{"author":"Kathleen Norris","author_id":"Kathleen+Norris","total_quotes":33,"quotes":[{"text":"To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["cereal","community","consumerism","humility","options","preference","self-centered"],"id":27457,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"...The imagination works not so much through inspiration as through perseverance. One must slog through the false starts, spot the wrong words and hold out for the right ones, and above all, be vigilant about staying on the path of revision, no matter how uncomfortable or even painful the journey might become.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["creativity","poetry","writing"],"id":30373,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"I recall the passage in the letter to the Hebrews in which we are reminded that Christ has already done everything for us. It speaks of the Christ who 'offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins' (Hebrews 10:12). And yet the church teaches, and our experience of faith confirms, that Christ continues to be with us and to pray for us. The paradox may be unraveled, I think, if we remember that when human beings try to 'do everything at once and for all and be through with it,' we court acedia, self-destruction and death. Such power is reserved for God, who alone can turn what is 'already done' into something that is ongoing and ever present. It is a quotidian mystery.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["jesus","sacrifice"],"id":46705,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"Hate is all a lie  there is no truth in hate.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["forgiveness"],"id":47281,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"Marriage: a job. Happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["marriage"],"id":57590,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"Friendship is an art  and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["friendship"],"id":108744,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["city","country"],"id":124399,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["binghamton","geography","kathleen-norris","memoir","prophetic-imagination","small-towns","spiritual-geography","spiritual-memoir"],"id":165751,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"When you come to a place where you have to left or right,' says Sister Ruth, 'go straight ahead.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["advice","decision-making","mysticism","mystics","suffering"],"id":178028,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"},{"text":"True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.","author":"Kathleen Norris","tags":["awareness","dignity","hospitality"],"id":181525,"author_id":"Kathleen+Norris"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":33,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}