Tara Troxel

“One might sometimes experience seasons of intense emotional connection, a kind of exuberance of the Spirit, shared in community, in which joy is the dominant note. But then one might enter a season, perhaps surprising, where God is experienced in, and as, stillness, a contemplative season in which God’s covenant faithfulness is a steady state of enduring. If the person from the exuberant season could see the “you” in that contemplative season, it might look like a kind of distance or coolness from the outside. But that exuberant “you” doesn’t yet have the capacity to comprehend the unspeakable comfort found in that contemplation to come. God’s nearness looks and feels different depending on the season you’re in.”
― James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

“While the past is lost for ever, everything that didn’t happen in it is doubly lost. This creates a particular kind of feeling of loss, the melancholy of an unrealized past.”
― James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

“In a noisy age, I think perhaps trying to live quietly might be a virtue.”
― James Rebanks, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey

“Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!

Loosely translated:

It is heavenly, when I overcome
My earthly desires
But nevertheless, when I'm not successful,
It can also be quite pleasurable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina