What would I find in my own heart if the noise of the world were silenced? Who would I be? Who will I be, when loss or crisis or the depredation of time take away the trappings of success, of self-importance, even personality itself?

p. 295, The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris

It is the emphatic integration of many experiences “out there” into the one unifying principle within each of us. Spirituality is a time when we truly understand that reason is not a luxury we cannot afford, but a necessity without which we cannot function…

pp. 213-214, Brickner, Finding God in the Garden

Increasingly, I am persuaded that the beginning of all faith
ought to be inquiry, doubt, and disbelief.
Our first statement ought to be I wonder, not I believe.

p. 213, Balfour Brickner, Finding God in the Garden

Labour not to be rich;
cease from thine own wisdom.

I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.