After all — it was God who gave us a sense of humor. Do you really think Jesus came to take it away?
Maybe if we allow Jesus the playfulness we see in his creation, we can then see him at play in the Gospels. Perhaps it will help us unlock some of these otherwise perplexing stories.
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 23
While the Deceiver jockeys to dupe us into thinking otherwise, we who are made in the image of God, being formed into Christ’s likeness, our happiness comes, too, not in the having but in the handing over. Give your life away in exchange for many lives, give away your blessings to multiply blessings, give away so that many might increase, and do it all for the love of God. I can bless, pour out, be broken and given in our home and the larger world and never fear that there won’t be enough to give. Eucharisteo has taught me to trust that there is always enough God. He has no end. He calls us to serve, and it is Him whom we serve, but He, very God, kneels down to serve us as we serve. The servant-hearted never serve alone. Spend the whole of your one wild and beautiful life investing in many lives, and God simply will not be outdone. God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, p. 197
We shape our God, and then our God shapes us.
A distorted understanding of God,
clung to with white knuckles and fierce determination,
can leave a person outside the party,
mad about a goat that was never gotten,
without the thriving life Jesus insists is right here, all around us,
all the time.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 183
The course of the Rhine below Mayence becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath. And on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards and populous towns, and a meandering river with green sloping banks, occupy the scene. We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat; and, as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquility to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to fairy land and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. “I have seen,” he said, “the most beautiful scenes of my own country. I have been on the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance. I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean — and the waves dash with fury on the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the night wind. I have seen the mountains of La Valais and the Pays de Vaud, but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled. Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also, on the island, almost concealed among the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half-hid in the recesses of the mountain. Oh! surely the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country.”
— Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, p. 179-180
The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers. We read Austen because she seems to know us better than we know ourselves, and she seems to know us so intimately for the simple reason that she helped determine who we are both as readers and as human beings.
— Harold Bloom, Foreword, A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen, edited by Susannah Carson
There is nothing more radically activist than a truly spiritual life, and there is nothing more truly spiritual than a radically activist life. If you fight for peace with an unpeaceful spirit, you guarantee that unintended consequences will trump your intended ones. If you struggle fora sustainable economy with unsustainable effort, you guarantee your own failure. The earth’s outer ecology will, inevitably, mirror our inner ecology. So there can be no lasting poverty reduction in society unless we grapple with greed reduction in the soul. If we want loving relationships, joyful communities, and peaceful nations in society, we must cultivate an inner fecundity of Spirit. That, of course, is no argument for passive pietism and quietism; it is, rather, a call to the most costly, radical activism, the one that calls us to be the change we want to see in the world. It is the call to be the light of the world — not merely to complain that the world is too dark. It is the call to be the salt of the earth — not merely to protest the world’s rottenness. It’s fruitless to argue being versus doing: you can’t do what you won’t be.
— Brian D. MacLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 237
Symbolic perceptions allow us to see that the real meaning of a crisis lies in showing us what we need to learn about ourselves. To blame the other players in our drama for helping to teach us what we need to learn is the height of foolishness. If, for example, I need to learn what it feels like to have something stolen from me, then anyone capable of stealing will do as my teacher. Spending my life resenting a particular “teacher” — waiting for the moment when I can punish the thief or make him feel guilty for all my years of mourning my loss — ultimately interferes with my learning process.
— Caroline Myss, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, p. 90
Some of the most amazing people we meet are people with the worst personal stories. Their stories were their training grounds and the laboratories of understanding that became their greatest gifts to others. They discovered that once they digested and released the energy of sorrow and trauma, it was replaced by a large capacity for compassion, wisdom, and a passion to contribute to the well-being of others. The degree of personal greatness some people achieve is directly related to the amount of forgiveness they had to do. In this way, self-healing is intimately related to living a purposeful life.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 10
Often, our deepest dream is an unspoken dream. We are unable to articulate it for fear that we are asking too much. God, listening with ears of the heart, is able to hear our unspoken prayer. Hearing this soul prayer and acting on it, God often seems to catch us by surprise. We do not expect to be taken as seriously as God seems to be taking us. When the Universe opens a door or two for us, we shy away.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 149-150
If you are going to enter this divine dance we call prayer, you have to surrender your desire to be in control, to figure out how prayer works.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 121