Back near the beginning of the month I took a couple days off from walking to rest and rejuvenate. I stayed with friends of Ann’s in the village Kirkby Malham. It sits in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
(If you’ve seen any of the episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS – which you should! – this is exactly what it looks like. And I do mean exactly, because this area is where the exterior shots were filmed.)
Read more“Most spiritual practices will eventually lose their freshness and become a source of boredom and tedium. But it is precisely there that our faith and determination are tried, and it is only through grace-filled faith and perseverance that we are able to reach the hidden treasures of these practices. It takes time–day after day and year after year–before these treasures come to light. We must stick to it.”
Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010, page 121.
Note:
Thomas mentions a series of activities, spiritual activities, that he wants his reader to persist in. Perseverance in “writing, reading, singing, lamenting, keeping silence and praying” will eventually bring a reward to the believing disciple: peace everlasting.
[Side note: at the end of my Lutheran school 6th grade, we were each assigned a topic for a one minute ‘speech’ we were to deliver at graduation. My topic was “perseverance.” I’ve wondered over the years whether my teacher was signalling that this was something he thought I needed to learn about.]
Quote:
“Continue on with what you are doing; labor perseveringly in My vineyard, and I Myself will be your reward. Continue your writing, reading, singing, lamenting, keeping silence and praying, and bearing your troubles bravely; for eternal life is worth all these combats and more.
“Peace shall come at a time known only to the Lord. And it will not last a day or a night as we calculate time; there will be light everlasting, infinite glory, unbroken peace and undisturbed rest.”
Imitatio Christi, Book 3, chapter 47, paragraph 2
Source: Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ: in Four Books. Newly ed. by Clare L. Fitzpatrick. NY: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1993.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 