Laura

“Empathy must be cultivated. The practice of empathy means taking a moment to imagine how you might behave if you were in our positions. Do not tell us how we should act if we were you; imagine how you would act if you were us. Imagine living in a society where your white skin marks you for disgust, hate, and fear. Imagine that for many moments. Only when you see black folks as we are, and image yourselves as we have to live our lives, only then will the suffering stop, the hurt cease, the pain go away.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

“From bitter experience she knew that pictures thrown on the screen of her imagination could seem much more unnerving and terrible than the actual facts.”
― Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet on High Places

“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“friendship with God is the entire goal of the Christian life.”
― Lauren F. Winner, Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God – A Spiritual Exploration of Biblical Metaphors