Natalie Maines Quotes

For me nature itself is god.

Just like I believe God is everywhere, I believe that whether it's nature, whether it's sitting on a bike in spin class, that can be church, too, for me.

I'm not a big fan of religion for that reason. But I am a true believer in God, and I have great faith, and I think that a spiritual connection with something is a really important part of our experience. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the church.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things - that religion which 'sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind,' which endows every object of sense with a living soul, which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious and venerable, and inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration.

It is doubtful that the dissection of living animals and plants could be done by those who believe them to be holy. A pantheist would not view trees as so many board feet in the manner a Christian would. A pantheist would be less likely to measure the number of acre feet coming over a waterfall than his Christian descendent, centuries later who had become a scientist. That which is sacred would be handled with a certain reverence.

Every once in a while I check and I say, do I still believe in God? And the answer is absolutely yes. And then I think, I suppose I should go to church now. But after going to so many churches in my life and trying to go with the flow with so many denominations, Eastern and Western, I don't really feel I need to go to church at all.

Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.

I think Easterners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their mind about God, and I think Westerners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their heart center about God.

I had tried, as I thought as a nun, to open myself to God and God seemed totally uninterested in me. The heavens remained closed and opaque. I now realize, of course, that I had a very, very inadequate idea of God. I was expecting clouds to part, a little sort of whisper in my ear, and of course, that's not what God is. God is not another being; we are talking about something much more profound.

What I believe is that we have this extraordinary spirit inside ourselves, which for me is our Buddha nature. I believe we are in the process of opening and getting closer and closer to our Buddha nature and stripping away all that is covering it. I don't think I'm going to end up meeting this one being up there or out there.

Nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.

I think that the real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature.

We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.

I don't think hell exists. I happen to believe in life after death but I don't think it's got a thing to do with reward and punishment. Religion is always in the control business and that's something which people don't really understand.

I think I can tell you how I experience God. I experience God as the power of life calling me to live, I experience God as the power of love calling me to love. That's the God I see in Jesus of Nazareth, that's the God I see in the fourth gospel.

I fly to Paris and discover how to make love to God.

It's often said that God works in mysterious ways. You have to really think about what He's trying to do. You can't be lazy and believe in God; He doesn't make it that easy. It takes spirit and faith and passion to really believe. Like most things worthwhile in life, you get back what you put into it. Only with faith, you get back a lot more.

Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,” I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.

When one is total, life flowers - and that flowering is spirituality. Spirituality is not an attitude, it is not a discipline. It is an outcome of a life lived totally, joyfully, delightfully; of a life of no complaint; of a life lived courageously, intensely. Then this flowering happens.

I don't think I”m a very good actor. Everything is very tentative and at a certain point you click in and just feel the spirit move you. I can be possessed really well.

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man.

People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."

My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.