A few good quotes

Going through old papers - love this quote:

“Every experience of beauty points to infinity” – Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I just need to remind myself to look for those moments of beauty, like the great storm that blew through yesterday after days of drought, and not let myself get bogged down in the particulars as we get deeper into the moving process.  For instance, I've been hunting for days a lost address book. I'm fretting about the flight times.  I can't decide which photo albums to store, if any.  Meanwhile, the days are flying by - our packers come next week. Yikes!

Happily, we took the time last night to escape on a little date.  Our friends were giving a talk on marriage for Theology on Tap, so we left the kids with a movie and went to the gourmet pizza place to hear their spiel. We were practically the oldest people there, but we tried to blend in. And even though we've been married almost as long as our friends, it's always good to hear someone else's perspective on what makes a marriage work, especially when we're in the midst of a trying time.  Our friends talked mostly about their experiences, which were interesting since they come from different backgrounds, but the gems I am holding on to are these quotes: "This too shall pass" and "You have to practice daily conversions." Very apropos to our situation.

The other highlight of the week so far was the visiting Irish priest's homily on Sunday.  We went to a later Mass than usual to meet our older boys, returning from their retreat with 48 other teens, and their renewed spirits energized the congregation.  Then the priest gave one of those homilies that makes you want to stand up and shout "Amen."  I wish I could remember more of it, but he started out with quotes from William Butler Yeats and Thomas Kinsella on aging:  Kinsella's "Mirror in February":

"Now plainly in the mirror of my soul

I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ."

And from Yeats, I think it was from "When You are Old":

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;"

Anyway, since it was the Feast of Corpus Christi, he spoke about being incarnated and about the importance of physical symbols (used a story about how the abused jr. gestapo youth, when they were being rescued from the streets after the war, couldn't sleep unless they held a piece of bread), but how we also have to feed our souls.  It was all very eloquent, but now my brain is not working well enough to remember more. So back to trying to practice detachment.