HOMESICK FOR THE FUTURE

'Nowhere was my sense of belonging as complete or unambiguous as it was in my childhood home, but if I saw that sense of belonging as something exclusive to the ironstone house, then I would never really leave, never grow up, never look for my place in the world. Somehow I had to turn my nostalgia inside-out, so that my love for the house, for the sense of belonging I experienced there, instilled not a constant desire to go back but a desire to find that sense of belonging, that security and happiness, in some other place, with some other person, or in some other mode of being. The yearning had to be forward-looking. You had to be homesick for somewhere you had not yet seen, nostalgic for things that had not yet happened.' 

William Fiennes, The Snow Geese, p.203. 

PSALM 23

'...only a few months before I had copied the last verse of the psalm into a notebook: 'But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.' It had occurred to me how often the the authors of scripture depict God as a house or shelter in which one might dwell, as if faith were itself a home, affording all the protection, comfort, stediness and sense of belonging that home implies - as if the need for God were homesickness in paraphrase.' 

William Fiennes, The Snow Geese, p.104. 

A GAMBLING 'CURATE'

'...he looked like a sheep with a secret sorrow.'
PG Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves in Life with Jeeves, p.31. 

THE FUTILITY OF IDOLATRY

'...the problem with idolatry is that it is an exercise in futility, a penchant that ends in profound dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Idolatry, we might say doesn't "work" - which is why it creates restless hearts. In idolatry we are enjoying what we're supposed to be using. We are treating as ultimate what is only penultimate; we are heaping infinite, immortal expectations on created things that will pass away; we are settling on some aspect of the creation rather than being referred through to its Creator.' 

James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.82. 

THE IDENTITY QUESTION

'The crucial question is not, Who I am? but, Whose am I?'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.310. 

HOW TO BE REMEMBERED

'The uncommitted person is the unremembered person. A person who does not commit to some loyalty outside the self leaves no deep mark on the world.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.299. 

THE SECRET OF LIFE

'The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of every day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.' 

Henry Moore in David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.295. 

PROTRACTED LONELINESS

'Protracted loneliness causes you to shut down socially, and to be more suspicious of any social contact. You become hyper vigilant. You start to be more likely to take offense where none was intended, and to be afraid of strangers. You start to be afraid of the very thing you need the most.' 

Johann Hari in David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.269. 

A BEAUTIFUL PRAYER

'Guard Thou my soul,
strengthen my body,
elevate my senses,
direct my course,
order my habits,
shape my character,
bless my actions,
fulfill my prayers,
inspire holy thoughts,
pardon the past,
correct the present,
prevent the future.'
Lancelot Andrewes, Private Devotions - Seventh Day: Intercessions (Edited by Alexander Whyte), p.25. 

GOOD COMMUNICATION

'She heard a quiet sniffle of laughter and a moment's silence, the way Lank held space for you in case you wanted to continue, without crowding the words that might need a minute to form.' 

Anne Lamott, Imperfect Birds, p.156. 

PERFECTIONISM MEETS HUMANKIND

'There's no room for perfectionism when you're dealing with something as broken as real human beings, only bemused affection.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.183. 

THE PICKLE THAT IS MARRIAGE

'The only way to thrive in marriage is to become a better person - more patient, wise, compassionate, persevering, communicative, and humble. When we make a commitment, we put ourselves into a pickle we have to be selfless to get out of.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.174. 

INTIMACY

'Intimacy happens when somebody shares something emotionally meaningful, and the other person receives it and shares back.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.151. 

MARRIAGE AS SURVEILLANCE

'...to be married is to volunteer for the most thorough surveillance program known to humankind. The person who is married is watched, more or less all the time. Worse, the awareness that you are being watched compels you to watch yourself. This new self-consciousness introduces you to yourself, to all the stupid things you do, from leaving the cupboards open, to the way you are silent and grumpy in the morning, to the way you avoid any difficult conversation or play passive aggressive when you are feeling hurt, as if life were some elaborate game of victimhood in which if you make your spouse feel guilty for hurting you you will get a slice of cherry cake at the end.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.145. 

WRITING

'Writing is really about structure and traffic management. If you don't have the structure right, nothing else will happen.'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.127.  

OLD AGE

'Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.'

Philip Roth, Everyman, p.156. 

HOW GRACE BEGINS

'To desire the aid of grace is the beginning of grace.'
Augustine of Hippo in James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.67. 

TRUE FREEDOM MEANS DEPENDENCE

'...the irony: my freedom of choice brings me to the point where I need someone else to give me a will that is actually free. And not merely free to choose - since that's what got me here in the first place - be free to choose the good. If freedom is going to be more than mere freedom from, if freedom is the power of freedom for, then I have to trade autonomy for a different kind of dependence. Coming to end of myself is the realization that I'm dependent on someone other than myself if I'm going to be truly free.' 

James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.66. 

WHEN YOUR FREEDOM TO BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE IS LIMITED BY YOURSELF

'It is a terrible and terrifying thing to know what you want to be and then realize you're the only one standing in your way - to want with every fiber of your soul to be someone different, to escape the "you" you've made of yourself, only to fall back into the self you hate, over and over again and over again. After the thrill of independence and experiments in self-actualization, drinking your so called "potential for Being" to the dregs, when the exhaustion starts to set in and then eventually morphs into a kind of self-disgust, you can reach a point where you know you want a different life but are enchained to the one you've made.'  

James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.64. 

CONVERSION DEFINED

'Conversion is not an arrival at our final destination; its the acquisition of a compass.'
James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, p.50. 

BEWARE THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW YOU

'The people who are exposed only to your public ministry persona, your books or Internet blogs, and your voice when it is in a conference or on a dvd are functionally incapable of giving you an accurate view of yourself. You must take their congratulatory words as well meant but lacking accuracy and therefore spiritual helpfulness.'  

Paul David Tripp in Emma Ineson, Ambition, p.112.