Emily

“Sometimes, it can be helpful to have a silent meal to help us practice mindful eating. That way, we can focus our attention on our breath, the food, and the company around us in order to become fully present in the here and now.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Eat

“He shocked or excited them with irreverent comments on authority; so he caricatured rival religious teachers ‘straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel’. He produced outrageous inversions of normality – ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead,’ Jesus said to a man who wanted to postpone becoming his disciple in order to see to his father’s funeral.40 This saying is clearly authentic, since Gospel writers felt bound to preserve it even though it outrages every pious norm of the ancient world and a universal human instinct; moreover, Christianity has stonily ignored the command throughout its subsequent history. Jesus puzzled people with references which apparently needed spelling out in private even to his closest followers.41 He had power: around him, as with many charismatic leaders over the centuries, there gathered stories of exceptional healings, miracles of providing food and drink, even raising apparent corpses from the dead.”
― Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

“The Great Divorce where the main character witnesses the spectacle of a heavenly parade with shining angels, saints, and animals flowing and dancing around a luminous woman who was so beautiful she was almost “unbearable” to behold. At first the observer thinks she must be Eve or Mary, the mother of Jesus. But he is told that, no, it is Sarah Smith, who lived as a suburban London housewife. In heaven, though, she is counted as one of the “great ones.” How did she get this status? Because in her ordinary life, she became mother to every young man, woman, boy, girl, dog, or cat she encountered, loving them all in a way that made them more loveable and more eager to love others.”
― C.S. Lewis, How to Be a Christian: Reflections and Essays

“Truly I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For whoever humbles himself like a child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 18:3–4).”
― Ignatius Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus: The Classic Guide to the Practice of Unceasing Prayer Found in The Way of a Pilgrim