Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake. ― N.D. Wilson, Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent (Thomas Nelson, August 6, 2013)
It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of… Continue reading Frederick Buechner
The more consciousness the more intense the despair. — Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death. (Princeton University Press November 1, 1983) Originally published 1849.
The movement from loneliness to solitude should lead to a gradual conversion from an anxious reaction to a loving response. — Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life ( Doubleday, 1975)
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. — C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed . (HarperOne July 28, 2009) Originally published 1961.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves ( HarperOne; Reissue edition, February 14, 2017) Originally t published 1960,
Did you ever say “Yes” to one joy? Oh my friends, then you also said “Yes” to all pain. All things are entwined, enmeshed, enamoured–did you ever want Once to be Twice, did you ever say “I love you, bliss–instant–flash–” then you wanted everything back. Everything anew, everything forever, everything entwined, enmeshed, enamoured–oh, thus you… Continue reading Friedrich Nietzsche
When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty. ― Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal. Written in… Continue reading Flannery O’Connor
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. — C.S. Lewis, A… Continue reading C.S. Lewis
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music…. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ – that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but… Continue reading Søren Kierkegaard
The Vale of Soul-Making 