Mary Alex Pooler

“But there comes a point when what’s empowering becomes discouraging. When we begin looking at others not for inspiration but to compare. When what we find no longer feels like tools that will help but stones that weigh us down. When that happens, it’s time to pause and remember why we’re doing this thing in the first place. And if we’ve made it this far, we usually know. After we remind ourselves of the why, we can ask, “What do I want this to look like in my life?”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“But is your faith not all strangeness and mystery—all blood, and brimstone—all seeing nothing in the dark, stumbling, making out dim shapes with your hands?” “You speak as if we were in the Dark Ages still, as if Essex still burned its witches! No—ours is a faith of enlightenment and clarity: I am not stumbling—I am running with patience the race that is set before me—there is a lamp on my path!”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Brother Lawrence did so in the kitchen of a French monastery over three hundred years ago. Instead of resenting the monotony and smallness of his chores, Brother Lawrence decided to seek God’s presence always and in everything. He writes, “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”2”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“I’ve always said there are no mysteries, only things we don’t yet know; but lately I’ve thought not even knowledge takes all strangeness from the world.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent