“True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice” St. Francis

­ “A man who uses his hands is a laborer. One who uses his hands and mind is a craftsman. But he who uses his hands, his mind, and his heart, is an artist.” St. Francis

“Nature is the art of God, just as productive work, the making of useful things, is the art of humans. Humans prosper rightly when their goods come from nature by their good work.” Wendell Berry, What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth­

“So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 8:15

“Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those acetic Pagans who called it the prison or the ‘tomb’ of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a ‘sack of dung’, food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body ‘Brother Ass’. All three may be – I am not sure – defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.
Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body.”
C. S. Lewis on St Francis of Assisi