The Last Word

God, Love 0

I know this is not the current version of what is psychologically “correct,” because we all seem to think we need nothing but unconditional love. Any law, correction, rule, or limitation is another word for conditional love. It is interesting to me that very clear passages describing both God’s conditional love and also God’s unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures, like Deuteronomy and John’s Gospel. The only real biblical promise is that unconditional love will have the last word!

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, p. 33

The Secret of Life

Compassion, Growth, Life 0

You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids….

But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help, and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise, you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others, so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.

I know exactly one other thing that I hope will be useful: that when electrical things stop working properly, ninety percent of the time you can fix them by unplugging the cord for two or three minutes. I’m sure there’s a useful metaphor here.

— Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required, p. 91-92

Reading as Revolution

Books, Reading 0

Lately, I’ve begun to think of this as the touchstone of a quiet revolution, an idea as insurrectionary, in its own sense, as those of Thomas Paine. Reading, after all, is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage. It connects us at the deepest levels; it is slow, rather than fast. That is its beauty and its challenge: in a culture of instant information, it requires us to pace ourselves. What does it mean, this notion of slow reading? Most fundamentally, it returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. Even more, we are reminded of all we need to savor — this instant, this scene, this line. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind. As we do, we join a broader conversation, by which we both transcend ourselves and are enlarged…. It is in this way that reading becomes an act of meditation, with all of meditation’s attendant difficulty and grace. I sit down. I try to make a place for silence. It’s harder than it used to be, but still, I read.

— David L. Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading, p. 150-151

Cooling Emotional Fires

Growth, Peace, Relationships 0

The destructive effects of anger are easily recognized. When even mild annoyance arises it can quickly grow and overwhelm us. Inner peace is lost. If we look at how anger arises we see that it usually happens when we feel unheard, unseen, or unfairly treated. If in that moment we look within, we may sense a feeling that anger can help us get even with the offending person or change the vexing situation. So the anger that arises can seem to have value, but in reality it cannot. There might be some logic to responding with anger if it could negate the offense that has taken place, but that cannot happen because the deed has already occurred. So anger cannot reduce or prevent the perceived wrong. In fact, if we react to a situation in an angry way instead of with patience, not only is there no benefit, but negative energy is created, which is likely to exacerbate a volatile situation. Further, when intense anger arises, it impedes our ability to use sound judgment and envision the consequences of our actions. Anger, annoyance, and impatience deplete energy. Patient effort strengthens our resources. We need to practice cooling emotional fires and alleviating fierce disruptions in our lives. The benefits of developing greater patience will be felt in all our relationships: intimate, casual, professional, as well as that all-important relationship, the one we have with ourselves.

— Allan Lokos, Patience, p. 22-23

Not Powerless

Acceptance, Joy, Letting Go 0

Coming to appreciate that we are not powerless over what we nurture in our minds, that we are, in fact, in charge of our thoughts, gives us the hope and the promise that we can feel however we want to feel. We can be as happy, as hopeful, or as miserable as we want to be. No thought can hold us hostage. No feeling can hold us hostage. No person can hold us hostage. We are as free as we want to be. This gives us all the ammunition we will ever need to know that all is well. Always, all is well.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 60

Reconciliation

Acceptance, Redemption 0

When our goal has been the recruitment of others to our way of thinking, we have often lost our way, valuing recruitment above reconciliation.

Our passion for recruitment lies in our desire to have others make the same religious choices we have made, thereby confirming our wisdom and good sense. In that sense, recruitment is a self-centered activity, valuing others primarily for their willingness and ability to confirm our decisions. But a church centered on reconciliation, not recruitment, begins with the assumption that others are our equal partners in loving work, not targets for our evangelism. When that is the case, we will no longer view those outside the church as mistaken, confused, spiritually lost, or damned. Instead, we will see in them the very potential and promise Jesus saw in those he encountered.

— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 188-189

Playfulness

God, Joy 0

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

Always Enough God

God, Gratitude, Joy, Life 0

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

The Older Brother

God, Life 0

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