Ethan

“Christianity is a religion for men who are aware that there is a deep wound, a fissure of sin that strikes down to the very heart of man’s being.”
― Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

“He loves to describe the “sabbath” of contemplation, in which the soul rests in God and God works in the soul; the quiet and transcendent activity, the quies sine rubigine, in which purity of heart rewards the contemplative for the labor of asceticism. This labor is “active life” in another and older sense: the life of discipline, penance, mortification, which is absolutely necessary. Without virtue there can be no real and lasting contemplation. Without the labor of discipline there can be no rest in love.”
― Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

“But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities. Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“In the first place, Benedictine spirituality implies, the presence of God demands total response. If I really believe God is present in my life, here and now, then I have no choice but to deal with that. Life, in fact, will not be resolved for me until I do. No manner of other agendas will ever completely smother the insistency of the God one. No amount of noise will ever successfully drown out the need to discover what is most important among all the important things of life. No degree of success will ever feel like success until I am succeeding at the center point of life.”
― Joan D. Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today