Victoria Lynch

“When I read the news, no,” she said. “When I see small children, yes. When I listen to talk radio, no. When I fly on a plane, yes. When I take Amtrak and go through North Philadelphia and see how people have to live, no. When I sit in my kitchen in the winter with coffee and watch the sunrise, yes. When I volunteered at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the children’s unit, no. When I see the parents who sleep next to their children for weeks at a time in that unit, yes. When I make the horrible mistake of glancing at the New York Post, no. When I see some tough-looking kid on the subway who I’ve mentally judged based on how he looks give his seat up for an elderly woman, yes.”
― John Kenney, I See You've Called in Dead

“A sign hangs on the wall in a New Monastic Christian community house: “Everyone wants a revolution. No one wants to do the dishes.” I was, and remain, a Christian who longs for revolution, for things to be made new and whole in beautiful and big ways. But what I am slowly seeing is that you can’t get to the revolution without learning to do the dishes. The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary. I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith—the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small—that God’s transformation takes root and grows.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

“When suffering is sharp and profound, I expect and believe that God will meet me in its midst. But in the struggles of my average day I somehow feel I have a right to be annoyed.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

“Beginning to live as though there's no such thing as other people's children might be our most critical, significant contribution to the flourishing of our own world.”
― Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You