Kathleen Norris Quotes
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The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.
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If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.
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They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.
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The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance.
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Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.
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A short-lived fascination with another person may be exciting-I think we've all seen people aglow, in a state of being "in love with love"-but such an attraction is not sustainable over the long run. Paradoxically, human love is sanctified not in the height of attraction and enthusiasm, but in the everyday struggles of living with another person. It is not in romance but in routine that the possibilities for transformation are made manifest. And that requires commitment.
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The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and . . . he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself.
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Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't. But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.
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I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
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I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.
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I write what I would like to read.
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Each and every one of us has one obligation, during the bewildered days of our pilgrimage here: the saving of his own soul, and secondarily and incidentally thereby affecting for good such other souls as come under our influence.
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For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.
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To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.
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Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value. The world doesn't care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.
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It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?
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Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.
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To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.
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When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
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We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy.
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Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.
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Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.
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You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.
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We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.
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Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.
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Peace - that was the other name for home.
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Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.
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The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.
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Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.
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Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.
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