No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

"If you see any beauty in Christ, and say, "I desire to have that," God will work it in you." - G.V. Wigram

"God often lays the sum of His amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors, on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty." - Stephen Charnock

Collage became a powerful spiritual practice for me; the drafting table is one of the places where I pray best. It provides a space between and beneath and beyond words, a thin place where memory and hope meet. The practice of collage also provides an image for understanding my work and my life. In much the same way that I sit at my drafting table and take the scraps to piece together a new creation, God does this within me. God takes everything: experiences, stories, memories, relationships, dreams, prayers — all those pieces, light and dark, rough and smooth, jagged and torn — and creates anew from them. I have learned to think of God as the consummate recycler: in God's economy, nothing is wasted. Everything – everything — can be used. Transformed. Redeemed. ~ Jan Richardson