I'm thankful for a book I'm reading right now, "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. This book makes many great points, but the a couple quotes that are sticking with me from my reading this morning are the following:
"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery, you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."
"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He ways always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small."
These ideas that celebrate wonder and mystery and how much is out there besides just me -- written in the context of Christianity - and by such a witty, intelligent author -- make me want to stand up and cheer. I'm only about a fourth of the way into the book and am SO grateful i get to to move through this one slowly over the summer.
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