When violence is real and you flinch away from it, violence does not push people to try and imitate that. Often, we shun the violence that makes us flinch, because it disturbs us. And what makes us uncomfortable and disturbs us is not often bad. What...
...the operative idea here is that there is a right and wrong theology -- a right God and a wrong God. But this is an invalid premise. All versions of God are the same thing: A HUMAN INTERPRETATION OF THE UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
If God spares us as a father does his son, let us imitate God. It is natural for children to imitate their parents. Let us imitate God in this one thing: As God spares us, and passes by many failures, so let us be sparing in our censures of others; l...
Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us...
No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone. The accidents happen, we’re not heroines, they happen in our lives like car crashes, books that change us, neighborhoods we move into and come to love. Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story, women at le...
Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.
The success of each of us benefits us all, and the success of us all benefits each of us individually.
Life bends us, shapes us, molds us, makes us, and breaks us." ~Lucian Bane~
God gave us our agency. He taught us a way. He showed us what to do. But he gave us our agency and left us free to act as we choose to do.
You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.
No matter how fierce the enemy seems--when fear cripples us, anger enrages us, or selfishness possesses us; when adversity crushes us, opposition hounds us, or temptation plagues us--God is greater.
Susanna: You use me, you use Raymond, you use everybody. Charlie: Using Raymond? Hey Raymond, am I using you? Am I using you Raymond? Raymond: Yeah. Charlie: Shut up! He is answering a question from a half hour ago!
Some of us pray demands. Some of us pray complaints. Some of us pray knowing, and some of us pray not knowing. But prayer is the attitude that you hold in your heart.
...here is, very simply, what I learned about Jesus and the ladies: he loves us. He loves us. On our own terms. He treats us as equals to the men around him; he listens; he does not belittle; he honors us; he challenges us; he teaches us; he includes...
At some point in reading, we realize we have to read not just the books that we'd enjoy, but the books that move us, touch us, those that break us and hurt us, those which remind us that we will always be the ignorant of this life. We have to read th...
God sends us meat, the devil sends us cooks.
...after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
Suffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is f...
Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us.
Jesus Christ is a prince of peace. He told us to live in peace. He told us to love our enemies. He told us to do good to them that spitefully use us.
Let us be a little humble; let us think that the truth may not perhaps be entirely with us.
