Maybe you have a little voice inside that says you aren’t strong enough to handle what life’s left at your feet. That voice lies. Prove it wrong today — then repeat, repeat, repeat.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 28
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 1, 2014
That’s how prayers are answered: some doors get locked and others get opened. And then there’s the waiting room. I know my friend is now in that waiting room, fearing that no door will open for her again now that this one has shut. I know better, though I have no idea what you’re up to. I told her to just surrender the mess of everything to You. Earthly chaos is really your sandbox. You will reroute her life. I told her not to interfere with Your plans for her. No offering You advice or limitations or restrictions. Surrender means surrender. Let go, and let You have at it.
— Caroline Myss, Intimate Conversations with the Divine, p. 119
Photo: Bluebell Trail, Bull Run Regional Park, April 18, 2008
Such bad theology has its roots in organizing a worldview around the retributive notion of justice, as we discussed earlier, distinguishing it from restorative justice (a fancy term for healing). Jesus neither practiced nor taught retribution, but that is what imperial theology prefers — clear winners and clear losers. Top-down worldviews can’t resist the tidy dualisms of an in-and-out, us-and-them worldview. But Jesus roundly rejects such notions in both his parables and his teachings — for example, when he says, “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40), and that “God causes his sun to rise on bad as well as good, and causes it to rain on honest and dishonest men alike” (Matthew 5:45), and when he makes outsiders and outliers the heroes of most of his stories.
— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 182
Photo: Citadelle de Bitche, France, March 2000