From These Hills

Beauty & Wisdom from Appalachia


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Key Moments

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“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because
in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

Frederick Buechner, 1926-
Presbyterian minister and American author

 


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Sown Into Time

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“It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools — that we are sown into time
like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time
and dissolved here, spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet,
and those feet likely to fell us over a tree root or jam us on a stone.
The joke part is that we forget it.
Give the mind two seconds alone and it thinks it’s Pythagoras.
We wake up a hundred times a day and laugh.”

Annie Dillard, 1945-
“Holy the Firm”
Pulitzer Prize winning American author

 


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Something to Say

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Looking towards Johnson City from Horseback Ridge

“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong.
I want to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in
words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole.”

Andrew to Alexa in “The Elect Lady” (1888)
George MacDonald, 1824-1905

 


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Evening Prayer

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“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight,
and give your angels and saints charge over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest your weary ones,
Bless your dying ones. Soothe your suffering ones.
Pity your afflicted ones, shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love’s sake.”

St. Augustine, 354-430
Theologian and important figure in the development of Western Christianity

 


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What if?

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Beauty Spot sunset, Unicoi Co., TN

“Look at the many ‘if’ questions we raise:
What am I going to do if I do not find a spouse, a house, a job,
a friend, a benefactor? What am I going to do if they fire me,
if I get sick, if an accident happens, if I lose my friends,
if my marriage does not work out, if a war breaks out?
What if tomorrow the weather is bad, the buses are on strike,
or an earthquake happens? What if someone steals my money,
breaks into my house, rapes my daughter, or kills me?”
……
Jesus says simply, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.”

Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Dutch Catholic priest and writer
(as quoted by Brennan Manning)

 


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Desire

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Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers

“I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness,
as that…I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden,
with very moderate conveniences joined to them,
and there dedicate the remainder of my life
to the culture of them and the study of nature.”

Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667
English poet

 

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