Ma

“But the intensity of my desire to help her had spoilt my intention. That intensity had brought with it a kind of effort that had tired me. Had goodness been part of me I should have helped her with detachment, quite simply because I could not do otherwise—as the sun shines, or as one give a hand to a tumbling child; I should not have vitiated the movement by thinking: "I must succeed I have to succeed!”
― Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“...their spiritual reading of the Bible, a reading understood as a means to salvation, an initiation into the Light, an approach to communion with the Living One, teaches us to be on our guard against two dangers. On the one hand, to beware of the dryness of a certain biblical exegesis today which offers, or claims to offer, exactness at the expense of the living nature of the message. On the other, to beware of the subjectivism which merely domes down to a certain virtuosity in playing the strings off the human psyche, giving the believer the suggestion of 'doing the truth in love' without giving any love for the truth, still less the truth itself.”
― Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (Cistercian Studies Series)

“…if we continue to feel poor when we have enough of the world’s goods, it is because we have not given sufficient attention to the inner person.”
― Elizabeth O'Connor, Letters to scattered pilgrims

“Five days after the food was Easter Sunday. The only church that had not been flooded in the neighborhood invited everyone to services, come as you are. Mom decreed we were going to church. "Church!?" I thought. What in the world was she thinking? We had been cleaning up flood mud for three days with no water to clean ourselves up. Mom insisted. She said that Calvary Baptist was going to allow women into the sanctuary in pants and that was something we were not going to miss. (In 1977 this was earthshattering for sure.) I guess we would take a stand for women's equality!”
― Donna L. Burgraff, Appalachian Magazine's Mountain Voice: 2017: A Collection of Memories, Histories, and Tall Tales of Appalachia