“If she had said, No,

The world would not have stopped:

Birds would have flown high still into sky,

The heavens would have proclaimed his glory

And the firmament the work of his hands.

We would have gone on reproving him,

Unaware of how deeply down

His love might plunge into our affliction,

Unaware of how he might have taken upon himself

The consequences of our nos.” —Pádraig J. Daly

“This is the irrational season

when love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

there’d have been no room for the child.”  —Madeline L’Engle

“Draw the circle wide, draw it wider still.

: “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ― Meister Eckhart

"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it."  — Gabriel García Márquez

“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”  —Psalm 24:1

"Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good."  

From our houses and our homes, you call us.

From our work and our worry, you call us.

From our planning and striving, you call us.

You call us and promise to feed us with the bread of heaven and the cup of hope.

Come, let us turn our hearts and worship.

"A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so."  — Chinua Achebe

O God, “By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity, override our presumed deficits, quiet our anxieties of lack. Transform our perceptual field to see the abundance . . . mercy upon mercy, blessing upon blessing.”   —adapted from Walter Brueggemann