From "Abba's Child" by Brennan Manning

"On February 8, 1956, in a Little Chapel in Loretto, Pennsylvania, I was ambushed by Jesus of Nazareth.  The road I've traveled these last thirty-eight years is pockmarked by disastrous victories and magnificent defeats, soul-diminishing successes and life-enhancing failures.  Seasons of fidelity and betrayral, periods of consolation and desolation, zeal and apathy are not unknown to me.  And there have been times...

   when the felt presence of God was more real to me than the chair I am sitting on;

   when the Word ricocheted like broken-backed lightning in every corner of my soul;

   when a storm of desire carried me to places I had never visited.

   And there have been other times...

   when I identified with the words of Mae West: "I used to be Snow White- but I drifted';

   when the Word was as stale as old ice cream and as bland as tame sausage;

   when the fire in my belly flickered and died;

   when I mistook dried-up enthusiasm for gray-haired wisdom;

   when I dismissed youthful idealism as mere naivete;

   when I preferred cheap slivers of glass to the pearl of great price.

If you relate to any of these experiences, you might want to browse through this book and pause to reclaim your core identity as Abba's Child."

From "Markings," by Dag Hammarskjold     Whitsunday, 1961

"I don't know Who- or what- put the question, I don't know when it was put.  I don't even remember answering.  But at some point I did answer Yes to Someone- or Something- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.  From that moment I have known what it means "not to look back," and "to take no thought for the morrow."  Led by the Ariadne's thread of my answer through the labyrinth of Life, I came to a time and a place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that the price for committing one's life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation.  After that, the word "courage" lost its meaning, since nothing could be taken from me.  As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and one man's experience.  Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it.  Also behind each of the words from the Cross."


"The House With Golden Windows," by T.S. Eliot

"This is a story told of a young boy who lived with his parents in a cottage on a hillside, overlooking a wide valley.  His greatest joy was to sit on the doorstep on summer evenings, and gaze across the valley to a house miles away on the opposite hillside, for, just as the sun was sinking in the west, the windows of that house would burst into flame, shining dazzlingly with golden light.  How perfectly happy the people must be who live there, he thought!  One day he packed sandwiches and set off to find the house with the golden windows, but it was farther off than he expected, and it was already towards sunset as he climbed steeply uphill.  To his disappointment the house was a plain cottage after all, and the windows ordinary windows.  The good people there offered him supper, and made up a bed in the kitchen, for it was too late now for him to return.  That night, in his dream, he asked directions of a girl about his age.  "The house with the golden windows?  Yes, I've seen it."  And she pointed.  He woke to the early song of the birds.  Drawing the curtain aside he looked out.  There far across the valley, was his own house- and, wonder of wonders, its windows flashed with gold in the brightness of the morning sun.
          And the end of all our exploring
          will be to arrive where we started
          and know the place for the first time."