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. Kathleen Norris
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More Quotes By Kathleen Norris
  1. The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.
  2. This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.
  3. I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
  4. Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.
  5. When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening.. .. I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.
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