Tim

“Our hearts, it seems, can be scraped only so gaunt before they crack into an acre of arid indifference.”
― Michael Yankoski, The Sacred Year: Mapping the Soulscape of Spiritual Practice -- How Contemplating Apples, Living in a Cave, and Befriending a Dying Woman Revived My Life

“I’m trying to remember how I got this way. I don’t recall always being this out of it. Nicholas Carr blames our use of electronic technology for scraping us gaunt. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Carr points out that our habitual electronic multitasking between smartphones, websites, news feeds, and social media is dramatically rewiring the neurological pathways in our brains. According to Carr, all our browsing and liking and streaming and retweeting has conditioned the ability to focus right out of us. “In the choices we have made . . . ,” writes Carr, “we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration. . . . We have cast our lot with the juggler.”4 “Tell me,” a wise friend once asked, “What is it you are doing with the singular gift of your life?” Juggling?”
― Michael Yankoski, The Sacred Year: Mapping the Soulscape of Spiritual Practice -- How Contemplating Apples, Living in a Cave, and Befriending a Dying Woman Revived My Life

“Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Let me stress that we cannot bring anyone to faith though pressure, guilt, argument, or cleverness. Conversion and true faith are works of the Holy Spirit. But it is also true that we can, by our responses, help or hinder another's journey. Responding to seekers in a way that does not accept and honor their lived experience may cause them to "freeze" or even move away from
God. Understanding the thresholds can help us help them or, at least, help us to not get in the way of what God is doing.”
― Sherry A. Wedell