“A burden of these years is to fear the ever-approaching mystical before us, as if the God-ness we have known in life will desert us in death.

A blessing of these years is coming to see that behind everything so stolid, so firm, so familiar before us runs a descant of mystery and meaning to be experienced in ways we never thought possible. To become free of the prosaic and the scheduled and the pragmatic is to break the world open in ways we never dreamed of.

In this new world, a mountain, a bench, a grassy path is far more than simply itself. It is a symbol of unprecedented possibilities, of the holiness of time.”

—- Joan Chittister, The Gift Of Years.