Category Archives: Quotes

I Possess God

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

–Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Everything Has At Best

hearst castle garden path

It struck me as odd and sad that man could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with structures that seemed made for it — little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills, winding roads, hedgerows — and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countryside that wasn’t like a slap across the face. These days everything has at best a sleek utility, like the dully practical windmills slipping past with the scenery outside my train window, or else it looks cheap and temporary, like the tin sheds and concrete hangars that pass for superstores on the edge of every mid-sized town. We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

The Perfection of the Disguise

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, “What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

My Own Quiet Little World

I was sitting on the wrong side of the train to look at scenery — outside my window there was nothing but a wall of rock — but a pleasant, bespectacled lady sitting across the aisle saw me straining to see things, and invited me to take the empty seat opposite her. She was Swiss and spoke excellent English. We chatted brightly about the scenery and our modest lives. She was a bank clerk in Zürich, but was visiting her mother in a village near Domodossola and had just spent a day shopping in Locarno. She showed me some flowers she had bought there. It seemed like weeks — it was weeks — since I had held a normal conversation with someone, and it was wonderful. I was so taken with the novel experience of issuing sounds through a hole in my head that I chattered away about any little thing that flitted through my mind, and before long she was fast asleep and I was back once again in my own quiet little world.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

In Every Important Way

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable — which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Words Which Harmonize

There are all sorts of books which describe how to meditate and what formulas to pronounce during these meditations. I do not deny that they are beautiful, useful, and effective. But there are two words which are never mentioned, words which for me are the most powerful of all, words which clarify, which harmonize, and which heal, and these words are “thank you”.

–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Invite the Divine

Home altars can be a space for prayer, meditation, reflection, intention; to me its presence seems like a source of protection and blessing. Home altars connect us to ancient traditions of worship, acknowledging our ancestors and their connection to the divine. In creating an altar in your home you invite the divine into your daily life, I think.

–Frances Pullara, Sacred Ordinary

altar

I’ve had a home altar since 1998. It has always contained items of great personal and spiritual meaning. Now I have two. One is in my bedroom; it is a version of the one from 1998, with mostly family photos and tokens — an altar for my ancestry. The altar in this photo is in the living room; I use it more. There are various Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Pagan elements to it, and there are items from family and friends that have been given in blessing over the years.

Nothing More Astonishing

There is nothing more astonishing than a human face. It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face has a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest in the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

If There is Love

If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

–His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Little Book of Buddhism

[via Whiskey River]

Tedious Gentlemen

But I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

A Practice I Could Stand to Implement

Materialism and the acquistion of stuff infects so much of our lives, and goes way beyond simply acquiring material goods. We accumulate all kinds of other things too: practices, tools, ideas, paths, teachings. Sometimes, when we are most lost in this downward spiral, we think if I just had one more theory, one more facilitation tool, one more spiritual practice, I would be complete.

And the truth is, we rarely utilize all that we do have to its fullest potential. We confuse span with depth, as Ken WIlber would put it: we think “more” equals “better.”

You could for example acquire a whole range of meditation practices, or you could simply sit for twenty minutes a day for the rest of your life and be mindful of breathing. I would be surprised if anyone could truly plumb the depths of breath practice completly, but how many people simply make the decision to “make do” with one practice and devote the rest of their life to it?

“Making do” means stopping the act of skimming surfaces and settle down into deep appreciation of what we have around us. It is subtly different from “good enough” becasue it is not about accepting mediocrity. It is rather about deepening the uses and possibilities of what we have — finding the aristocracy in the clover.

–Chris Corrigan, Parking Lot

A Silent Sorrow

A miscarriage is a particularly silent sorrow since others often fail to recognize the agonizing emptiness it leaves behind. When you lose a baby early in the pregnancy, you may have to deal with a lack of concrete memories about your baby and the absence of established rituals to mark this sad event in your life.

You may take some comfort in learning that you are not alone since most pregnancy losses occur in the first three months, or trimester, of pregnancy. Miscarriages account for almost 95 percent of all early losses up to 20 weeks gestation, after which they are considered to be live births or stillbirths.

A miscarriage ends the pregnancy just as it was beginning, sometimes only weeks or days after you and your partner realized you were going to become parents. Your joyous expectations were suddenly turned to grief, and the pregnancy may now seem unreal, even to you.

–Perry-Lynn Moffitt

See her recommended reading list here.

Made Primarily For Blessing

There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know what they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead