What are quotes or scriptures that resonate deeply?

Written by Darrell Muth

My children asked me to write about my life. “The Given Life” is my memories. My answers to their questions.

What are quotes or scriptures that resonate deeply?

Thank You, Mother Teresa

I am like many others. That is, I wish to change the world. Is it not a common theme? This desire to make a difference? What societal tremor will I instigate? I listen to interviews of those who are making a weighty impact. Am I a tinge envious? The desire to be known may be the secret significant motive for prompting change. Social media influencers are reaching out. Counting followers. I, in turn, count how many read our blog.

Influenced by Mother Teresa, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love”. I push back against this go big or go home mindset.

What does this look like? I no longer desire to change the world. I live to change my world. And what is my world? I am learning to lower my gaze and not look at the horizon for the monumental, the amazing, and the earth-tremor-creating. Instead, I practice embodying the fruit of the spirit of Christ at every touch point.

Mother Theresa inspires me again: “Love has a hem to its garment which reaches the very dust. It sweeps the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must”.

What are these touchpoints? My neighbours. My family. The one who passes me on the street or takes my money at the till. Those who want to have coffee with me as one who can listen to them name their pain.

The tagline on my email is “We live the given life, not the planned.” Wendell Berry coined this phrase and it influences my responses to much that is unanticipated. “We Live the Given Life” is also the title of this book. Thank you, Wendell: environmentalist, activist, farmer and poet. You inspire me.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats has my heart. I read it daily as part of my morning meditative ritual. It takes me to a place that sounds, looks and feels like paradise. It helps carry me through the low hum of grief, loss and uncertainty.

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 honey-bee,

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. [1]

A box of Scripture Verses

At a Church Youth Gathering in 1976, the speaker ended with this challenge. Holding up a small red box containing cards of scripture verses, he stated. “I’ll give you this packet if you promise to memorize these verses.”

I took a box. They continue to play an essential role in my spiritual formation. There are about 40 verses. None is dearer to me than the other. I take one card weekly and meditate on it during my morning walk. They are falling apart and fading. To slow the aging process, I’ve taped the edges.

Finishing an early Spring morning walk a few years back, I couldn’t find my card where it should be—in my coat pocket. The following morning, walking head down, I found it! Dirty and damp, but found.

I have yet to memorize all these 40 verses. Still, I hope these scriptures roll off an otherwise unaware tongue when I am aged, and my mind is gone.

1. Copyright Credit: W.B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” from The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. (London: Kagan Paul, Trench and Co., 1889.) Public domain.