#47

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature- but that is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

#46

#45

I knew that no one comes holier than anyone else, that nowhere is better than anywhere else. I knew that the resurrection of the mind was possible. I knew that no matter how absurd and ironic it was, acknowledging death and the finite was what gave you life and presence. You might as well make it good. Nature, family, children, cadavers, birth, rivers in which we pee and bathe, splash and flirt and float memorial candles- in these you would find holiness.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith

#44

There is now, living in New York City, a church-sanctioned hermit, Theresa Mancuso, who wrote recently, "The thing we desperately need is to face the way it is."

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

#43

I finally figured out that I had a choice: I could suffer a great deal, or not, or for a long time. Or I could have the combo platter: suffer, breathe, pray, play, cry, and try to help people. There was a meaning in pain; it taught you how to survive with a modicum of grace when you did not get what you wanted.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)

#42

A long time ago I read Jack Kerouac's essential for prose. Four of them, in particular, have provided me with heart for the path:

Accept loss forever

Be submissive to everything, open, listening

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge

Be in love with your life

Believe me, you, too, can find yourself inside the huge terrain of writing. No one is so odd as to be left out.

Now, please, go. Write your asses off.

-Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

#41

Make a line, write a sentence. See what happens.

-George Crane