cold tangerines

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I recently read Shauna Niequist's book Cold Tangerines. It was incredible and I wanted to share some quotes from the book. I would quote the whole book to you if I could. I hope you enjoy these little gems.

"To choose to celebrate in the world we live in right now might seem irresponsible. It might seem frivolous, like cotton candy and charm bracelets. But I believe it is a serious undertaking, and one that has the potential to return us to our best selves, to deliver us back to men and women God created us to be, people who choose to see the best, believe the best, yearn the best."

"This pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will every experience."

"I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold."

"Family gets made when the you decide to hold hands and sit shoulder to shoulder when it seems like the sky is falling."

"Friendship is acting out God’s love for people in tangible ways. We were made to represent the love of God in each other’s lives, so that each person we walk through life with has a more profound sense of God’s love for them. Friendship is an opportunity to act on God’s behalf in the lives of the people that we’re close to, reminding each other who God is. When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life. We get to remind one another about the bigger, more beautiful picture that we can’t always see from where we are."

"We can’t stand in the way of death, but when it comes, we can stand in its face together, and celebrate life and celebrate family and celebrate having loved fiercely and expressively.
I thought I might burst at that moment, so full of sadness and beauty, so thrilled for this new family, this new symbol of possibility and life, and so heavy with the grief I carried with me. And that moment felt like a rare gift, like the essence of life and love and family was sitting in my hand, like a tiny bird."

"One look at a baby’s fingers and you just know that those little bundles of flesh and tiny bones are more sacred, more spiritual, than any thought or idea or theology could ever be."

"It’s rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life. It’s much easier and much more common to be miserable."

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