The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value. The world doesn't care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.

The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and . . . he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.