one thing we know for sure:

it is God's will that these bones live.

-barbara brown taylor.

grace.

"you say grace before meals.
all right.
but i say grace before the play and the opera,
and grace before the concert and pantomine,
and grace before i open a book,
and grace before sketching, painting,
swimming, fencing, boxing, watching, playing, dancing;
and grace before i dip the pen in the ink."

-gk chesterton.

beginnings.

"the man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free." 

-thomas merton.

found.

"this much i will tell.  what's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup."

-godric, frederick buechner

listen.

"Be kind enough to others to listen, beneath all the words they speak, for that usually unspoken hunger for holiness that i believe is part of even the unlikeliest of us, because by listening to it and cherishing it maybe we can help bring it to birth in them and in ourselves."

-frederick buechner.

the passionate restraint.

"As i understand it, to say that God is mightily present even in such private events as these does not mean that he makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen.  Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which i believe is what salvation is.

The power that created the universe and spun the dragonfly's wing and is beyond all other powers holds back, in love, from overpowering us.  God in his very stillness, holding his breath, loving us all, the only way he can without destroying us.

...the passionate restraint and hush of God."

-frederick buechner.

אמת

"we make ourselves real by telling the truth."

-thomas merton.