Jesus invites us to joy. The holiness to which we are called is to know joy in its fullness. We let ourselves be drawn to the Tender One whose face is unbridled joy. We are beckoned to this locus of joy, not a reckoning with the error of our ways but God saying, unabashedly smiling, “Get over here.”
— Gregory Boyle, Forgive Everyone Everything, p. 18
Photo: Cardinal, South Riding, Virginia, December 31, 2026
God did not make us to hate us.
God did not dream up the color yellow and craft the scientific art of making butter from milk and whimsically birth cumulus clouds just to . . . disdain a little girl who misunderstood the cosmic structure.
God did not count the hairs on our heads or the stars that would hang in the sky over billions of years just to resentfully accept desperate people begging to be spared from brutal torment.
I know this because maybe heaven isn’t a pit stop between Raleigh and LA, but heaven is all around us. Breaking in and barreling down walls and peeping up like dandelions in the asphalt. God would not be so creative and wily and beautiful all at the same time if God’s desire was punishment.
— Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p. xi
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 14, 2025
So clean your windows. Take a look again at the world and see it, this time, the way you were meant to see it. Recover your sacramental wonder and be shocked anew by the color green. Become like a child and enter the kingdom of heaven. Count your blessings and rejoice. Always rejoice. Look to the horizon in hope, even in the Valley of Dry Bones. And remember why you matter. You are a child of God.
–Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 116
Photo: Blackwater River Valley, West Virginia, October 8, 2025
It’s tempting to dismiss these bright moments as merely flashes of serendipity, of coincidence. I contend that they are limited only by our response to them. We’ve already considered that hallowed moments are often found in small things and small places and that God does not have a habit of appearing to us in spectacular ways. Rather, we note God’s presence when we take time to observe the humble, everyday miracles and, now and then, the bright moments. These will not make the newspapers, but they should surely hold space in our private journals.
–Tracy Balzer, A Journey of Sea and Stone, p. 81
Photo: Sunrise, South Riding, Virginia, March 7, 2025
Recovering this sacramental ontology is the next big step toward enchanting our faith in this skeptical age. This is a one-story universe. So let’s stop going through the day living as if God doesn’t exist. God is everywhere present. God isn’t that mysterious neighbor living in the apartment above you. God is closer than you can imagine. The signs and sacraments are all around you. Christ is playing in ten thousand places. The world hums with sacred electricity. Listen for the laughter and follow your joy. You are standing at the gateway to heaven. You are living in the House of God.
–Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 90
Photo: Burg Grafendahn, Germany, June 18, 2024
As Paul says, “He has not left himself without witness.” God’s voice is heard in the rain and in the harvest. God is close where there is good food and the laughter of friends. God has been with you this entire time, declares Paul, “filling your hearts with joy.” Start with joy if you’re looking for enchantment. Let gladness be your guide to the gateway of heaven.
— Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 90
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 11, 2025
It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.
But a child rejoices in presents!
— Madeleine L’Engle, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, collected by Carole F. Chase
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024
Do something today that will bring you joy even if you know you will not do it well. Let go of the idea that you have to be the best at something to do it. Train yourself to crave experience, not perfection.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 139
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, July 1, 2022
Do not turn away joy — even if it arrives at an inconvenient time, even if you think you should be grieving, even if you think it’s “too soon.” Joy is always on time.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 105
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, 1/17/2022
Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection. . . . Joy and resentment cannot coexist.
— Henri J. M. Nouwen, You Are Beloved, p. 170 (from The Return of the Prodigal Son)