The Spirit of God does not ask us to contort ourselves into something we are not. There is no demand for assimilation, no hierarchy of languages or cultures. No single race, class, or status holds dominance in the kin-dom of God. Instead, the Spirit invites us to be the fullest expression of who we are, in all our particularity, in all our strangeness and beauty.
— Kat Armas, Liturgies for Resisting Empire, p. 147
Photo: Parc Botanique de Haut Bretagne, June 19, 2026
There is nothing you need to do differently to be lovable — no emotional debt you have to pay, no change you have to make. Know this like you know your own voice, your own pulse.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 195
Photo: Monet’s Garden, Giverny, France, June 22, 2026
The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves. God did not love Jacob because he was a cheat, but because he was Jacob. God loves us in our complex isness, and when we get stuck on the image of the totally virtuous and morally perfect person we will never be, we are unable to accept this unqualified love, or to love other people in their rich complexity.
If God can love Jacob – or any single one of us – as we really are, then it is possible for us to turn in love to those who hurt or confuse us. Those we know and those we do not know. And that makes me take a new look at love.
— Madeleine L’Engle, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 194-195
Photo: Étretat, France, June 23, 2026
First, the church needs to stand as a counter-witness to all dehumanizing and nauseating propaganda. Jesus spoke powerfully and directly to this calling as his central message in the Sermon on the Mount: we are taught to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. The vocation of every Christian and of the church as a whole is to stand always against the dehumanization of any person or group. Even when we rightly understand a group or person to be a legitimate threat or to be engaging in active harm, we are tasked with never losing sight of their humanity, their possession of the imago Dei, and the unconditional and undying love that God has for them. Beyond that, the church has been taught to embrace an “upside down” view of the social order wherein those that our community deems least worthy of honor and dignity – the oppressed, poor, and marginalized – are understood to be the very people whom we are most honored to count as members of our body.
— Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. 192-193
Photo: Cloister, Mont Saint-Michel, France, June 18, 2026.
Adam and Eve walked out from the garden loved, called, and chosen. Their eyes were firmly fixed on God’s promise to make all things new. They weren’t wandering, and they weren’t lost, and we don’t need to be either. We are image bearers of God. We are created out of his abundant love, we were called with a purpose, and we have been equipped to imitate him! We live out the image of God together and in every sphere of our lives. We imitate him at home, at work, and at church. We fill and subdue; we create and bring order both in the secular and spiritual realms. We have been called to bring the fullness of God to the world, and we do that by living as his image.
We have been freed to live as image bearers of God.
— Elizabeth Garn, Freedom to Flourish, p. 138-139
Photo: Cherry blossoms, South Riding, Virginia, March 31, 2026
I don’t think I’m at death’s door, but I find myself assessing things I believe as I inch toward that door. I believe the following things:
For what it’s worth, this book just wants to lure us to embracing God’s heart and punto de vista. It proposes a mystical view that perhaps can lift us above those things that keep us apart. Nobody VS. Anybody. God’s dream come true.
— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 12
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026
God, give me satisfaction in the trying.
Give me joy in the never-quite-there.
Grant me peace in my unsettled heart
for my wild mediocrity.
Help me smile back
at the truth that no one,
not one, knows perfection but you.
And you already looked at this
messy creation
at the beginning of time
and pronounced it pretty darn good.
— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! p. 79
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026
People say we are unworthy of salvation. I disagree. Perhaps we are very much worth saving. It seems to me that God is making miracles to free us from the shame that haunts us. Maybe the same hand that made garments for a trembling Adam and Eve is doing everything he can that we might come a little closer. I pray his stitches hold.
— Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 15
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 17, 2026.
I told the crowd that two unwavering principles held at Homeboy Industries were the following: 1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and 2) We belong to each other (no exceptions). Then I posited: “Now, do I think all our vexing and complex social dilemmas would disappear if we embraced these two notions?” I paused, then continued, “Yes, I do.” And the entire audience exploded in laughter. I was startled. When the laughter subsided, I repeated quietly: “Yes, I do.”
These two ideas allow us to roll up our sleeves so that we can actually make progress. So that we can love without measure and without regret. So that we can cultivate a new way of seeing. We finally understand that the answer to every question is, indeed, compassion.
— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 2.
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 27, 2025.
So clean your windows. Take a look again at the world and see it, this time, the way you were meant to see it. Recover your sacramental wonder and be shocked anew by the color green. Become like a child and enter the kingdom of heaven. Count your blessings and rejoice. Always rejoice. Look to the horizon in hope, even in the Valley of Dry Bones. And remember why you matter. You are a child of God.
–Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 116
Photo: Blackwater River Valley, West Virginia, October 8, 2025