A doggedly chosen kindness to your children and husband is far from negligible, and many cannot manage it. Keep up the good work, and believe that it is indeed good work. And believe in the good one who empowers it.
Your sentence about rest being your embodied statement just went into my commonplace. Thank you for being a chaser of the light and for sharing your writing to encourage us all!
Oh, thank you so much for this. I'm journaling some of the same thoughts this summer but with peaches instead of blackberries. This gives me so much courage.
This is just what I needed to read right now. Thank you!
And I actually pre-ordered your book (from Baker Book House) at the beginning of June, and I cannot wait! "This Beautiful Truth" and "Book Girl" are some of my favorite books of all time, and I have no doubt "Reclaiming Quiet" will join them. Ever since the BGF Summer Fete, I have been thinking a lot about what you shared regarding cultivating a rich interior life, and I've been trying to shift into different practices to be more intentional in that. From what I read on BBH about "Reclaiming Quiet", it seems like that will be a great resource there.
Thank you, this gave language to my soul’s prayers. As I asked the Lord, “How?” 1 John 1:7 came to mind “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
1 John 1:7 ESV
Let’s continue holding each other up in fellowship as we walk in His great light that will sustain us!
Sarah, I loved your post today. Also I have recently read two books I loved dearly - This is Happiness and History of the Rain by Niall Williams. I thought of you when I read them, the way Williams talks about how story and books become part of the great river of our lives. If you haven’t read, I highly recommend both.
“My life takes on the shape of the Goodness toward which I reach” These are the words I am pondering today. Thank you for your encouragement Sarah! You are a blessing to me!
Sarah, I am so delighted you were able to rest in an Orthodox vesper service. It’s an inimitable kind of wonder. O Gladsome Light is a lullaby of sorts in our home. The bright flashings I will take from your words today are these on prayer:
This wildly strange practice of quieting my soul in a snatched moment in order to speak to, listen for the breathings of… someOne outside time.
Oh Sarah, this is just what I needed to read today. I feel like your writing makes me feel as if I am with you sitting in that pew in the back of the church, letting the beautiful music wash over me, or picking blackberries and paying attention to their tiny little beauty. What a refreshing post. I have found great solace in constantly having a puzzle going on the dining room table - I can still be present with my family yet set my attention on the little misshapen pieces and feel the thrill of finding connection and watching the bigger picture fall into place. Thank you, for your refreshing words and beautiful, contemplative heart. ❤️
Dear Sarah: One day, I awoke from a nap, still aware of a dream I had of Light, living and dwelling in Light. The theme keeps coming back. You are familiar with St. John's first epistle. You will recall how he is writing to invite his readers into the fellowship he and the other apostles and early disciples had with God and his Son. To invite them into this fellowship, he declares a message to them, and the rest of his epistle is an exposition of that message. And what is the message? Simply, " This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
St. Paul: Eph. 3:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: ... 14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
May the Son/Sun of Righteousness and the Morning Star evermore arise and shine in the hearts of you and your family. You all are certainly ever in our hearts and prayers.
A doggedly chosen kindness to your children and husband is far from negligible, and many cannot manage it. Keep up the good work, and believe that it is indeed good work. And believe in the good one who empowers it.
Your sentence about rest being your embodied statement just went into my commonplace. Thank you for being a chaser of the light and for sharing your writing to encourage us all!
Oh, thank you so much for this. I'm journaling some of the same thoughts this summer but with peaches instead of blackberries. This gives me so much courage.
This is just what I needed to read right now. Thank you!
And I actually pre-ordered your book (from Baker Book House) at the beginning of June, and I cannot wait! "This Beautiful Truth" and "Book Girl" are some of my favorite books of all time, and I have no doubt "Reclaiming Quiet" will join them. Ever since the BGF Summer Fete, I have been thinking a lot about what you shared regarding cultivating a rich interior life, and I've been trying to shift into different practices to be more intentional in that. From what I read on BBH about "Reclaiming Quiet", it seems like that will be a great resource there.
Thank you, this gave language to my soul’s prayers. As I asked the Lord, “How?” 1 John 1:7 came to mind “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
1 John 1:7 ESV
Let’s continue holding each other up in fellowship as we walk in His great light that will sustain us!
💕🦋💕
Sarah, I loved your post today. Also I have recently read two books I loved dearly - This is Happiness and History of the Rain by Niall Williams. I thought of you when I read them, the way Williams talks about how story and books become part of the great river of our lives. If you haven’t read, I highly recommend both.
This is so beautiful Sarah and just spoke to my heart today. Particularly, a dogged chosen kindness.
“My life takes on the shape of the Goodness toward which I reach” These are the words I am pondering today. Thank you for your encouragement Sarah! You are a blessing to me!
Blackberries for Amelia by Richard Wilbur
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.
They have their flowers too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petaled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we now are told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were—
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait—
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
Sarah, I am so delighted you were able to rest in an Orthodox vesper service. It’s an inimitable kind of wonder. O Gladsome Light is a lullaby of sorts in our home. The bright flashings I will take from your words today are these on prayer:
This wildly strange practice of quieting my soul in a snatched moment in order to speak to, listen for the breathings of… someOne outside time.
Outside time. Astonishing to those bound to it.
Such truly beautiful thoughts. Thank you for taking time to write them down and share them with us.
Oh Sarah, this is just what I needed to read today. I feel like your writing makes me feel as if I am with you sitting in that pew in the back of the church, letting the beautiful music wash over me, or picking blackberries and paying attention to their tiny little beauty. What a refreshing post. I have found great solace in constantly having a puzzle going on the dining room table - I can still be present with my family yet set my attention on the little misshapen pieces and feel the thrill of finding connection and watching the bigger picture fall into place. Thank you, for your refreshing words and beautiful, contemplative heart. ❤️
Dear Sarah: One day, I awoke from a nap, still aware of a dream I had of Light, living and dwelling in Light. The theme keeps coming back. You are familiar with St. John's first epistle. You will recall how he is writing to invite his readers into the fellowship he and the other apostles and early disciples had with God and his Son. To invite them into this fellowship, he declares a message to them, and the rest of his epistle is an exposition of that message. And what is the message? Simply, " This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
St. Paul: Eph. 3:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: ... 14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
May the Son/Sun of Righteousness and the Morning Star evermore arise and shine in the hearts of you and your family. You all are certainly ever in our hearts and prayers.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
What a beautiful meditation and worth the screen time. Thank you