Presence

Presence isn’t just about savoring the sights, smells, and tastes we encounter every day. Nor is it only about taking time to appreciate and connect with our family and true friends.  It’s also about being authentic in this world and creating connections between ourselves and those who suffer.

— Jennifer Grant, Wholehearted Living, p. 90

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Leisure

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification.  To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

— Pope Francis

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Stillness

Sit still and take several deep breaths. Close your eyes. What do you hear? The refrigerator’s hum? The ticking of a clock? A bird outside? Listen for a few moments. Open your eyes. What do you see? The wisp of cloud that is is smeared across on an otherwise clear, blue sky? Your daughter’s smile?

Slow down your mind today and notice something you’ve been missing. Maybe it’s the way carrots bleed orange on the cutting board when you chop them. Or maybe it’s the flecks of gold in your son’s brown eyes.

Maybe it’s a desire for more stillness that gently tugs at your sleeve.

— Jennifer Grant, Wholehearted Living, p. 71

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Infinite and near

My daughter picks up a dozen rocks a day on the road by our house. Not special, beautiful rocks, but common pebbles. She lines them up on our windowsills and they become works of art. My son collects sticks and fallen tree limbs. A feather or a piece of beach glass is a treasure to them.

The art critic John Berger once imagined heaven as invisible but close; we might find it, he mused, by simply picking up the saltshaker. The small and unremarkable are transformed in an instant by this God who is both infinite and near, vast and small enough to fit in a palm, in a wafer of bread.

— Jessica Mesman Griffith, in Daily Inspiration for Women, p. 118

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