Sehnsucht - A deep-seated longing for joy: "that central music in every pure experience"; it may stab you but once you scrutnize that joy it becomes elusive. - An unatainable extasy which all your life has hovered just beyond the grasp of your conciousness.

The great breakthrough came when Lewis learned to discern between the desire for joy and the desire for that of which joy was the desiring. As long as you seek joy it evades you, but when you seek God, you find joy.

Knox Chamblin. Class notes from C.S. LEWIS. AN ELECTIVE IN THEOLOGY.

Students who arrive expecting to find a "spiritual hothouse" often find seminary to be a singular test of faith. The crushing academic work-load, the uninspiring and unhelpful courses, the financial agonies, the too-busy professors, the equally hard-pressed fellow students all contribute to the spiritual debilitation.

John Frame. A PROPOSAL FOR A NEW SEMINARY. (make sure you read Frame's two postscripts)

The house of my soul is too small to let you in; you will have to expand it. It lies in ruins; you will have to rebuild it. There are things in it, I know and confess, that are offensive to your sight. But who will clean it up? To whom else besides you can I cry out, "Clear me from my hidden faults...?"

St Augustine. THE CONFESSIONS OF AUGUSTINE IN MODERN ENGLISH (edited by sherwood wirt).

I'm coining a personal principle: if given the freedom to choose between organizing and making stuff, don't let the allure of organization get in the way of making.

David Seah. A return to spirited blather.

Your leadership can only move as fast as the progress made by the people you serve.

ericbryant: RT @ jagwick

Maybe what the world needs, more than for you to come alive...Is for you to become the kind of person who's alive by meeting the needs of the world.

Jason Jaggard

Drawing on nothing fancier than the poetry of his own life, let him use words and images that help make the surface of our lives transparent to the truth that lies deep within them, which is the wordless truth of who we are and who God is and the Gospel of our meeting.

Frederick Buechner. TELLING THE TRUTH: THE GOSPEL AS TRAGEDY, COMEDY & FAIRY TALE.