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Quote by Sarah Elaine Smith

“I felt good. I usually had a window of optimism after I bathed, which wore off by the time I was dry again. But for just then, I was washed. I was hungry in a clean right way I hadn't found in some time.”

Quote by Sarah Elaine Smith

Book:Marilou Is Everywhere
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Marilou Is Everywhere

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Sarah Elaine Smith

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“Can I discover how to live so that life ceases to be problematic, so that one lives in the eternal and not in grip of the falsities of time? Can I expunge selfishness from my gene pool? Can I mine from my central chord the ability to demonstrate empathy, supply a compress of sympathy, and extend charity for people in need of assistance? Can I concentrate all my cognitive material to express grace and thankfulness for the world? Must I shed the tattered shirt of yesteryear in order to advance to the next stage in life? When the pigmented henna of the naked self is exposed, do I see the resin of my elemental character more clearly? Stripped of the restrictive pig iron of disappointment, I realize that the mystique of the future trumps the perspicuity of my blemished past. Letting go of the past and torching a wagonload of personal guilt is freeing. Once disburdened from a repressive sense of a remorseful and shamefaced self, I am free to prowl about uninhibited and nurture a mantle of renewed optimism for the brilliant seasons to come.”

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Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

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Book:The Four Loves
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“Cecily said, "That's the difference between optimism and naivety. No one in this room is naive. Naive people haven't been through real trials yet, so they think it could never happen to them. Optimists have been through it already, and we keep getting up each day because we believe we can keep it from happening again. Or we trick ourselves into thinking it." Richard said, "All belief is a trick.”

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Book:The Great Believers
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“Our failure is not that we chose earth over heaven: it is that we fail to see the divine in the earth, already active and working, pouring forth grace and spilling glory into our lives. Artists, whether they are professed believers or not, tap into this grace and glory. There is a "terrible beauty" operating throughout creation. If Christ announced his postresurrection reality into the darkness, even into hell, as the Bible and Christian catechism suggests, then, as theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, there is not one inch of earth that Christ does not call "Mine!”

BeautyOptimismResurrectionGnosticismAbraham Kuyper
Book:Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
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