Quotes About Renewal

Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!

How couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes?

We must teach our children, our students, and our political and corporate leaders the fundamental facts of life—for example, that one species' waste is another species' food; that matter cycles continually through the web of life; that the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun; that diversity assures resilience; that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.

A living organism is primarily engaged in renewing itself, cells continuously breaking down and building up their structures, tissues and organs replacing their cells in continual cycles. While these continual structural changes take place, however, the organism maintains its identity and overall pattern of organization. This coexistence of stability and change is one of the hallmarks of life.

Just as the decay of last year's fallen leaves provides nutrients for new growth this spring, some institutions must be allowed to decline and decay, so that their capital and human talents can be released and recycled to create new organizations.

Because God is full of life, I imagine each morning Almighty God says to the sun, Do it again; and every evening to the moon and the stars, Do it again; and every springtime to the daisies, Do it again; and every time a child is born into the world asking for curtain call, that the heart of the God might once more ring out in the heart of the babe.

The Old Testament begins with the Genesis of heaven and earth through God making all things. The New Testament had another kind of Genesis, in the sense that it describes the making of all things new.

We grow weary, of course, but God is unwearied in giving us new strength.

Thanks to the Spirit, though the priest grows older in years, he becomes younger through ascent to the altar of God where youth is renewed.

But where the surrender is to God, we get ourselves back ennobled and enriched.

Before He gives strength, He makes us feel our emptiness.

But He pointed to His torn and battered Self on a hill, and then added that only through the Cross in their lives will there ever be beauty of soul in the newness of life.

Some things in life you just have to erase. If you're going to go on with your existence, you have to drop them into a deep dark well somewhere in your soul, and trudge onward as if they never happened.

I almost think that hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism. Where hope is lacking the soul dries up and withers...

I cried, steady tears, like rain. And, like rain, they brought ease.

During all my worrying about how and when and whether we'd ever get together again, I had neglected to imagine we might slip back together as naturally as a dislocated joint slipping back into place, followed by an ardor more straightforward than either of us had been capable of before.

A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.

Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

Of all the seasons, winter is the most conducive to the great art of dormancy. This art requires an appreciation of semi-consciousness: the beautiful and necessary prelude to sleep - a special pleasure in itself that is all too often neglected, under-valued or looked down upon.

In the winter I separate, in the summer I marry. It's been 15 years since I've been getting married every year.

The deadnettle is the Punxsutawney Phil of the plant world: short of stature but stout of heart. At the first hint of winter's wane, its stem rises from the ground, and a green, grasping hand of sepals unclenches to divulge two silky-white petals, one of which unfurls straight up toward the sky.

Usually the thing that signifies that I'm done with the winter and all that is that I start skateboarding.

Once winter sets in I must have the sun and warmth. I need to be in the sun - I'm a true island baby.