from Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams

It was then, lying there in the bed beside her sleeping husband, that Margaret Looney realised there was to be an emptying as much as a filling of her heart with love, and that as much as her heart had expanded and grown in the first girlish weeks of love in Donegal, filling her until bursting, now, in the years left, there was to be the slow drop by drop bleeding back of it all. It would all have to be given back, and day after day as the hardship of their life dulled into routine -- window panes that rattled under the lash of the wind for months on end, rain that leaked beneath the doors, her husband out and drinking, electricity cut off and the radio shut down, the boredom, the quiet and incredible loneliness -- Margaret Looney would remember when she first discovered love and wonder at how immense it must have been to be lasting so long.

from The Silent Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Some days later I was out on my porch, fussing over my roses. It was an activity that even in my distress brought a tincture of comfort. But then it is clear to me that any effort at gardening, even a haphazard, stop-go one such as mine was, is an effort to drag to earth the colours and the importances of heaven.

(Untitled) by laura morgan

Trying to figure it out.

Sitting at the kitchen table
trying to figure out what I have to show for all these years of living.

Mind ponders, and I peer across the sitting room.
Peer out the window
through hazy sheer
where
propane gas cylinders stand side by side
all sage green and rusty red on a truckbed

beautiful to me,
shocking white cautionary flammable gas warning and all.

All is quiet, and I sit, 
seized by the irony

of a life-sized still-life not wholey unlike my memories:
forty-six years of foggy recollections

caustic
and beautiful.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

By her own estimation, a plain woman, she did not wish to be a plain old woman. However I would also question her plainness. There were times when her face shimmered and flashed with its own beauty. There was the moment we stood side by side in the church, and I looked down at her face just the second before she said 'I do,' and then heard her say it, and then out of her face flew this extraordinary light, flooding up at me. It was love. You do not expect to see love like that. I did not anyhow.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

As usual I don't have words for what I mean. I am trying to say I loved Bet, yes, soul to soul, and the lines and wrinkles were part of some other story, her own harrowing reading of her own life.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Even the grandees came to the pictures. ... It wasn't the church, but it was like the church, better, far better. It was at the pictures that you could look around and see that rapt gaze on people's faces that maybe the priest or the minister dreamed of one day seeing on the faces of their parishioners. The whole of Sligo in a damp crowd, all those different people and different degrees, paupers and princes, united by their enchantment. You could have said Ireland was united and free, at the pictures anyhow.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

My next thought was that she was being cagey because she feared me, or was even perhaps in dread of speaking, in case it led her back to things she would rather forget. Of course either way I know she has suffered enormously. You can see it in in her eyes as plain as day. It is actually what gives her her strange grace, if I may say that.

from Traveling, a blog by my colleague Bethany Ferguson

John Updike says, “Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body. if the cells dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.” Resurrection is as much physicality as it is theology. Belief in the resurrection doesn’t just change how I understand the world, it also impacts how I interact with it, especially with the things that are broken. Even as it seems that things are falling apart, I work by faith for reversal, reknitting, rekindling, resurrection, and look to the One who has promised He is making everything new.

from Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love. And just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did.  That is all… Do not ask "How shall I pass this on?" but "What does it say to me?’" Then ponder this word long in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them.

from The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

from The Life You've Always Wanted, by John Ortberg

Jesus' announcement of the gospel is simply the announcement of the existence and availability of another dimension of existence, another world. 'The kingdom of God has come near,' he said. 'Repent, and believe int he good news.' The Good News -- the word we translate "gospel" -- is that this fallen world as we know it is not the whole story. There is another realm. It is as real as the chair I sit in and the book you read.

from On Fairy Stories, by J.R.R. Tolkein

It is the mark of the good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it an give to the child or man that hears it, when the "turn" comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.

by Soren Kierkegaard

Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.

from Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life, by Shauna Niequist

Everything is interim. Everything is a path or a preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we're not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard. It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we've barred the door against any last-minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. It keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled by remote control. Life with God is a dancing dream, full of flashes and last-minute exits and generally all the things we've said we'll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope.

from Abba's Child, by Brennan Manning

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. 

from The Threat of Gospel Amnesia, by Luma Simms

At the end of hope, feeling and believing myself to be on the receiving end of the hot displeasure and disappointment of a holy God, I crashed. And then, when there was nothing left of me, there was Jesus. Savior, Redeemer, Friend. No displeasure, no disappointment, just the blazing fire of unmerited grace.

from The Four Loves, by CS Lewis

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.

Hymn, by Brooke Frasier

If to distant lands I scatterIf I sail to farthest seasWould You find and firm and gather‘Til I only dwell in Thee?
If I flee from greenest pasturesWould You leave to look for me?Forfeit glory to come after‘Til I only dwell in Thee
If my heart has one ambitionIf my soul one goal to seekThis my solitary vision‘Til I only dwell in TheeThat I only dwell in Thee‘Til I only dwell in Thee

from Shadowfeet, by Brooke Frasier

There's distraction buzzing in my head

saying in the shadows it's easier to stay

but I've heard rumours of true reality

whispers of a well-lit way

from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

What's past is prologue.

from The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

from Out of Control by Ben Young and Dr. Sam Adams

"We're daring you to move from control to mystery; from sustained, chaotic activity to periods of silence and solitude; and from practiced self-reliance to deep faith and trust in God. ... to experience true peace and rest."

from Out of Control by Ben Young and Dr. Sam Adams

A lot of us wrongly believe that we can attain true peace and simplicity only through radical self-denial, a la Saint Francis. ... But Christ never said that. He said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you (John 14.27, NKJV), not "Peace I leave with you if you sign up for full-time missions work ..."

from Out of Control by Ben Young and Dr. Sam Adams

"How can the church be truly countercultural if it is as consumed as the world is with activities? Playing the same game of busyness under the guise of 'spirituality' offers little refuge from the inevitable storms of chaos of life. ... the church should offer hope and renewal, not contribute to exhaustion and fatigue." 

from The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

"You tell stories?" the mans asks, the piquing of his interest almost palpable.

"Stories, tales, bardic chronicles," Widget says.

"Whatever you care to call them. The things we were discussing earlier that are more complicated than they used to be. I take pieces of the past that I see and I combine them into narratives. It's not that important, and this isn't why I'm here --"

"It is important," the man in the grey suit interrupts. "Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and ever ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that." He takes another sip of his wind. "There are many kinds of magic, after all."