feels regrets for paths not taken. More significantly is that he comes to accept his fate and come to terms with his life situation. Winter is not only coming but is already here. In a symbolic gesture, Holmes writes the names of significant people in his life on stones and places them in a circle around them. He then pays homage to them. In typical Holmesian fashion, Sherlock Holmes, grandmaster detective, defeated his villain Alzheimer’s by escaping into his memories.

My other movie reviews and reflection are here

4 November 2015

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Holiness in Time

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

-Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes page

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The Attitude Toward Leisure

"February 25,1956... The greatest change between now and seventy years ago is in the attitude toward leisure. Now there is no such thing... In my experience you can have ability without leisure, but ability only, and not creativeness, Real ideas come to me while relaxed, and brooding, meditative, passive. Then the unexpected happens. An illumination, a combination of words, a revelation for which I made no conscious preparation. And seventy years ago one had time for everything, for[open-hearted] reading, for equally [openhearted] discussion, for activities whose only result was to strengthen, refine, and clarify our own selves as works of art, and not as now to be considered only when producing material results."

Sunset and Twilight by Bernard Berenson

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Play Needs No Purpose

Play needs no purpose. That is why play can go on and on as long as players find it meaningful. After all, we do not dance in order to get somewhere. We dance around and around. A piece of music doesn't come to an end when its purpose is accomplished. It has no purpose, strictly speaking. It is the playful unfolding of a meaning that is there in each of its movements, in every theme, every passage: celebration of meaning. Pachelbel's Canon is one of the magnificent superfluities of life. Every time I listen to it, I realize anew that some of the most superfluous things are the most important for us because they give meaning to our human life. We need this kind of experience to correct our worldview. Too easily are we inclined to imagine that God created this world for a purpose. We are so caught up in purpose that we would feel more comfortable if God shared our preoccupation with work. But God plays. The birds in a single tree are sufficient proof that God did not set out with a divine no-nonsense attitude to make a creature that would perfectly achieve the purpose of a bird. The purpose of a bird. What could that purpose be I wonder? There are titmice, juncos, and chickadees; woodpeckers, gold finches, starlings and crows. The only bird never created is the no-nonsense bird. As we open our eyes and hearts to God's creation, we quickly perceive that God is playful, a God of leisure.

Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer by Brother David Steindl-Rast

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes page

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Reservoir and Canal

Image Credit: Communio - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself… 

Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Sermon 18.3

more quotations may be found here on Kairos Spiritual Formation Quotes 

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