Quotes by Cathleen Falsani

About Cathleen Falsani:

Cathleen Falsani is an American journalist, author and blogger. She is religion columnist who has written for The Orange County Register in Southern California and the Chicago Sun Times. Falsani is the author of several non-fiction books on religious, spiritual, and cultural issues.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

God can and does use anything God chooses to get our attention. Who's to say the hawk wasn't sent as an agent of grace to catch my wandering attention and quiet what Buddhists might call my “monkey mind,” which is more often than not swinging wil...

Cathleen Falsani

Outside, it feels like there is less standing between the Creator and us. There is a lingering visceral connection we can hear and see and smell, reminders of the bond between Creator and creation, like the mountain sage crushed up in the pocket of t...

Cathleen Falsani

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is,” Anne Lamott once told me. �...

Cathleen Falsani

Some theologians argue that one kind of grace is better than another, and that some people think they're experiencing “divine” grace when it's actually just “common.” To me, that's like bickering about what color God's eyes are. (They're haze...

Cathleen Falsani

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, “W...

Cathleen Falsani

Together, on his back porch, his cigarette smoke rising like incense to the heavens, we spoke to the God of grace we both are so grateful to know up close and personal. It may be the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard. Jesus, for some reason you'v...

Cathleen Falsani

Maybe that's why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn.

Cathleen Falsani

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her—hadn't even wanted her, truthfully—but there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world.

Cathleen Falsani

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

Cathleen Falsani

We're so worried about the legal details of crossing doctrinal t's and dotting sociopolitical i's that we miss the big picture. The love picture. The one thing Jesus was really clear about: LOVE. If we could just get that one thing down, I believe th...

Cathleen Falsani

Sometimes grace is having the strength to persevere through the storm. Sometimes it's having the guts to rebuild, to take a chance, to follow your nose and your heart rather than your head. Sometimes grace is finding out that your preconceived notion...

Cathleen Falsani

Wait, go back to that Southern Baptist part,” Julia said, interrupting, as she does. “Are you a born-again?” articulating her question as if she were asking me if I were really a headhunter or a Martian. “Yes,” I said, “but I'm not an ass...

Cathleen Falsani

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it.

Cathleen Falsani

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it. It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive mo...

Cathleen Falsani

Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character...

Cathleen Falsani

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, “God loves you.” To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always...

Cathleen Falsani

My nun, which is how I think of her, was the most profound witness for God's love I've ever encountered in this world. She was a magnet for lost souls, a petite fortress of strength and unconditional love. What this sprightly, silly, lovely woman did...

Cathleen Falsani

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, un...

Cathleen Falsani

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Je...

Cathleen Falsani

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. “My definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness,” Jean tol...

Cathleen Falsani

Author Bio

  • NameCathleen Falsani
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornSeptember 25, 1970
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist