Acceptance has everything to do with simplicity, with sitting in the ordinary place, with bearing witness to the plain facts of our lives, with not just starting at the essential, but ending up there. Acceptance speaks in the gentlest voice. It commands only that we acknowledge what’s true.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 127
Believe not that there is a limit, an end, to God’s forgiveness, and his redeeming love and power. Believe it not, lest you justify your unforgiving heart and thus not be forgiven yourself, but go down with those your brothers to the torment, from where, if God were not better than that phantom many call God, you and the rest of them should never come out, but whence assuredly you shall come out when you have paid the uttermost farthing. Out you shall come when you have learned of God in hell what you refused to learn of him upon the gentle-toned earth, when you have learned what the sunshine and the rain could not teach you, nor the sweet compunctions of the seasons, nor the stately visits of the morning and eventide, nor the human face divine, nor the word that was nigh thee in your heart and in your mouth — the story of him who was mighty to save, because he was perfect in love.
O Father, thou art All-in-all, perfect beyond the longing of thy children, and we are all and altogether thine. Thou wilt make us pure and loving and free. We shall stand fearless in thy presence, because perfect in thy love. Then shall thy children be of good cheer, infinite in the love of each other, and eternal in thy love.
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series, “Love Thine Enemy,” quoted in Knowing the Heart of God, p. 349
The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light.
Look hard.
Risk that.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 90
The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see us. Silence makes hard things harder than they need to be. It creates a secret you’re too beautiful to keep. Telling has a way of dispersing things.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 87
The best quotes don’t speak to one particular truth, but rather to universal truths that resonate — across time, culture, gender, generation, and situation — in our own hears and minds. They guide, motivate, validate, challenge, and comfort us in our own lives. They reiterate what we’ve figured out and remind us how much there is yet to learn. Pithily and succinctly, they lift us momentarily out of the confused and conflicted human muddle. Most of all, they tell us we’re not alone. Their existence is proof that others have questioned, grappled with, and come to know the same truths we question and grapple with, too.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. xv
Sad indeed would the whole matter be if the Bible told us everything God meant us to believe. But herein is the Bible itself greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever-unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” not the Bible, except as leading to him.
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series, “The Higher Faith,” quoted in Discovering the Character of God, p. 74.
If it’s true that there is only one love (with different expressions, not different types), then it could also be true that there is only one fear. Love can express itself in ten thousand ways, but it’s all the same love, so maybe fear can also express itself in ten thousand ways, and it’s all the same fear. Looked at this way, all love is an extension of the basic truth “I am loveable,” and all fear is a projection of the basic fear “I am not loveable.”
— Robert Holden, PhD, Loveability, p. 134-135
I was recently asked to explain to three thousand evangelical youth workers gathered together at a conference in Nashville, Tennesee, why millennials like me are leaving the church.
I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff — biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice — but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hears and minds behind, without wearing a mask.
I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we don’t feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people. And I told them that, contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Millenials aren’t looking for a hipper Christianity, I said. We’re looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we’re looking for Jesus — the same Jesus who can be found in the strange places he’s always been found: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.
— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, p. xiii-xiv
I believe in the power of words to help us reset our intentions, clarify our thoughts, and create a counternarrative to the voice of doubt many of us have murmuring in our heads — the one that says You can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t have. Quotes, at their core, almost always shout, Yes!
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. x.
O God, help me to believe the truth about myself
no matter how beautiful it is!
Amen.
— Macrina Wiederkehr, quoted by Robert Holden in Loveability, p. 77