Kvothe Kingkiller

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

— Kvothe, in The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

What’s the Message?

Some Christians believe and often repeat that all that matters is whether or not a person is going to heaven. Is that the message? Is that what life is about? Going somewhere else? If that’s the gospel, the good news — if what Jesus does is get people somewhere else — then the central message of the Christian faith has very little to do with this life other than getting you what you need for the next one. Which of course raises the question: Is that the best God can do?

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 6

Baby Steps

“Now you are here where before you were there” — that is a good description of how God works with us. We are not often shoved into the limelight. More often we are edged forward; we are nudged and coaxed and encouraged until we take the step out of the shadows we have been balking at. Often we see a huge step and we say, “I cannot take that” and we are right. But what we can take are the many little steps that make up the one giant step. We can take each baby step because it is “only” a baby step and we do not let ourselves think too much about where such baby steps are leading us. Taken cumulatively, baby steps work just as well as giant steps at taking us where we want to go. In fact, they may work better, since they allow us to keep our equilibrium while taking them.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 106

The Jesus Story

This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance of anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. viii

Blossoming

Let’s become more beautiful with age, attaining the stature of the Jungian crone. Let’s be wise and mature and queenly. Let’s allow our centers of power to shift with grace, from focus on physical expression to focus on spiritual strength. The game isn’t cruel except when played by the negative mind. In the life God has in mind for us, we grow more and more beautiful and know more and more joy. The longer we live, the more time we have to pursue the things that make life meaningful. Above all, let’s not be ashamed of age. How often I’ve heard it said about a woman, “She’s fifty. I’m telling you, she’s not a day under,” as though she had been caught in some crime. Youth is not a great prize, and age a sad afterthought. If anything, youth is the bud, and age is when we blossom.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 140

Endearing Idiosyncracies

Our innate idiosyncracies are actually more endearing to others than our most glorious personal achievements….

History is full of incompetent people who were beloved, blunderers with winsome personality traits, and inept folks who delighted their entourages with their unassuming presences. Their secret? To accept their flaws with the same grace and humility as their best qualities.

— Veronique Vienne, The Art of Imperfection, p. 9

Works in Progress

To have faith is to have faith in process. God is not finished with us. We are works in progress, and as much as we would like to know the end point of all the growth we are asked to undertake, we often do not see an end point — or any point at all. At any given time, we may be able to sense only a fraction of God’s intention for us.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 102-103

Growth Is Worth It.

Childbirth is difficult, but holding the child makes the pain worthwhile. And so it is when we finally have a glimpse of our own completion as human beings — regardless of our husband or lack of one, our boyfriend or lack of one, our job or lack of one, our money or lack of it, our children or lack of any, or whatever else we think we need in order to thrive and be happy. When we have finally touched on a spiritual high that is real and enduring, then we know that the pain of getting there was worth it, and the years ahead will never be as lonely.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 138-139