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If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.

Kathleen Norris

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Kathleen Norris
Grace
Unwelcome
Wonderful
Disguised
Maybe
Recognizing
Often
Gentle
Comes
Difficulty
Order
Failure
Change
Loss
Made
Accepting

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Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
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Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.
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I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.
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For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.
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The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.
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But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.
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You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.
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When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.
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I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
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Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.
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They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.
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