Attentive stability

"if one's sight is clear and if one stays on and works well, one's love gradually responds to the place as it really is, and one's visions gradually image possibilities that are really in it."

     Wendell Berry, "People, land, and community," In The art of the commonplace:  the agrarian essays of Wendell Berry (Washington, DC:  Counterpoint, 2002), 187, as quoted in Norman Wirzba, "Attention and responsibility:  the work of prayer," in The phenomenology of prayer, ed. Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York:  Fordham University Press, 2005), 98 (88-100).

Redeeming the time

"The future of prediction, dreary with anxiety or buoyant with hope, has to be held at bay, so that we may use this moment of time to do something, however modest, that is worthwhile and responsible, something to endure before the throne of judgment."

     Oliver O’Donovan, Self, world, and time (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2013), 17, as quoted in Andrew Errington, "Wakeful communities and digital sociality:  social media and the life of Christian communities," St. Mark’s review no. 233 (October 2015):  43 (42-59).