A Sense of Direction Quotes

“As rivers flow into the sea and so lose name and form, attains the Supreme Being, the Self-Luminous, the Infinite.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“Anything we have chosen to do invites the specters of all that we haven't chosen - this is the real mystery of choice.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“The experiences of wanting less, needing less, and giving more allow us to withdraw from the psychic conflicts that cause so much pain for ourselves and those around us.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“Tom and I help in common the hope that there might be a geographical ticket out of the problems of indecision, boredom, and the suspicion that more interesting things were happening in more fashionable places to more attractive people.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“This is perhaps what we lose in the absence of calendrical rite: We lean too heavily on the fantasy of one salvific ordeal, just like we lean too heavily on the fantasy that the right person will finally make us happy or whole.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“My dad sent me dozens of texts to the effect that he was ready to forgive me for my 'outburst' and that if I met him for dinner he would act as if nothing had happened. Which was, of course, precisely the problem, or one of them: his willingness and ability to go on acting as though nothing had ever happened.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“I wondered...if the difference between people who believed in preparation and those who believed in proof...wasn't the difference between those who worked constantly for something that would endure and those who sought to capture something that occurred once.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“The main problem with desires...is that they're not nearly as authoritative as we wish they were...How can you find some structure that allows you to begin to understand what you want without forcing you to pay constant attention to the fluctuation of endlessly conflicting desires? ANd how can you realize that, whatever the situation, you're probably already getting what you want on some level, whether you know it or not?”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“Emilie...got done during the day what she had to get done and she did at night what she wanted to do. She was comfortable with her desire for some things because she was obligated to do others; she was able to oblige some things because she desired others.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“time...counts for precisely something because its quantity is fixed”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“breaks from the ordered configurations of everyday life...'anti-structures.' The chief characteristic of the anti-structure...is...'communitas' - a spontaneous, rich, classless, nonhierarchical association of people who have stepped out of their routine lives and into a liminal passage like a pilgrimage...The pilgrim could step outside of all roles and just be a person”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“On the divine model, sin is a bad decision in the eyes of God. Penance is the expiation of sin through suffering in the service of God, or the mortification of the worldly desires that put us in conflict with God's plan. Redemption, the goal of penance, is forgiveness in the eyes of God - God's acceptance of our sins. In a secular vocabulary, these concepts might look something like this: anxiety is regret over a past bad decision, or of a future bad one, either in the eyes of our future selves or in the eyes of our community. Austerity...is the expiation of anxiety through suffering in the service of simplicity. It is the mortification of the human desires that put us in conflict with ourselves, the world, and the people we love...Forgiveness is an acceptance of the inevitability of conflict, of the costs of our decisions...On pilgrimage, privation is endured, shared, and collectively encourage as part of the aspiration to want less, at least for the moment - and not only to want less for ourselves, but perhaps even more important, to need less from others and, at the same time, to be able to recognize their suffering and give them more. The experiences of wanting less, needing less, and giving more allow us to withdraw from the psychic conflicts that cause so much pain for ourselves and those around us.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

“As long as we keep moving, time is kept at bay; when we stop, it catches up in a rush.”
― Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful