If you do return to your birth country, it will be as a stranger, and you may find that the lemon groves whose scent is still so fragrant in your memory have been paved into parking lots. You will never find again the specific places or people or dreams that you’ve lost.
—Susan Cain, Bittersweet
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“Could I too choose to make the pain stop by staying busy? Eventually, the action was over and everyone had to go home. There is always a point when the doing ends, and then we are faced with the deafening and horrendous silence that is our thoughts.”
—Joe Watson Jr., The End of Despair -
“It is not freedom when we say to people that everything is permitted. That is slavery.”
—Saint Paisios the Athonite -
Fr. Bishoy was away from the monastery for a short time, and upon his return he was told a monk had passed away. In the world, even though a person who has died is enjoying the sights and splendor of Paradise, people on earth tend to ignore that and simply bemoan their death. For monastics, however, death is not treated in the usual manner; they regard it as simply leaving the monastery and returning home to Paradise. Hence, upon hearing that his friend had died, Fr. Bishoy simply said, “Oh what a shame, I wish I could have said goodbye before he left.” But that was it: no tears, no big deal.
Orthodox Afterlife
John Habib -
What is this whole world, with all its continents, its past, present, and future? What does it amount to? Nothing! I resonate with a statement from one scholar who once said: “When I was a child I saw myself in comparison to the world as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean.” So what if someone lives in any given city within a specific country, which is part of a specific continent, which in turn is a small part of planet Earth, itself just one of innumerable planets? What would that mean? It is nothing. What does this person turn out to be? He says: “When I was a child, I saw myself as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean, but now I know that I am the endless ocean and the whole world is a small speck of sand on my beach.”
One who sits to think of the world finds that it is frivolous. If you asked him, “What is the world?” he would say, “A small speck of sand on my beach.” And if you asked, “What is your endless beach?” he would reply, “This is the beach leading to eternity.” If you see yourself as the image and likeness of God, then what does this world amount to? With all its noise, struggles, desires, and status, what does the world amount to? Nothing. This is a person’s valuation of the world.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us -
The person who really knows what’s going on, a lot of times, you find him more reserved.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri
SO GOOD QUOTES 