Liturgies

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the Alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

I have come to understand that the voice of God is all around me. God is not a silent God. God is speaking to me all the time. In everything. Through everyone. I am only now beginning to listen, let alone to hear.

Joan Chittister,
Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir, p.18

We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it. But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. … I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, God’s will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life.

― Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, p. 81

Detail from photograph of paper doves hanging from the ceiling of the Church of the Most Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Lviv, Ukraine thanks to SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Live News