I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid.
Ocean is my potion, I need vitamin sea.
I got better the way everyone gets better: by trial and error and error and error, by fumbling around and making mistakes but not giving up and working incredibly hard at it every day and eventually, through a painful and laborious process of eliminating every wrong turn, finding my way.
Acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh pervails completely over the spirit. You don't just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don't care, and you don't care that you don't care.
Not everything that nearly kills you makes you stronger. Sometimes it just makes you hate yourself for being so easily wounded yet unable to die.
Searching for a better description of this rotting sadness, I came upon the concept of acedia. In Christian theology, it’s an antecedent to sloth, the least sexy of the seven deadly sins. Thomas Aquinas winnowed it down for me: acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh prevails completely over the spirit. You don’t just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don’t care, and you don’t care that you don’t care.
I was called a bookish child. Mother sent me to a ballet teacher in Cincinnati when I was nine years old. I guess I was an awkward child and the family wanted me to be graceful. When I found out I liked to dance and people seemed to like to watch me, I was determined to go places.
You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.
Meditation really helps create not only a sense of balance. . . but serenity and kind of a calm state of mind.
There is always an incredible amount of things vying for our attention at home. I'm not saying you should never do the laundry, or pay attention to the kids, but for most of us, we're not present to how much time we spend on those. Anything that wastes your time is a waste of money.