Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.

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

Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.