Esther de Waal > Quotes

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.”
― ESTHER DE WAAL

“Stability says there must be no evasion; instead attend to the real, to the real necessity however uncomfortable that might be. Stability brings us from a feeling of alienation, perhaps from the escape into fantasy and daydreaming, into the state of reality. It will not allow us to evade the inner truth of whatever it is that we have to do, however dreary and boring and apparently unfruitful that may seem. It involves listening...to the particular demands of whatever this task and this moment in time is asking; no more and no less.”
― Esther De Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict

“When Brueggemann writes about the Jewish people at one historic point in their story, the sacking of Jerusalem and the loss of the temple in 597, he uses the word relinquish.6 It becomes a metaphor for the opening up to the new gifts and new forms of life given by God that become possible just when everything seems to have come to an end. Of course there is loss and it is right to grieve and not to pretend otherwise. Insecurity makes certitude attractive, and it is in times like these that I want to harness God to my preferred scheme of things, for it is risky to be so vulnerable. Yet it is this vulnerability that asks for trust and hope in God's plans, not mine. So I try to learn each time that I am called upon to move forward to hand over the past freely, putting it behind me, and moving on with hands open and ready for the new.”
― Esther de Waal, To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border

“Vacare Deum. Be free for God.     I have a need of such a clearance as the Saviour effected in the temple of Jerusalem a riddance of the clutter of what is secondary that blocks the way to the all-important central emptiness which is filled with the presence of God alone.   Jean Danielou”
― Esther de Waal, Lost in Wonder: Rediscovering the Spiritual Art of Attentiveness

“To be transformed implies letting go of control for a while in the hopeful expectation that something worthwhile may result”
― Esther de Waal, Living On the Border: Reflections on the Experience of Threshold

“To seek God means first of all to let yourself be found by him. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the God of Jesus Christ. He is your God
not because He is yours but because you are His. To choose God is to realize that you are known and loved in a way surpassing anything you can imagine long before anyone had thought of you or spoken your name.”
― Esther de Waal, Living With Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality

“There is no once and for all moment when we can say that at last we are whole, the past is buried and over, the hurts forgotten, the wounds healed. Instead we find that it is to be a search that we must expect to continue throughout our lives.”
― Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality

“My difficulty is that on the whole I am not very good at change, I cling to the safe and the known... I must live in this moment, not looking either forward or back, or to right or left, but realizing that unless I am what I am there cannot be any growth. If I promise myself that life will be better, that I shall be a more agreeable person, that I shall be closer to God on the next stage along the way, then I am failing to live as I am called to live because I go on dreaming of that ideal which does not exist. The past has brought me to this moment and if I begin today anew I can also begin tomorrow anew and the day after that, and so I shall be truly open to change.”
― Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict

“Stand still. But not like Lot’s wife.” (From a talk on her book *Seeking God, Seeking Life*, (YouTube video), St Paul’s, London, May 19, 2013)”
― Esther de Waal

“Without taking use of ox or man,
Or of creature as Mary desired,
Without spinning thread of silk or of satin,
Without sowing, without harrowing, without reaping,
Without rowing, without games, without fishing,
Without going to the hunting hill,
Without trimming arrows on the Lord's Day,
Without cleaning byre, without threshing corn,
Without kiln, without mill on the Lord's Day. Whosoever would keep the Lord's Day,
Even would it be to him and lasting,
From setting of sun on Saturday
Till rising of sun on Monday.17 Beltaine remained the central festival in the cycle of the agricultural pastoral year, the season of light, the time of growth. It was then that the sheep and cattle would be driven up to the summer pastures, the “shielings” in Scotland, the “hafods” in Wales. This was a virtual migration since these might be six or eight or even twelve or fourteen miles away, and it often meant crossing land that was rough and rugged or full of swamps, even sometimes having to swim across channels or rivers. The procession included the men carrying spades, ropes, and other things that might be needed to repair their summer huts, while the women carried the bedding, meal, and dairy utensils. As they went, there were songs to be sung on the journey, a dedicatory hymn to the Trinity and to the most familiar of the saints, Michael, Bride, and Columba, respectively the protector, the woman who knew about dairies, the guardian of their cattle—and, of course, to Mary herself, who on this occasion they address as mother of the White Lamb: Valiant Michael of the white steeds,
Who subdued the Dragon of blood,
For love of God, for pains of Mary's Son,
Spread”
― Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination

“The promise of the Kingdom is not that we shall escape the hard things but that we shall be given grace to face them, to enter into them, and to come through them. The promise is not that we shall not be afraid. It is that we need not fear fear.”
― Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality

“The Rule, in making distribution of goods according to needs, warns against the common pitfall that all should receive the same and instead asks for something which demands maturity and understanding on the part of the members of the community. 'We do not imply that there should be favoritism - God forbid! But rather consideration for weaknesses. Whoever needs less should thank God and not be distressed, but whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness, not self-important because of the kindness shown him. In this way all the members will be at peace.' Waning fair share is natural and it is only as I grow in maturity, recognizing my own strengths and weaknesses and accepting those of others, that I begin to make any headway in what St Benedict is talking about here.”
― Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict

“The monastic tradition has always known about finding God in the daily and the ordinary, so it should not really surprise us that in recent years the monastic vision has escaped the cloister and become the property of many lay people who find that it brings them a down-to-earth refreshment of spirit which sadly they often fail to find in the institutional Church. People are waking up to hear the call of the monastery bell – and if we think of that as the bell for the first Office of the day, which is Vigils, then we are given the further image of a wake-up call, a call to become vigilant, alert, fully awake, fully alive.”
― Esther de Waal, Lost in Wonder: Rediscovering the Spiritual Art of Attentiveness

“But so many people find themselves in a situation of enclosure, in a marriage or a career, with the fundamental difference that by their refusal to accept it it has become a trap from which they long to escape, perhaps by actually running away, perhaps by resorting to the daydreaming which begins with that insidious little phrase 'if only...' Family life which is boring, a marriage which has grown stale, an office job which has become deadening are only too familiar. Our difficulty lies in the way in which we fail to meet those demands with anything more than the mere grudging minimum which will never allow them to become creative.”
― Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict