Quotes from Kathleen Norris

One of the advantages of laws is that you can follow them blind, when you have lost all your moorings. You can't follow your instincts, but you can remember your rule.

Because we are made in God's image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

When I see teenagers out in public with their families, holding back, refusing to walk with mom and dad, ashamed to be seen as part of a family, I have to admit that I have acted that way myself, at times, with regard to my Christian inheritance. A hapless and mortally embarrassed adolescent lurked behind the sophisticated mask I wrote in my twenties: faith was something for little kids and grandmas, not me.

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?

Whatever you do repeatedly," he writes, "has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person— even if you're not totally engaged' in every minute!

In choosing a bare bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.

if the scriptures don't sometimes pierce us like a sword, we're not paying close enough attention.

religious traditions build up meaning only over time and in a communal context. They can't be purchased like a burger or a pair of shoes.

Ironically, it seems that it is by the means of seemingly perfunctory daily rituals and routines that we enhance the personal relationships that nourish and sustain us.

Anger, [Evagrius] wrote, is given to us by God to help us confront true evil. We err when we use it casually, against other people, to gratify our own desires for power or control.