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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
May We Always Find the Capacity to Appreciate
The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.
– Abraham Maslow
Wednesday of Hope – Not Fearful of the Night
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
– Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse
See What Is Here Now
Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
– Ann Patchett
Wednesday of Hope – Looking Ahead
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Watching for Wonder
Human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.
– E. B. White
Wednesday of Hope – Breathing Hope
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
– Arundhati Roy
Wednesday of Hope – Inevitability of Dreams
At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.
– Christopher Reeve
Hear the Snowflake in the Silence
May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation.
– David Steindl-Rast
Wednesday of Hope – Despite Everything . . . Live in Hope
Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
– Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork
If Etty Hillesum could write this with all she endured, we too can be women and men of hope, like this sparrow hanging upside down from tender branch in the dead of winter. In 1943 when Etty and her family were placed on a train bound for Auschwitz, she tossed out window a postcard that read, “We have left the camp singing.” She was executed in Auschwitz on November 30, at the age of twenty-nine.
Being Connected
Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.
– Paula Gunn Allen
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