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And Once You Live A Good Story, You Get A Taste For A Kind Of Meaning In Life, And You Can't Go Back To Being Normal; You Can't Go Back To Meaningless Scenes Stitched Together By The Forgettable Thread Of Wasted Time.

-Donald Miller

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And Once You Live

Donald Miller

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And Once You Live A Good Story, You Get A Taste For A Kind Of Meaning In Life, And You Can't Go Back To Being Normal; You Can't Go Back To Meaningless Scenes Stitched Together By The Forgettable Thread Of Wasted Time.

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When Something Happens To You, You Have Two Choices In How To Deal With It. You Can Either Get Bitter, Or Get Better.

It Is When People Do Not Allow God To Show Up Through Them ... That The World Collapses In On Itself.

It Comforts Me To Think That If We Are Created Beings, The Thing That Created Us Would Have To Be Greater Than Us, So Much Greater, In Fact, That We Would Not Be Able To Understand It. It Would Have To Be Greater Than The Facts Of Our Reality, And So It Would Seem To Us, Looking Out From Within Our Reality That It Would Contradict Reason. But Reason Itself Would Suggest It Would Have To Be Greater Than Reality, Or It Would Not Be Reasonable.

I Could Not Have Known Then That Everybody, Every Person, Has To Leave, Has To Change Like Seasons; They Have To Or They Die. The Seasons Remind Me That I Must Keep Changing.

It's Funny How You Can't Ask Difficult Questions In A Familiar Place, How You Have To Stand Back A Few Feet And See Things In A New Way Before You Realize Nothing That Is Happening To You Is Normal. The Trouble With You And Me Is We Are Used To What Is Happening To Us. We Grew Into Our Lives Like A Kernel Beneath The Earth, Never Able To Process The Enigma Of Our Composition...nothing Is Normal. It Is All Rather Odd, Isn't It, Our Eyes In Our Heads, Our Hands With Five Fingers, The Capacity To Understand Beauty, To Feel Love, To Feel Pain.

People Are Lonely. They Want Company And Your Book Can Provide Them Company And A Little Bit Of Hope. And There's Nothing Wrong With That.

...i Should Have People Around Bugging Me And Getting Under My Skin Because Without People I Could Not Grow - I Could Not Grow In God, And I Could Not Grow As A Human.

When You Stop Expecting People To Be Perfect, You Can Like Them For Who They Are. And When You Stop Expecting Material Possessions To Complete You, You'd Be Surprised At How Much Pleasure You Get In Material Possessions. And When You Stop Expecting God To End All Your Troubles, You'd Be Surprised How Much You Like Spending Time With God.

People Who Live Great Stories Know Failure Isn’t A Judgment, It’s An Education.

Leave. Roll The World Around On Your Tongue For A Bit. It Is A Beautiful World, Isn't It? So Strong And Forceful, The Way You Have Always Wanted To Be. And You Will Not Be Alone. You Have Never Been Alone. Don't Worry. Everything Will Still Be Here When You Get Back. It Is You Who Will Have Changed.

Sometimes I Wish I Could Go Back In Time, Sit Down With Myself And Explain That Things Were Going To Be Okay, That Everybody Loses Ground Sometimes And It Doesn’t Mean Anything. It’s The Way Life Works. This Is Hard To Understand In The Moment. You Get To Thinking About The Girl Who Rejected You, The Job You Got Fired From, The Test You Failed, And You Lose Sight Of The Big Picture — The Fact That Life Has A Beautiful Way Of Remaking Itself Every Few Weeks.

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

We Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Embrace Whimsy, That Nagging Idea That Life Could Be Magical; It Could Be Special If We Were Only Willing To Take A Few Risks.

It Made Me Wonder If The Reasons Our Lives Seem So Muddled Is Because We Keep Walking Into Scenes In Which We, Along With The People Around Us, Have No Clear Idea What We Want.

If You Buy The Website, Maybe You'll Do Something With It. But So Far I Haven't; We'll See.

When You Stop Expecting People To Be Perfect, You Can Like Them For Who They Are.

We Don't Naturally Want To Take Responsibility For Our Lives. We Want To Give The Responsibility To Someone Else. We Blame Them When Our Lives Aren't Good.

I Believe The Greatest Trick Of The Devil Is Not To Get Us Into Some Sort Of Evil But Rather Have Us Wasting Time. This Is Why The Devil Tries So Hard To Get Christians To Be Religious. If He Can Sink A Man's Mind Into Habit, He Will Prevent His Heart From Engaging God. I Was Into Habit.

Flattery Has A Short Battery Life, But Reminding People They Are Amazing And Precious And Wanted And Works Of Art Can Truly Change Their Lives.

The Times We Worked Harder To Make The Day Stand Out. Our Story Demanded That We Change And So We Did.

Dying For Something Is Easy Because It Is Associated With Glory. Living For Something Is The Hard Thing. Living For Something Extends Beyond Fashion, Glory, Or Recognition. We Live For What We Believe.

There Are Two Types Of Men In This World--one Is Looking For A Woman To Make His Life Complete And The Other Is Looking For A Woman To Join His Complete Life.

I'm Amazed At How Much My Writing Is Improved When I Step Away From The Computer, Even In Small Amounts. If I'm Stuck, I Vacuum The Living Room Or Walk The Dog. I'm Amazed At What Comes Out Of That... We Have To Realize That Part Of The Writing Life Where We're Sitting Down At The Computer Is Harvesting The Crops, But You Have To Have Planted Them And Watered Them And Created Fertile Soil - And That's A Life.

I Know, From The Three Visits I Made To Him, The Blended Composite Of Love And Fear That Exists Only In A Boy's Notion Of His Father.

Be Encouraged. Your Heart Is Writing A Poem On The World And It's Being Turned Into A Thousand Songs.

I Think Our Society Puts Too Much Pressure On Romantic Love, And That Is Why So Many Romances Fail. Romance Can't Possibly Carry All That We Want It To.

When I Was In Love There Was Somebody In The World Who Was More Important Than Me, And That, Given All That Happened At The Fall Of Man, Is A Miracle, Like Something God Forgot To Curse.

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

Half The Time I Pick Up A Book, That's What I'm Trying To Get.

It's Something You Can Actually Control. With Writing, It Feels Like It's Given To You, And When The Good Stuff Hits, It Feels Like It's Coming From Some Other Planet.and You're Just Channeling It.

We Live On Top Of The Created World, I Think To Myself, Not In It.

If You Don't Feel Free And Be Yourself, You Can't Connect. Find People Who Accept Your Quirks. They'll Heal Your Soul.

It Is Worthy Of Note That The Chinese And Japanese Characters For Money And Gold Are The Same.

If You Aren't Telling A Good Story, Nobody Thinks You Died Too Soon; They Just Think You Died.

Your Life Is A Blank Page. You Write On It.

It's Not What People Do That Scares Me. It's What They Hide. It's The Secrets That Keep Us From Bonding And Create Distrust. If We Were More Willing To Accept Each Other's Depravity We'd Be More United, We'd Be More Honest. If You Hide Two Things From Me, I'll Assume You're Hiding A Million. And I'll Keep You At A Distance. I'm Not Afraid Of The Evil In You. It's In Me Too.

Book Of Ecclesiastes, God Is Saying... Write A Good Story, Take Somebody With You And Let Me Help

To Change The World You'll Need A Pen.

Changing The World

I Used Love Like Money, But Love Doesn't Work Like Money. It Is Not A Commodity. When We Barter With It, We All Lose. When The Church Does Not Love It's Enemies, It Fuels Their Rage. It Makes Them Hate Us More.

If We Hear, In Our Inner Ear, A Voice Saying We Are Failures, We Are Losers, We Will Never Amount To Anything, This Is The Voice Of Satan Trying To Convince The Bride That The Groom Does Not Love Her. This Is Not The Voice Of God. God Woos Us With Kindness. He Changes Out Of Character With The Passion Of His Love.

She Knows Who She Is. She Just Forgot For A Little While.

The Truth Is, If What We Choose To Do With Our Lives Won't Make A Story Meaningful, It Won't Make A Life Meaningful Either.

Meaning Of Life

I Have Sometimes Wondered If The Greatest Desire Of Man Is To Be Known And Loved Anyway.

By Accepting God's Love For Us, We Fall In Love With Him, And Only Then Do We Have The Fuel We Need To Obey.

Falling In Love

I Will Love You Like God, Because Of God, Mighted By The Power Of God. I Will Stop Expecting Your Love, Demanding Your Love, Trading For Your Love, Gaming For Your Love. I Will Simply Love. I Am Giving Myself To You, And Tomorrow I Will Do It Again. I Suppose The Clock Itself Will Wear Thin Its Time Before I Am Ended At This Altar Of Dying And Dying Again. God Risked Himself On Me. I Will Risk Myself On You. And Together, We Will Learn To Love, And Perhaps Then, And Only Then, Understand This Gravity That Drew Him, Unto Us.

All My Books Have Been Titled Based On A Piece Of The Prose From Inside The Book.

I Want To Start Replacing My “fix” Response With An “enjoy” Response And Just Let People Be Themselves.

The People I Used To Be Surrounded By Are Getting Along Without Me. Somehow, That Really Bugs Me.

I Am Early In My Story, But I Believe I Will Stretch Out Into Eternity, And In Heaven I Will Reflect Upon These Early Days, These Days When It Seemed God Was Down A Dirt Road, Walking Toward Me. Years Ago He Was A Swinging Speck In The Distance; Now He Is Close Enough I Can Hear His Singing. Soon I Will See The Lines On His Face.

Every Human Being Is Searching For A Deep Sense Of Meaning, And Yet We're All Chasing Success. We've Confused One For The Other.

The Early Bird Catches The Worm. But I Have Never Been One For Worms. I Am Not Sure What The Late Bird Catches, But I Will Feast With Him Today. Probably Porridge.

There Are About 360,000 Churches In America, So We Could Mentor A Million Kids Within A Short Period Of Time If Everyone Signed On, Which, Of Course, Is A Pipedream, But We're Going To Reach Toward That.

Do I Still Think There Will Be A Day When All The Wrongs Are Made Right, When Our Souls Find The Completion They Are Looking For? I Do. But When All Things Are Made Right, It Won’t Be Because Of Some Preacher Or Snake-oil Salesman Or Politician Or Writer Making Promises In His Book. I Think, Instead, This Will Be Done By Jesus. And It Will Be At A Wedding. And There Will Be A Feast.

There's A Lot Of Letters, And A Lot Of People Come Say "hi" At Book Signings, But I'm Amazed At How Normal Everybody Is.

It Occurs To Me It Is Not So Much The Aim Of The Devil To Lure Me With Evil As It Is To Preoccupy Me With The Meaningless.

The Thing I Loved About Her Was That I Never Felt Like She Was Selling Anything. She Would Talk To God As If She Knew Him, As If She Had Talked To Him On The Phone That Day. She Was Never Ashamed Which Is The Thing With Some Christians I Had Encountered.

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

I Used To Write When I Was In The Mood Or Felt Inspired. Anymore, I Write Whether I Feel Inspired Or Not. It's A Discipline. So That's Definitely Different. It's Part Of Maturing As A Person And As A Professional.

Some People Skip Through Life. Others Are Dragged Through It. I Sometimes Wonder If We Are Moving Through Time, Or Whether Time Is Moving Through Us. Light, Unlike Anything Else In The Universe Is Not Effected By Time. Light Exists Outside Of Time.. It Is Still A Mystery To Physicists.

There Are Things You Cannot Understand, And You Must Learn To Live With This. Not Only Must You Learn To Live With This, You Must Learn To Enjoy This.

I Didn't Know How Story Worked. So, When Writing The Screenplay, People Introduced Me To The Science Of It. And I'm Grateful. I'll Probably Use That Information For The Rest Of My Career, In Terms Of Writing Novels Or Writing Stories. And Then, Of Course, To Help Me Live A Better Story, A More Meaningful Story

We Don't Know How Much We Are Capable Of Loving Until The People We Love Are Being Taken Away, Until A Beautiful Story Is Ending.

How Disappointing Would It Be Get To Heaven And Find Out God Created Life To Be Enjoyed While All We Did Was Worry?

Too Much Of Our Time Is Spent Trying To Chart God On A Grid, And Too Little Is Spent Allowing Our Hearts To Feel Awe. By Reducing Christian Spirituality To Formula, We Deprive Our Hearts Of Wonder.

The Greatest Stories Go To Those Who Don’t Give In To Fear.

What I Believe Is Not What I Say I Believe; What I Believe Is What I Do. I Used To Say That I Believed It Was Important To Tell People About Jesus, But I Never Did. A Friend Kindly Explained That If I Do Not Introduce People To Jesus, Then I Don't Believe Jesus Is An Important Person. It Doesn't Matter What I Say. We Live For What We Believe.

Sunday Morning Church Service Is Not An Enormous Priority; Spending Time With Other Believers Is.

Believing In God Is As Much Like Falling In Love As It Is Making A Decision. Love Is Both Something That Happens To You And Something You Decide Upon.

Falling In Love

Let Probability And Sample Size Do The Heavy Lifting.

I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me

The Most Often Repeated Commandment In The Bible Is 'do Not Fear.' It's In There Over Two Hundred Times. That Means A Couple Of Things, If You Think About It. It Means We Are Going To Be Afraid, And It Means We Shouldn't Let Fear Boss Us Around. Before I Realized We Were Supposed To Fight Fear, I Thought Of Fear As A Subtle Suggestion In Our Subconscious Designed To Keep Us Safe, Or More Important, Keep Us From Getting Humiliated. And I Guess It Serves That Purpose. But Fear Isn't Only A Guide To Keep Us Safe; It's Also A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life.

I Want To Keep Walking Away From The Person I Was A Moment Ago, Because A Mind Was Made Fo Figure Things Out, Not To Read The Same Page Recurrently.

When I Started Studying The Issue And Issues Related To Fatherlessness, I Realized I Had All Of Them. Fear Of Intimacy, Fear Of Commitment, Poor Work Ethic, Just Stuff That You Don't Have When You Don't Have A Man In Your Life To Look You In The Eye And Say, "you're Good," Or "good Job."

I Started Storyline After I'd Accomplished All My Goals And Still Wasn't Happy. I'd Become A New York Times Bestselling Author, Which Was My Goal From High School, And Yet I Was Less Happy After Accomplishing My Goals Than I Was Before.

Today I Wonder Why It Is God Refers To Himself As 'father' At All. This, To Me, In Light Of The Earthly Representation Of The Role, Seems A Marketing Mistake.

We Believe We Will Be Made Whole By Our Accomplishments, Our Possessions, Or Our Social Status. It's Written In The Fabric Of Our Dna That Life Used To Be Beautiful And Now It Isn't, And If Only This And Only That, It Would Be Beautiful Again.

The Trouble With Deep Belief Is That It Costs Something. And There Is Something Inside Me, Some Selfish Beast Of A Subtle Thing That Doesn't Like The Truth At All Because It Carries Responsibility, And If I Actually Believe These Things I Have To Do Something About Them. It Is So, So Cumbersome To Believe Anything. And It Isn't Cool.

The Downside Of Being A Writer Is You Get Plenty Of Time To Overthink Your Life.

Somehow I Had Come To Believe That Because A Person Is In Need, They Are Candidates For Sympathy, Not Just Charity. It Was Not That I Wanted To Buy Her Groceries, The Government Was Already Doing That. I Wanted To Buy Her Dignity. And Yet, By Judging Her, I Was The One Taking Her Dignity Away.

I Think Jesus Is Saying, Look, You Guys Are Running Around Like Monkeys Trying To Get People To Clap, But People Are Fallen, They Are Separated From God, So They Have No Idea What Is Good Or Bad, Worthy To Be Judged Or Set Free, Beautiful Or Ugly To Begin With. Why Not Get Your Glory From God? Why Not Accept Your Feelings Of Redemption Because Of His Pleasure In You, Not The Fickle And Empty Favor Of Man? And Only Then Will You Know Who You Are, And Only Then Will You Have True, Uninhibited Relationships With Others.

The Thing About Being Irresponsible Is It's Only Cute Till You Are About Twenty-two Or So, Then It Becomes A Liability. One Day You Wake Up Under A Pizza Box, The Television Blaring In Your Bedroom, The Laundry Piled Up Over What Might Be A Bedside Table, And You Ask Yourself: 'how Did My Life Get Like This? Why Don't People Like Me? Didn't I Have A Cat And What Is That Smell?'

Our Lives Have A Countdown Clock That We Can't See. Mine Reminds Me To Only Do Work That Matters.

I Don't Read A Lot Of Inspirational Books For Life. But For Writing, I Think The Two Best Books Are The War Of Art And William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I Read A Lot Of Classics.

In The Age Of Information, Ignorance Is A Choice.

I Can't Do It. It Would Be Like, Say, Trying To Fall In Love With Somebody, Or Trying To Convince Yourself That Your Favorite Food Is Pancakes. You Don't Decide Those Things, They Just Happen To You. If God Is Real, He Needs To Happen To Me.

Falling In Love

We Don't Need As Much As We Have. Hardly Any Of Us Need As Much Money As We Have. It's True What They Say About The Best Things In Life Being Free.

If You Have A Beautiful Story, It Has To Have Conflict. If You Don't Have Conflict, It Can't Be A Good Story.

There Is Something Beautiful About A Billion Stars Held Steady By A God Who Knows What He Is Doing.

I Think Each Of Us Can, Through Our Writing, Discover Our Super Power

Being A Christian Is More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Ideas.

Falling In Love

What I Believe Is Not What I Say I Believe; What I Believe Is What I Do.

I Think Writers Can Get A Little Melodramatic Sometimes About Their Work, And It Helps Me Not To Do That, To Just Say, "well, This Is How I Make A Living, And I Need To Become A Very Good Craftsman."

The Times In My Life When I Have Been Most Happy Haven't Been The Times When I Have Had The Most Money Or The Most Freedom Or The Most Anything, But Rather When I've Been In Love Or In Community Or Right With People.

One Of The Things I Love About Our Source Text As Christians, The Bible Is That It Teaches Us Not To Avoid Conflict. And It Teaches Us That Before The Fall Of Man, In Paradise, There Was Conflict. God Wants Conflict To Be A Part Of Your Life.

Good Writers Show Rather Than Tell. Stories Are Told In Action. Life Stories Are No Different.

People Love To Have Lived A Great Story, But Few People Like The Work It Takes To Make It Happen.

When I Walked Into The Christian Section Of A Bookstore, The Message Was Clear: Faith Is Something You Do Alone. Rick Does Not Have Much Tolerance For People Living Alone. He's Like Bill Clinton In That He Feels Everyone's Pain. If Rick Thinks Somebody Is Lonely, He Can't Sleep At Night. He Wants Us All To Live With Each Other And Play Nice So He Can Get Some Rest. Tortured Soul.

Maybe Life Isn't Meaningless...maybe Just Your Life Is Meaningless

Imagine, A Being With A Mind As Great As God's, With Feet Like Trees And A Voice Like Rushing Wind, Telling You That You Are His Cherished Creation.

When We Do What God Wants Us To Do, We Are Blessed, We Are Spiritually Healthy.

The Reason I Like Writing A Memoir Is Because It Isn't Preachy.

Nothing Is Going To Change In Congo Until You And I Figure Out What Is Wrong With The Person Inside The Mirror

The Ambitions We Have Will Become The Stories We Live.

I Think Writers Would Do Better To Consider That Idea [to Write To Yourself], Because You Know Yourself Really Well, And You Never Know Your Demographic Fully. You Only Get Into Trouble If You Try To Please Somebody You Don't Really Understand.

I Think That Every Living Person, Every Person Who Is Awake To The Functioning Principles Within His Reality Has A Moment Where He Stops Blaming The Problems In The World On Group Thinking, On Humanity And Authority, And Starts To Face Himself. I Hate This More Than Anything. This Is The Hardest Principle Within Christian Spirituality For Me To Deal With. The Problem Is Not Out There, The Problem Is The Needy Beast Of A Thing Living In My Chest.

Job Found Contentment And Even Joy, Outside The Context Of Comfort, Health Or Stability. He Understood The Story Was Not About Him, And He Cared More About The Story Then He Did About Himself.

All Relationships Are Living And Alive And Moving And Becoming Something.

...she Wanted God To Make Sense. He Doesn't. He Will Make No More Sense To Me Than I Will Make Sense To An Ant.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements. We Don’t Even Believe Things Because We Believe Them Anymore. We Only Believe Things Because They Are Cool Things To Believe.

It Wasn't Necessary To Win For The Story To Be Great, It Was Only Necessary To Sacrifice Everything.

I Never Liked Jazz Music Because Jazz Music Doesn't Resolve. But I Was Outside The Bagdad Theater In Portland One Night When I Saw A Man Playing The Saxophone. I Stood There For Fifteen Minutes, And He Never Opened His Eyes.

...i Want My Spirituality To Rid Me Of Hate, Not Give Me Reason For It.

It's Possible To Do Both As A Writer - To Engage And Have A Family And All That Good Stuff - And I Chose Not To For The Sake Of The Career.

Relationships Unlock Certain Parts Of Who We Are Supposed To Be.

The Inciting Incident Is How You Get (characters) To Do Something. It's The Doorway Through Which They Can't Return, You Know. The Story Takes Care Of The Rest.

Passion About Nothing Is Like Pouring Gasoline In A Car Without Wheels. It Isn't Going To Lead Anybody Anywhere.

I Often Learn More About Myself From Listening To The Life Story Of A Friend Than I Do Reflecting On My Own Story.

I Think It's Very Hard For Us, For Christians, To Understand That It's Okay To Read A Book, For Instance, On How To Manage Your Time. There's Nothing Wrong With That.

Lets Choose To Do Something Really Difficult, Something That Saves Lives, And Let's Do That Thing With People We Love.

Everybody Wants To Be Somebody Fancy. Even If They're Shy.

I Think Life Is Staggering And We're Just Too Used To It.

Things Jesus Never Said: "you Should Come With Me To Church.

I Have Friends Who Are Writers, But We Don't Tend To Talk About Literature Very Much. It's Just Not Part Of My Process; I Tend To Be Pretty Secretive About What I'm Working On.

Christians Might Say That You Can't Live A More Meaningful Life Without Jesus. Well, That's Absolutely Not True. You Can. You Can Enjoy A Sunrise Whether You Know Jesus Or Not.

Without The Christian Explanation Of Original Sin, The Seemingly Silly Story Of Adam And Eve And The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil, There Was No Explanation Of Conflict. At All.

They Are Lonely. I'm Not Talking About Lonely For A Lover Or A Friend. I Mean Lonely In The Universal Sense, Lonely Inside The Understanding That We Are Tiny People On A Tiny Little Earth Suspended In An Endless Void That Echoes Past Stars And Stars Of Stars.

I Don't Know Why It Is, Exactly, But The People With The Healthiest Self-esteem, Are Also The Greatest At Intimacy. I'm Not Talking About Arrogant People. I'm Talking About People Who Know They Are Both Good And Bad Yet Believe At The Deepest Level They Are Really Good For People.

Right, But You Know, What Would Any Of Us Lose By Losing Our Possessions. Maybe We Would Gain Something, Like Relationships, Like The Beauty Of Good Friends, Intimacy, You Know What I Mean, Man? Like We Wouldn't Be Losing Anything If We Lost Our Stuff, We'd Be Gaining Everything.

But Playing Your Music As Loud As You Want And Coming Home Drunk Aren't Real Life. Real Life, It Turns Out, Is Diapers And Lawnmowers, Decks That Need Painting, A Wife That Needs To Be Listened To, Kids That Need To Be Taught Right From Wrong, A Checkbook, An Oil Change, A Sunset Behind A Mountain, Laughter At A Kitchen Table, Too Much Wine, A Chipped Tooth, And A Screaming Child.

Humans Are Designed To Seek Comfort And Order, And So If They Have Comfort And Order, They Tend To Plant Themselves, Even If Their Comfort Isn't All That Comfortable. And Even If They Secretly Want For Something Better.

...if I Do Not Introduce People To Jesus, Then I Don't Believe Jesus Is An Important Person. It Doesn't Matter What I Say.

If The Abortion Issue Is Important To Me, This Is How You Tackle That Issue.

Christian Spirituality Was Not A Children's Story. It Wasn't Cute Or Neat. It Was Mystical And Odd And Clean, And It Was Reaching Into Dirty. There Was Wonder In It And Enchantment.

The More I Try To Impress People, The More I Separate Myself From Them. Vulnerability Attracts Love.

I'm Just Trying To Make The Point That The Story We're Telling Ourselves Is Often Very Different From The Story We're Telling The People Around Us.

All The Trees Are Losing Their Leaves, And Not One Of Them Is Worried.

It Is Always The Simple Things That Change Our Lives. And These Things Never Happen When You Are Looking For Them To Happen. Life Will Reveal Answers At The Pace Life Wishes To Do So. You Feel Like Running, But Life Is On A Stroll. This Is How God Does Things.

I Asked God To Help Me Understand The Story Of The Forest And What It Means To Be A Tree In That Story.

Let's Show Up To Life. Let's Prove How Beautiful It Can Really Be. Let's Face The Conflict, Redeem It, Conquer It, And Allow It To Mold Our Character. Let's Participate In What God Is Doing In The World.

I Heard Once That Real Love Doesn't Ask What Is In It For Me; It Just Gives Unconditionally. It Just Tries To Take The Weight Out Of Somebody Else's Pack, Lessen His Load, And If It Gets Reciprocated, That's Great, But That Isn't What You Did It For.

I've Wondered, Though, If One Of The Reasons We Fail To Acknowledge The Brilliance Of Life Is Because We Don't Want The Responsibility Inherent In The Acknowledgment. We Don't Want To Be Characters In A Story Because Characters Have To Move And Breathe And Face Conflict With Courage. And If Life Isn't Remarkable, Then We Don't Have To Do Any Of That; We Can Be Unwilling Victims Instead Of Grateful Participants.

The Mountains Themselves Call Us Into Greater Stories.

The Thing About New Things Is You Feel New When You Buy Them, You Feel As Though You Are Somebody Different Because You Own Something Different. We Are Our Possessions, You Know. There Are People Who Get Addicted To Buying New Stuff. Things. Piles And Piles Of Things. But The New Things Become Old Things So Quickly. We Need New Things To Replace The Old Things.

I Listened So Hard Because It Felt Like, While She Was Telling Me Stories, She Was Massaging My Soul, Letting Me Know That I Was Not Alone, That I Will Never Have To Be Alone, That There Are Friends And Family And Churches And Coffee Shops. I Was Not Going To Be Cast Into Space.

Self-discipline Will Never Make Us Feel Righteous Or Clean; Accepting God's Love Will.

I Know Our Culture Will Sometimes Understand A Love For Jesus As Weakness. There Is This Lie Floating Around That Says I Am Supposed To Be Able To Do Life Alone, Without Any Help, Without Stopping To Worship Something Bigger Than Myself. But I Actually Believe There Is Something Bigger Than Me, And I Need For There To Be Something Bigger Than Me. I Need Someone To Put Awe Inside Me; I Need To Come Second To Someone Who Has Everything Figured Out.

If We Are Not Willing To Wake Up In The Morning And Die To Ourselves, Perhaps We Should Ask Ourselves Whether Or Not We Are Really Following Jesus.

God Doesn't Give Us Crying, Pooping Children Because He Wants To Advance Our Careers.

What Do Markets Do? They Consolidate, They Breakout, They Extend, They Overextend, They Back And Fill, They Consolidate, And Repeat The Process. That's All You Need To Know About The Markets.

Sometimes The Things We Want Most In Life Are The Things That Will Kill Us.

True Intimacy, The Exchange Of Affection Between Two People Who Are Not Lying, Is Transforming.

Great Writers Know What To Cut Out. It's The Same In Life. Clear Ambitions. Clear Relationships. This Is The Stuff Of Good Story.

I Do Not Believe A Person Can Take Two Issues From Scripture, Those Being Abortion And Gay Marriage, And Adhere To Them As Sins, Then Neglect Much Of The Rest And Call Himself A Fundamentalist Or Even A Conservative. The Person Who Believes The Sum Of His Morality Involves Gay Marriage And Abortion Alone, And Neglects Health Care And World Trade And The Environment And Loving His Neighbor And Feeding The Poor Is, By Definition, A Theological Liberal, Because He Takes What He Wants From Scripture And Ignores The Rest.

And Once You Live A Good Story, You Get A Taste For A Kind Of Meaning In Life, And You Can't Go Back To Being Normal; You Can't Go Back To Meaningless Scenes Stitched Together By The Forgettable Thread Of Wasted Time.

At The Time, I Didn't Know What Forgiveness Meant. I Wouldn't Really Know What Forgiveness Meant For Another Year, Until My Pastor, Rick Mckinley, Happened To Spell It Out In A Sermon. He Said That When You Forgive, You Bear The Burden Somebody Has Given You Without Holding Them Accountable.

The Real Voice Is Stiller And Smaller And Seems To Know, Without Confusion, The Difference Between Right And Wrong And The Subtle Delineation Between The Beautiful And Profane. It's Not An Agitated Voice, But Ever Patient As Though It Approves A Million False Starts. The Voice I Am Talking About Is A Deep Water Of Calming Wisdom.

Fear Isn’t Only A Guide To Keep Us Safe; It’s Also A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life … The Great Stories Go To Those Who Don’t Give In To Fear.

There's No Authoritarian Structure At Reed College, But The Education Is Conservative. So What You Have Is A Lot Of Students Who Are Very Authentically Looking For Truth.

Earthly Love… Is Temporal And Slight So That Is Has To Be Given Again And Again In Order For Us To Feel Any Sense Of Security; But God’s Love, God’s Voice And Presence, Would Instill Our Souls With Such Affirmation We Would Need Nothing More And Would Cause Us To Love Other People So Much We Would Be Willing To Die For Them.

Half The Time I Don't Know What I'm Trying To Say.

In Exchange For Our Humility And Willingness To Accept The Charity Of God, We Are Given A Kingdom. And A Beggar's Kingdom Is Better Than A Proud Man's Delusion.

No Love Is Conditional. If Love Is Conditional, It’s Just Some Sort Of Manipulation Masquerading As Love.

The Most Important Thing That Happens Within Christian Spirituality Is When A Person Falls In Love With Jesus.

Falling In Love

Suffering Ceases To Be Suffering When You Have A Redemptive Perspective.

But The People Who Took The Bus Didn't Experience The City As We Experienced The City. The Pain Made The City More Beautiful. The Story Made Us Different Characters Than We Would Have Been If We Had Skipped The Story And Showed Up At The Ending An Easier Way.

All This Beauty Exists So You And I Can See His Glory, His Artwork. It's Like An Invitation To Worship Him, To Know Him.

I Don't Wonder Anymore What I'll Tell God When I Go To Heaven When We Sit In The Chairs Under The Tree, Outside The City........i'll Tell These Things To God, And He'll Laugh, I Think And He'll Remind Me Of The Parts I Forgot, The Parts That Were His Favorite. We'll Sit And Remember My Story Together, And Then He'll Stand And Put His Arms Around Me And Say, "well Done," And That He Liked My Story. And My Soul Won't Be Thirsty Anymore. Finally He'll Turn And We'll Walk Toward The City, A City He Will Have Spoken Into Existence A City Built In A Place Where Once There'd Been Nothing.

If I Use The Bible To Prove I Am Right, I Have Yet To Be Humbled By The Beautiful Truths Of The Bible.

Everybody Has To Leave, Everybody Has To Leave Their Home And Come Back So They Can Love It Again For All New Reasons.

It Confuses Me That Christian Living Is Not Simpler. The Gospel, The Very Good News, Is Simple.

I Loved The Fact That It Wasn't My Responsibility To Change Somebody, That It Was God's, That My Part Was Just To Communicate Love And Approval.

I Love To Give To Charity, But I Don't Want To Be Charity. This Is Why I Have So Much Trouble With Grace.

I Think If You Like Somebody You Have To Tell Them. It Might Be Embarrassing To Say It, But You Will Never Regret Stepping Up. I Know From Personal Experience, However, That You Should Not Keep Telling A Girl That You Like Her After She Tells You She Isn't Into It. You Should Not Keep Riding Your Bike By Her House Either.

I Never Liked Jazz Music Because Jazz Music Doesn't Resolve. But I Was Outside The Bagdad Theater In Portland One Night When I Saw A Man Playing The Saxophone. I Stood There For Fifteen Minutes, And He Never Opened His Eyes. After That I Liked Jazz Music. Sometimes You Have To Watch Somebody Love Something Before You Can Love It Yourself. It Is As If They Are Showing You The Way. I Used To Not Like God Because God Didn't Resolve. But That Was Before Any Of This Happened.

I Think The Things We Want Most In Life, The Things We Think Will Set Us Free, Are Not The Thing We Need.

When You Live On Your Own For A Long Time, However, Your Personality Changes Because You Go So Much Into Yourself You Lose The Ability To Be Social, To Understand What Is And Isn't Normal Behavior. There Is An Entire World Inside Yourself, And If You Let Yourself, You Can Get So Deep Inside It You Will Forget The Way To The Surface. Other People Keep Our Souls Alive, Just Like Food And Water Does With Our Body.

Other People Keep Our Souls Alive, Just Like Food And Water Does With Our Body.

Most Great Art Is Created When The Artist Feels They Are Channeling Something Rather Than Trying To Communicate Something.

Many Of Our Attempts To Understand Christian Faith Have Only Cheapened It. I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me. The Little We Do Understand, That Grain Of Sand Our Minds Are Capable Of Grasping, Those Ideas Such As God Is Good, God Feels, God Loves, God Knows All, Are Enough To Keep Our Hearts Dwelling On His Majesty And Otherness Forever.

I Think We Can Provide Better Stories Through Providing Mentors, And Certainly Part Of My Story Is Providing Mentors To Kids Growing Up Without Dads. I Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.i Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.

And There Is Something Profoundly Humbling About Knowing God. I’m Not Talking About The Trinket God Or The Genie-in-a-lamp God. I Mean The God Who Invented The Tree In My Front Yard, The Beauty Of My Sweetheart, The Taste Of A Blueberry, The Violence Of A River At Flood. There Are A Lot Of Religious Trends That Would Have Us Controlling God, Telling Us That If We Do This That And The Other, God Will Jump Through Our Hoops Like A Monkey. But This Other God, This Real God, Is Awesome And Strong, All-encompassing And Passionate, And For Reasons I Will Never Understand, He Wants To Father Us.

Every Day You Live Is A Page. Every Year, A Chapter. Your Life, A Book. What Is It About?

When We Think Too Much About The Opinions Of Others, We Are Letting Them Edit A Book God Has Written.

When You Fly Across The Country In An Airplane The Country Seems Vast; But It Isn't Vast. It's All Connected By Roads One Can Ride A Bike Down. If You Watch The News And There's A Tragedy At A House In Kansas, That Guy's Driveway Connects With Yours, And You'd Be Surprised By How Few Roads It Takes To Get There.

There Is Something Beautiful About A Billion Stars Held Steady By A God Who Knows What He Is Doing. (they Hang There, The Stars, Like Notes On A Page Of Music, Free-form Verse, Silent Mysteries Swirling In The Blue Like Jazz.) And As I Lay There, It Occurred To Me That God Is Up There Somewhere.

It Is No Coincidence That Jesus Talks Endlessly About Love. Free Love. Unconditional Love.

Unconditional Love

I Didnt Like Being Reminded About How Self-absorbed I Was. I Wanted To Be Over This, Done With This. I Didnt Want To Live In A Broken World Or A Broken Me. I Wasnt Trying To Weasel Out Of Anything. I Just Wasnt In The Mood Of Being On The Earth That Night. I Get Like That Sometimes When It Rains, Or When I See Certain Sad Movies.

More Than My Questions About The Efficacy Of Social Actions Were My Questions About My Own Motives. Do I Want Social Justice For The Oppressed Or Do I Jusy Want To Be Known As A Socially Active Person? I Spend 95 Percent Of My Time Thinking About Myself Anyway. I Dont Have To Watch The Evening News To See The World Is Bad, I Only Have To Look At Myself. I Am Not Brow Beating Here, I Am Only Saying That True Charge , True Living Giving, God Honoring Change Would Have To Start With The Individual. I Was The Very Problem I Had Been Protesting. I Wanted To Make A Sign That Read “i Am The Problem

Meaningful Stories Have Lots And Lots Of Conflict. If We Avoid Conflict, Our Stories Won't Be Meaningful.

If The Point Of Life Is The Same As The Point Of A Story, The Point Of Life Is Character Transformation. If I Got Any Comfort As I Set Out On My First Story, It Was That In Nearly Every Story, The Protagonist Is Transformed. He's A Jerk At The Beginning And Nice At The End, Or A Coward At The Beginning And Brave At The End. If The Character Doesn't Change, The Story Hasn't Happened Yet. And If Story Is Derived From Real Life, If Story Is Just Condensed Version Of Life Then Life Itself May Be Designed To Change Us So That We Evolve From One Kind Of Person To Another.

If The Point Of Life Is The Same As The Point Of A Story, The Point Of Life Is Character Transformation.

I Am A Person Of Faith, So I Come From A Community That's Involved In 360,000 Churches Across The Country, That Is An Institution That Could, In A Relatively Short Period Of Time, Provide Hundreds Of Thousands, If Not Millions, Of Positive Male Role Models.

In An Age In Which We Can Project An Image And Score That Image Based On Immediate Facebook And Twitter Feedback, Thus Making A Video Game Of Life And A False-reality Composed Of Lies, What Gets Lost Is A Joyful Obsession With The Work We Create From The Purest Of Motives, A Sheer Joy In The Act Of Creation Itself That Causes Us To Lose Ourselves In Something Else, And In A Way Die To Ourselves Over The Absolute Love Of A Thing We Are Breathing Into Life.

If A Piece Of Genius Comes, It Comes, And It If Doesn't, It Doesn't.

What We Really Need Is Somebody Who Loves Us So Much We Don’t Worry About Death, Or About [anything For That Matter]… We Need This; We Need This So We Can Love Other People Purely And Not For Selfish Gain, We Need This So We Can See Everybody As Equals, We Need This So Our Relationships Can Be Sincere, We Need This So We Can Stop Kicking Ourselves Around, We Need This So We Can Lose All Self-awareness And Find Ourselves For The First Time, Not By Realizing Some Dream, But By Being Told Who We Are By The Only Being Who Has The Authority To Know, By That I Mean The Creator.

I Fell In Love With Books. Some People Find Beauty In Music, Some In Painting, Some In Landscape, But I Find It In Words. By Beauty, I Mean The Feeling You Have Suddenly Glimpsed Another World, Or Looked Into A Portal That Reveals A Kind Of Magic Or Romance Out Of Which The World Has Been Constructed, A Feeling There Is Something More Than The Mundane, And A Reason For Our Plodding.

I Tend To Write First Drafts That Are Incredibly Cognitive, Very Rational, Very Boring. They Come Off As Justification. Like, 'this Is My Idea And Here's All The Reasons That It's Right.' It Doesn't Make For Very Compelling Reading.

Nobody Will Listen To You Unless They Sense That You Like Them.

I Think That's The True Litmus Test For Someone Who Has Become Closer To Jesus: Their Heart Is More Loving, Accepting, Childlike, Less Believing That They Have All The Answers And More Believing In Him.

I Think Understanding Your Life As A Story Is A Really Terrific Way Of Kind Of Knowing Where You Are And Knowing Who You Are.

Knowing Who You Are

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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