licking honey off a thorn

“My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.”

[Louis Adamic]

the reader's soul

"A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sounds is the reader's soul."

[Marie-Henri Beyle / Stendahl]

brief and bitter / few and evil

"Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "how many are the days of the years of your life?" And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life..." 

[Genesis 47:7-9]

"Thetis answered [Apollo] then letting the tears fall: "Ah me, my child. Your birth was bitterness. Why did I raise you? If only you could sit by your ships untroubled, not weeping, since indeed your lifetime is to be short, of no length. Now it has befallen that your life must be brief and bitter beyond all men's." 

[from The Iliad by Homer (Book I:413-418)]

breaks the spirit

"A gentle tongue is a tree of life,
but perverseness in it breaks the spirit." 

[Proverbs 15:4]

to gray hairs I will carry you

"In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory...
Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been born by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save." 

[Isaiah 45:25; 46:3-4]

to win us to our harm

"And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths..."

[Lord Banquo in Shakespeare's Macbeth]

Biscuit by Jane Kenyon

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can't bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

[Jane Kenyon]

it's worse to judge

"In our day it’s worse to judge evil than to do evil." (Os Guinness)

anything less

"O my soul, thou art capable of enjoying God; woe to thee if thou art contented with anything less than God."  

[Frances de Sales]

a divine choice

"Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are...a divine choice."  

[Henry Nouwen]

become smaller

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!"

[G.K. Chesterton]

more outstanding, more praised

"If you want to experience the flow of love as never before, the next time you are in a competitive situation, pray that the others around you will be more outstanding, more praised, and more used of God than yourself." 

[Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines]

carrying on with your conspiracies, filling the room with a sense of unease

If you come to find me affable
Build a replica for me
Would the idea to you be laughable
Of a pale facsimile?

So will you come to burn an effigy?
It should keep the flies away
And when you long to burn this effigy
It should be of the hours that slip away, slip away

It could be you, it could be me
Working the door, drinking for free
Carrying on with your conspiracies
Filling the room with a sense of unease

Fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone
Like the words of a man who's spent a little too much time alone
When one has spent too much time alone

So will you come to burn my effigy?
It should keep the flies away
If you long to burn an effigy
It should be of a man whose has lost his way, slips away

It could be you, it could be me
Working the door, drinking for free
Carrying on with your conspiracies
Filling the room with a sense of unease

Fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone
Like the words of a man who's spent a little too much time alone
When one has spent too much time alone

[Andrew Bird, "Effigy"]

like waifs clustering around a blazing fire

"Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about [the Bible], holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God." 

[Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place]

Christ in the parent, in the child

"Christ incarnated in the parent is the only hope of incarnating Christ in the child..." - Ann Voskamp

what you do with your solitude

"Your religion is what you do with your solitude." 

[William Temple]

it's either a reality or a sham

"How can you cope with the end a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the more devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it’s a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between..."

- N.T. Wright

a sprinting, shoving age

"Our age is not the age of the meditative man. It's a sprinting, shoving age. Daily, new antidotes for contemplation spring into being and leap out from store counters."  

[Norman Cousins]

but behold, bloodshed

"For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, an outcry!"

Isaiah 5:7

act as if you are living in a temple

"To be reverent is to act as if you are living in a temple."