OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Category: Spirituality
Recipe for a Happy New Year
Take twelve whole months. Clean them thoroughly of all bitterness, hate, and jealousy. Make them just as fresh and clean as possible. Now cut each month into twenty-eight, thirty, or thirty-one different parts, but don’t make up the whole batch at once. Prepare it… Continue Reading “Recipe for a Happy New Year”
Wednesday of Hope . . . . 8
It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which… Continue Reading “Wednesday of Hope . . . . 8”
Wednesday of Hope . . . . 7
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. – Anne Lamott
The Blessing of Winter
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. – Anne Bradstreet
Wednesday of Hope . . . . 6
In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, throwing clover. – Wendell Barry “February 2, 1968” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
The Sense of Wonder
There is a sixth sense, the natural religious sense, the sense of wonder. – D.H. Lawrence
Wednesday of Hope . . . . 5
At the bottom of the heart of every human being there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered and witnessed, that is good and not evil will be done to her. It is this above… Continue Reading “Wednesday of Hope . . . . 5”
How to Find Contentment
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu
Wednesday of Hope . . . 4
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. – Lin Yutang
The Grateful Heart
As the colder and darker days of Advent arrive, let us enter them with joy and anticipation. There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. – Celia Laighton Thaxter
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