Dana

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
― Anglican clergyman

“Okay,” I say at last. “But you have to teach me how to do animals. I can’t keep myself from wilting when I’m a plant, so I’ve been afraid to try a living form.”
She laughs and shifts into the shape of a large golden retriever and almost licks me to death before I can make her stop.”
― Margaret Maron, Crimes by Moonlight: Mysteries from the Dark Side

“To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“A woman’s body doesn’t quit just because her heart breaks.”
― Margaret Maron