If you look at the big picture - the tree as it’s growing - nothing happens. If, however, you notice the details - the leaves emerging, the flowers forming, the fruits bursting from flowers - then trees seethe with action.
Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City
“Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
“To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.
Perhaps beginnings make us anxious because we did not begin ourselves. Others began us.
Beginning precedes us, creates us, and constantly takes us to new levels and places and people.
There is an old Irish proverb that says, “Tus maith leath na hoibre.” “A good beginning is half the work.”
John O’Donohue, To Bless The Space Between Us
Gratitude is the basis of all holiness. The holiest person you know is the most grateful person you know.
Ronald Rolheiser
You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.
Anthony de Mello, S.J.
Jesus assures us that the measure we measure out is the measure that we ourselves will receive in return. In essence, that says that the air we breather out will be the air we will reinhale. That is not just true ecologically. It is a broad truth for life in general. If we breathe out miserliness, we will reinhale miserliness; if we breathe out pettiness, we will breath in pettiness; if we breather out bitterness, then bitterness will be the air that surrounds us; and if we breather out a sense of scarcity that makes us calculate and be fearful, then calculation and fearfulness will be the air we reinhale. But if, aware of God’s abundance, we breathe out generosity and forgiveness, we will breath in the air of generosity and forgiveness. We will reinhale what we exhale.
Ronald Rolheiser
Sacred Fire
“Maybe what our world needs more than anything is communities where we celebrate life together and become a sign of hope for our world. Maybe we need signs that it is possible to love each other.”
Jean Vanier
“To become a friend of someone, you should eat a sack of salt together.”
Aristotle
"Death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It’s certainly not something resurrection people worry about."
Rachel Held Evans
For most of us, the machine has replaced the meal as the dominant feature and metaphor of daily living.
Eugene Peterson, Living the Resurrection
Here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation.
Paul Tillich