And then God gave me insight: this was winter. It would end, in time, but not by my own doing. My responsibility was simply to know the season, and match my actions and inactions to it. It was to learn the slow hard discipline of waiting. It was my season to believe in spite of – to believe in the absence of evidence or emotion, when there’s nothing, no bud, no color, no light, no birdsong, to validate belief. It was my time to walk without sight.

Because we are what we love, our identity and our dignity depend on what we love and the depth and passion with which we love.

We honestly think that we ourselves and those around us should be proficient with spiritual power, moving and acting with agility and endurance, wisdom and purity, able to conquer long-established habits of sloth and rebelliousness, simply on the basis of our desire and effort and sincerity... We have to train for the spiritual life.

To worship is to ascribe to God things that are true about him until we actually believe that truth and live according to it.

Laughter – just good bone-shaking, belly-jiggling, light-in-the-head laughter, is a sure sign of health. The only one who hates it is Satan and all his wannabes.

Simplicity is something more, something other than just doing without or doing it yourself. Its essence is neither forsaking nor striving. Its essence, rather, is listening: What has God put in your heart? Simplicity is, once having discerned that, being content with it. Simplifying it further: simplicity is being content with God.

Stabilizing an Unstable Economy,16 Minsky described.

Sabbath’s golden rule: Cease from what is necessary. Embrace that which gives life.

Sabbath's golden rule: Cease from what is necessary. Embrace that which gives life.

Physical sickness we usually defy. Soul sickness we often resign ourselves to.