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" Before Virginia, I had not known that the prize for enduring a real winter, with its occasional wonderland days and its regular misery days, was an awakening so astonishing it felt as if I learned that the word spring meant for the first time in my life. Spring wasn't simply a pleasant interlude; it wasnt merely the change to catch one's breath between the ice storm and the heat wave. It was a fulfillment. It was a promise kept, though I had not even realized a promise had been made. Like winter, the wilderness is always a promise. God leads us in and, one way or another, he leads us out again.
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― Christie Purifoy , Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace
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" Instead, the best gifts, like gifts of my sons and daughters, and like the gift of ever one of our homes, are those that invite participation, our prayer, our desire, and only then, when we have so much more to give, our gratitude. Because "a longing fulfilled is a tree of life".Proverbs 13:12
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― Christie Purifoy , Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace
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" Instead, the best gifts, like gifts of my sons and daughters, and like the gift of ever one of our homes, are those that invite participation, our prayer, our desire, and only then, when we have so much more to give, our gratitude. Because "a longing fulfilled is a tree of life".Proverbs 13:12
I believe beauty reflects the truth about who God is and what this world is all about.
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― Christie Purifoy , Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace
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" The wilderness is not necessarily a desolate place. It has its own unique beauty, and that beauty is enough. It does not need us. It does not ask for our participation. This may be one reason why wilderness wandering is such a harsh experience, but this is certainly one reason why time in the wilderness is a gift. Our cultivation and our care are not required. God himself plants trees in that place; God himself draws water from dry rocks. The gift of the wilderness is that this is the place we go simply to receive. This is the place we go to listen. In the wilderness, we are given the opportunity to lay down the burden of our desire to make and remake so that when some other place invites our participation and our creative efforts, we are ready to offer those things with humility. The trees—even in the wilderness—are singing a song, but if we plunge ahead in accompaniment without first stopping to listen, and without letting ourselves be changed by the song, we may find ourselves leaving not beauty but crooked patios and poison ivy and heartbroken tears in our wake. "
― Christie Purifoy , Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace
