The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
…
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot
“But, like liturgy, the work of cleaning draws much of its meaning and value from repetition, from the fact that it is never completed, but only set aside until the next day. Both liturgy and what is euphemistically termed “domestic” work also have an intense relations with the present moment, a kind of faith in the present that fosters hope and makes life seem possible in the day-to-day.”
….
“It is not in romance but routine that the possibilities for transformation are made manifest.”
-Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries
-William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World
‘The intermediate hope, the things that happen in the present time to implement Easter and anticipate the final day-are always surprising because, left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present… is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”
-N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
O light that foll’west all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
-George Mattheson, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
“An idol is behind our loftiest dreams, our scariest nightmares and our most unyielding emotions.”
-Tim Keller
“Lord, mold us and form us into the kind of people you want us to be.
Be patient with us when we fall short of what love demands of us.
And give us patience with ourselves.
Catch us in the arms of your grace.”
-Amen.
-Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
“Do you see how the devil is defeated by the very weapons of his prior victory? The devil had vanquished Adam by means of a tree. Christ vanquished the evil by means of the tree of the Cross. The tree sent Adam to hell. The tree of the Cross brought him back from there. The tree revealed Adam in his weakness, laying prostrate, naked and low. The tree of the Cross manifested to all the world the victorious Christ, naked and nailed on high.
Adam’s death sentence passed on to all who came after him.
Christ’s death gave life to all his children.”
-John Chrysostom
peacocks for pilgrims 