The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. The soul and body can synchronize.
--Ann Voskamp
I rather would entreat you to see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully, sluggardized at home, wear out your youth in shapeless idleness.
--from Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
. . . the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.
--G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to . . . that the ordinary view is the right one.
--G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.HT: Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts
--John Milton
Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.
--G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.
--G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
It is good that we should have to submit to what we do not understand. It teaches us the laws of faith and hope.
It is good that we should have to do what we should rather not, in circumstances not of our choice.
It is good that there should be always something to prick us on, something to remind us that we are in an enemy's country, belong to a marching column.
It is good that we should meet with checks and failures in what we undertake, to keep us humble and prayerful.
All these things belong to sowing in tears.
God seems to have laid out the order of things in His Church . . . for the hidden sanctification of the individual souls which compose it.
Janet Erksine Stuart, Prayer in Faith
How often I wished I could companioning my children through their most difficult experiences--or through their every joy. Too often I learned of the twists of their personal journeys after the fact. I hadn't been there. Moreover, if I had been, I may have been denied full access to--a full understanding of--their hearts and minds in the event.
But there is a way, a blessed way, into the hearts and minds of our children as they journey through life. When the parent reads out loud to the child, the older one becomes the younger one's most intimate companion. They travel together through dangers and delights, through adventures and mysteries, through stories, through genuine experiences--through life itself.
The power of a story well told is to create whole experiences for the child, but controlled experiences with beginnings and middles, and with good endings.
The reward for parents who read such stories to their children is an intimacy that is emotional, spiritual, and real. The walls come down; nothing is hidden between them.
And the benefits to children are legion:
*They are assured that, whatever the experience, they are not alone.
*They are fearless before the circumstances of the story, however frightening or thrilling. And, in consequence, they are prepared to meet similar circumstances in their real life with the boldness and trust that come of experience.
*They, when they laugh heartily, are empowered! For the laughter of children in the face of giants or troubles or evils is their sense of superiority. Their ability to see silliness in danger is their freedom to take spiritual steps above the danger.
*And they are granted a genuine independence, a freedom of choice. For children can choose to hear a fantasy tale as fantasy only, something fun and funny, but not anything you would meet in the real world. And they can listen to stories of distant heroes and heroic deeds as ancient history and nothing to do with their life. Or else they can choose to identify completely with the main character--in which case this fantasy or this ancient story stands for things absolutely real in their own world. Children don't make such choices consciously; they make them in the deep parts of their souls, when they are ready to take the real ride of the story. And the fact that they can and do choose grants them true personhood.
And you, their parent, are there, companioning your child through wonders and terrors, through friendships and wisdom, through experience into experience.
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When my father bought a thick book containing all the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and read them to us, he did me a kindness more profound than mere entertainment. He began to weave a world that genuinely acknowledged all the monsters in mine, as well as all the ridiculous situations and silly asides that I as a child found significant. Dad/Andersen was my whispering, laughing, wise companion when I most needed companionship.
Night after night my dad would read a story in his articulate, baritone voice. Gently the voice invited me. Slowly I accepted the invitation and delivered myself to a wonderful world. And as I looked around, I discovered that this world was confident with solutions, and I was a citizen of some authority and reputation. I was no longer alone, no longer helpless.
Dad would sit in a chair beside my bed, one lamp low at his shoulder, his pipe clamped between his teeth and sending the smell of his presence and his affections to me where I lay. Mostly the room, an attic with slanted ceilings, was in darkness. The wind whistled in the eaves.
"Ready?" Dad would say.
We would nod. We would curl tight beneath the covers.
"Once upon a time," Dad would read, sending me straight through the attic walls into the night, onto the wind, for gorgeous breathtaking flights.
What of my being could not find affirmation in such an event? My body was present, delighting in its vicarious adventures. All my senses were alert and active, sight and sound and smell and touch. My emotions were given every opportunity--highs so tremendously high, and lows acceptable because Dad was the leader. My mind, my intellect, labored at solutions before the story itself declared them.
And all my affections were granted lovely objects. I could love in that event when my father read to us: I could love characters in the tale; I could love their qualities, their deeds, their struggles; I could love the tale itself--but mostly, I could love my father, whose very voice was his offering of love to me. We were one in this event, one in the reading and in the listening and in the experiencing.
Night after night my father read to us from that thick book. Night after night I lived the adventures that gave order to my turbulent child's experience. The tales gave shape to my waking self, to my instincts, to my faith in God, and to my adulthood yet to come. For I am what I am now, in part, because once I experienced important events within the protected sphere of my father's dear influence.
These events were deep and primal.
But on the page they were merely stories--until my father opened his mouth and read them to me.
True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions--joy transcends all other emotions.--Ann Voskamp
Though my marriage tree may not budand though my crop of children may fail and my work produce little yield,though there is no money in the bank and no dream left in the heart,though otay choose different ways to live their one life,till my last heaving breath, I will fight to the death for this:"I will take joy" (Hab 3:18)
I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts.--F.B. Meyer
Pride slays thanksgiving . . . A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves." --Henry Ward Beecher
"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!"---G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy
"Expectations kill relationships."--Ann Voskamp's mother
