Merry Christmas – 2019
The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.
– Hans Christian Andersen
This is a Chihuly glass work. It was hanging from the ceiling, but because it looked so like a tree, I turned it upside down.
Wednesday of Hope – The Light Always Returns
There is a perfectly still moment right before dawn, when the sun gathers itself and then steps into the dark world and everything is so filled with light that any doubts from that long night are barely a memory. It is the way of all things that the night ends and the light returns. The light always returns.
– Brian Andreas, Story People
Salvation Happens
Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
– Barbara Brown Taylor
Wednesday of Hope – Darkest before Dawn
On this Feast of St. Lucy, whose name means Light – celebrated in the darkest days in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ve chosen this quote for those times we find ourselves in darkness, no matter the time of year or the hemisphere.
We must believe it is darkest before the dawn of a new world. We will see it when we believe it.
– Saul Alinsky
All is Alive
The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power.
– Henry Crow Dog
Wednesday of Hope – Life Worth Living
Before, I always lived in anticipation . . . that it was all a preparation for something else, something “greater,” more “genuine.” But that feeling has dropped away from me completely. I live here and now, this minute, this day, to the full, and the life is worth living.
– Etty Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum
Longing for a Sense of Wonder
If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
– Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge
