Thought and Sight

“Prayer is a refusal to settle for what is.”― Walter Brueggemann, Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”― John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Volume 3. Of Many Things

Thought and sight.
Slow and awake.
Witness and partake.
May the sky at sunrise and sunset capture your attention every time.
A flower in bloom jolt you into delight.
Hope that anchors and sails.
Walking out love every day.
Mostly in small, seemingly insignificant ways.
Seeds on fertile ground.
A smile, an encouraging word or two, asking, listening, laughter, gratitude.
All forms of prayer.

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.”― Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination