You must learn

You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.
--George MacDonald in The Day Boy and the Night Girl

Angels

We are like children, who stand in need of masters to enlighten us and direct us; and God has provided for this, by appointing his angels to be our teachers and guides.
--Saint Thomas Aquinas

It is by loving

It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I know that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return.
--George MacDonald in Phantastes

Gently, in the heart

To you, my dear and most patient friends, I offer my sincerest apology for being away for so long. I pray that you have had a blessed Christmastide and that the new year has begun well for all of you. Family and friends have needed me, and there has been little time left over to spend here. I have missed you all very much and I am grateful that you have waited for me to return.

It has been three years since I took the first step on "A Trail of Flowers," and so much has happened since then that it seems as though much more time has passed than that. The seasons have come and gone, though it appears as though Winter weather will not come at all this year to my little corner of the world. I do not miss the bitter cold: in fact, this January reminds me of those youthful days I  spent along the banks of the Mississippi River. It is almost balmy now as it was then, and so I send these warm words to you in the bleakness of Winter, along with the hope that you never forget, dear friends, that I hold you all "gently, in the heart."   

"I'll never forget the days of my youth. When the waves rippled between my toes, taking the pink and silver grains of sand back out to the depths of the sea. There was a peace then; an indescribable feeling of immortality in the ebb and flow of the tide, and the seemingly endless stretch of beach and sky. Now as I gaze out upon those same sparkling waters, I realize that youth is never left behind, but is carried always, gently, in the heart." --Hetty King of Avonlea

Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle

For I think that God hath set forth us apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honorable, but we without honor.

Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode;  And we labor, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it.  We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now. I write not these things to confound you; but I admonish you as my dearest children.  For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.

 --Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 4:9-16

Saint Thomas, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Edmund, pray for us.

All the other things in the world

 No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world. --Aristotle 

The Tree of Life

 "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life,

the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.
Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."

--Mrs. O'Brien in The Tree of Life