• “Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.”

    —Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace

  • Capriciousness is the germ of the corruption of the heart, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of evil, and an abomination to the Lord.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I am rising to do the work of a human being. What do I have to complain about, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” But it’s nicer here …

    So were you born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? But we have to sleep sometime… Agreed. But nature set a limit on that, as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There’s still more of that to do.

    You don’t love yourself enough. For if you did, you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is not then your labor in the world just as worthy of respect and worth your effort?

    —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  • Restaurants meals could feed two or three people, but most of us eat whatever is put in front of us. When we went out, I slowed down, enjoying time with my family more than the food I ate. Since I only ate a third of the food I order, I felt great on the way home.

    Are We Too Busy To Enjoy Our Food?

  • When the soul desires to seek after a variety of foods, then it is time to afflict it with bread and water that it may learn to be grateful for a mere morsel of bread. For satiety desires a variety of dishes, but hunger thinks itself happy to get its fill of nothing more than bread.

    — Evagrius Ponticus, Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer

  • Whenever the process of the soul’s submission to God reaches its full stride, man will never be able to bear any pleasure, comfort, or corruptive seduction that draws him away from his state of submission to God and his enjoyment of his obedience to him. This is freedom, absolute freedom.

    —Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life

  • If you fall under discipline, know for sure that this is a great profit, for God chastises the soul that has forgotten its weakness and has been puffed up by its talents and success. This is carried on until it realizes its weakness, especially when God does not provide in tribulation a way of escape. He besieges the soul from all sides and embitters it with inward and outward humiliation, whether by sin or by scandal, until it abhors itself, curses its own intelligence, and disowns its counsel. Finally, it surrenders itself to God, feeling crushed and lowly. At such a time, it becomes easy for man to hate himself. He even wishes it to be hated by everybody. This is the way of true humility. It leads to total surrender to divine plan. It ends up with freeing one’s soul from the tyranny of the ego, with its deception, its stubbornness, and its vanity.

    —Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life

  • Believe me, if you are willing to start at seven o’clock in the evening, without having duties to busy you, and even to put off supper if needed, and to sit with God and read His Word at length without looking at the clock, you will find yourself up until morning. “O Lord, I’ve been up seven hours reading and praying without feeling the time pass!”

    —Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life

  • There will be a storm of issues. Worries will surround you, and maintaining your Christian life will not be easy.  But don’t worry.  God will help you. Do what is within your power.  Can you pray for five minutes a day? Then pray. And if you can’t manage five minutes, pray for two. The rest is God’s affair. Contrary to our expectations, there is no ‘must.’  Such a word does not exist within the Christian life. The idea that something ‘must’ be, or ‘must’ take place, is a product of the intellect,…a logical conclusion….But the word ‘must’ has never moved anyone to do anything. On the contrary, it makes you feel like a slave and discourages you from moving forward.

    —Elder Aimilianos

  • Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.

    ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness