The Sacred Year Quotes

“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

“Just about anything can become a spiritual practice,” Father Solomon suggested on my last day at the monastery. “If you approach it in the right way—with intentionality, humility, receptivity, hope. And of course with an attentive eye on the lookout for the activity of the divine.”
― 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

“We are at rest now, borne along by an ancient power working constantly and tirelessly in the depths.”
― 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

“The Daily Examen has five basic steps, and I’ve found envisioning these steps as “movements” in a musical piece makes them seem less regimented. You begin with gratitude, then move into a petition to God for clarity, crescendo with a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour review of the day’s events, descend into confession for the wrongs committed, and wrap”
― 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

“conditioned responses aimed at deflecting the opponent’s attacks.”
― 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

“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