From unknown:
Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda: The church reformed and always to be reformed.” RefMgr field[22]: 1″
From Berdeyev, Quoted in Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction:
There is something morally repulsive about modern activistic theories which deny contemplation and recognize nothing but struggle. For them not a single moment has value in itself, but is only a means for what follows.”
From Anonymous, Prayer":
Great God of the old and the new, take our lives and make them like new wine. Refresh our spirits. Disturb our apathy. Strengthen us with your courage. For we seek to be new people, and your presence gives us joy. Be with us as we worship, and as we go from this place in work and play. Through Christ with us. Amen.
From G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, The Unfinished Temple", (April 1994) at page 15:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
From William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree":
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
From William Butler Yeats, A Cradle Song":
The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God’s laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.
From William Wordsworth, 'The World Is Too Much with Us', in Immortal Poems of the English Language, at 260:
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckeled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
From William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting The Banks of the Wye During a Tour," (July 13, 1798),:
. . . .These Beauteous forms / Through a long absence, have not been to me/ As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;/ But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din/ Of towns and cities, I have owed to them/ In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,/ felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; and passing even into my purer mind,/ With tranquil restoration – feelings, too,/ of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps/ As have no slight or trivial influence,/ On that best portion of a good man’s life,/ His little, nameless, unremembered acts/ Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,/ To them I may have owed another gift,/ Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,/. . . .
If this/ Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft –/ In darkness and amid the many shapes/ of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir/ Unprofitable, and the fever o the world,/ Have hung upon the beatings of my heart -/ How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,/ O silvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,/ How often has my spirit turned to thee!/ And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,/ With many recognitions dim and faint,/ And somewhat of a sad perplexity,/ The picture of the mind revives again;/ While here I stand, not only with the sense/ Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts/ That in this moment there is life and food/ For future years. And so I dare to hope,/ . . . .
1630
From Governor John Winthrop, The City on a Hill", Delivered on Board the Arabella, Salem Harbor, 1630, "A Model of Christian Charity":
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the Counsel of Micah, to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with our God, for this end wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities,. . . .