IF
the praise of man elates me and his blame depresses me;
if I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself;
if I love to be loved more than to love,
to be served more than to serve,
then I know nothing of Calvary Love.
-Amy Carmichael, If
“There are few things I find more rewarding than feeding people and giving them what I know they will like, and it’s impossible to determine who gets more pleasure or blessing from it-the recipient or the giver.”
-St. Irene
Patience is waiting.
Patience is waiting, is Advent.
Patience is waiting for a child to be born.
Patience is the love of God.
Patience is a slow-blooming flower,
modest and full of promise.
Patience knows how to be sill and silent.
Patience is gentle and sweet.
Patience understands the beauty of quiet inner growth that cannot be hurried.
Patient chases away pressures and stress.
Patience can never be overwhelmed.
Patience teaches the art of living with unfulfilled desires.
Patience is serene and tranquil.
Patience is a motherly virtue.
Patience is winter waiting for spring.
Patience is the thawing of a frozen heart.
Patience is taking one step at a time.
Patience is renouncing control.
Patience is running with perseverance the race.
Patience does not seek rest, it provides rest.
Patience is our reserve fuel when the tank runs empty.
It will carry us safely to our destination.
Patience is fasting.
Patience is starting allover.
Patience is rejoicing on a Monday morning.
Patience is the continuous process of uncluttering whats around you and inside you.
Patience is committing yourself in faith to God’s plan for you.
Patience is longing without receiving.
Patience creates rom where there is no room.
Patience creates time where there is no time.
Patience keeps on striving without tangible results.
Patience is potty-trainging my down syndrome daughter Margaret.
Patience keeps on praying.
Patience keeps on keepin’ on.
Patience is living an ocean away.
Patience is looking for a lost treasure.
Patience is living with a deceitful heat.
Patience is living with unanswered questions.
The eyes of Christ are patient.
-Ingrid Trobisch, The Confident Woman
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
peacocks for pilgrims 