Benjamin McMullen

“I’m tired of all the death this world keeps insisting on.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Increasingly, I am convinced that the Kingdom of God moves forward most enduringly when ordinary people do small things kindly and well over a long period of time.”
― Allen Levi, The Last Sweet Mile

“By God’s design, the sustenance that keeps you from dying is not bitter or tasteless but endless varieties of delicious. The necessary is needlessly delightful. This marriage of survival and delight is not a happy accident but a strategically planted clue to the secret of everything. This universe is the creation of a God so rich and full in himself that he needs nothing and no one else to be infinitely satisfied. This universe is not a symptom of need but a signature of generosity.”
― Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes' Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

“I don’t think my way into consumerism. Rather, I’m covertly conscripted into a way of life because I have been formed by cultural practices that are nothing less than secular liturgies. My loves have been automated by rituals I didn’t even realize were liturgies. These tangible, visceral, repeated practices carry a story about human flourishing that we learn in unconscious ways. These practices are loaded with their own teleological orientation toward a particular vision of the good life, a rival version of the kingdom, and by our immersion in them we are—albeit unwittingly—being taught what and how to love.”
― James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit