Everybody gets to that point, right? I know it’s not just me. Where everything is so, so loud. If you could live inside the tranquility of noise cancelling headphones for a month – a week – even a day! – it would make everything a little more bearable.
I hit my wall, after a super-high-stress summer/2024 in general. I had to drop out of a few things to get my peace back, and I’ll tell you what I did. I deactivated Instagram and Facebook, and that alone turned down a lot of the volume, more than I expected. I didn’t plan a definite time frame for my quietude, but it lasted about 8 days, and then I felt ready to more adeptly manage input and could tune back in a little. While on hiatus, I spent time reflecting on some quotables from the Saints. Here are a few that bear contemplation.
- “Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.” -St Teresa of Avila
- “Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude.” -St Terese of Lisieux
- “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” -St Mother Teresa
- “Trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.” -St Teresa of Avila
- “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.” -St Pope John Paul II
- “What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.” -St Catherine of Sienna
- “When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God.” -St Teresa of Avila
- “Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him.” -St John of the Cross
I am choosing peace as I move forward into this new season. Peace and gratitude. And so, providentially, in that frame of mind, I came across a wonderful post on Facebook by Timothy Jones, which I will share with you in closing:
I’ve been thinking about food this morning. My own homemade toast, with jam, and coffee on the porch. And cream for the coffee! Are you kidding? What a boon.
I too often forget to be grateful for these kinds of things.
People can’t make sense of an eternity in heaven spent praising God, but praise is only gratitude made tangible, and gratitude is the necessary condition for real happiness. God doesn’t need our praise, and being God, doesn’t want it except for the sake of our own happiness. It’s not a heavenly requirement, it’s as spontaneous as laughter.
Our problem since Eden is this pall of amnesia that makes us forget, or makes us unable to even see, the incredible grace in ordinary things.
The word “ordinary” reflects this problem, meaning “common… according the the usual course”. We take for granted all these astonishing things simply because they are repeated every day; the sun coming up, the earth under our feet… everything.
Toast & coffee.
— Timothy Jones
