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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.

-Donald Miller

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I'm Amazed At How

Donald Miller

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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.

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When A Relationship Is Right, It Is No More Possible To Wake Up And Want Out Of The Marriage Than It Is To Wake Up And Stop Believing In God. What Is, Is What Is.

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

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.

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.

When You Write, You're Alone In A Room. And When Someone Reads A Book, They're Alone In A Room, Too, Usually. It's A Really Intimate Exchange. And So People Ask Me Where I Get The Boldness To Talk About This Or That, But I Didn't Feel Like It Required Any Sort Of Courage, Because I Was Alone. Sometimes It Feels Weird For People To Read It.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You Can't Tell A Good Story Without Conflict - The Story Can't Be Beautiful Or Meaningful. We're Taught To Run From Conflict, And It's Robbing Us Of Some Really Good Stories.

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.

The Most Difficult Lie I Have Ever Contended With Is This: Life Is A Story About Me.

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

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.

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.

Great Stories Move Through Fear.

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

I Think This Is When Most People Give Up On Their Stories. They Come Out Of College Wanting To Change The World, Wanting To Get Married, Wanting To Have Kids And Change The Way People Buy Office Supplies. But They Get Into The Middle And Discover It Was Harder Than They Thought. They Can't See The Distant Shore Anymore, And They Wonder If Their Paddling Is Moving Them Forward. None Of The Trees Behind Them Are Getting Smaller And None Of The Trees Ahead Are Getting Bigger. They Take It Out On Their Spouses, And They Go Looking For An Easier Story.

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.

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 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.

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.

It’s Interesting That In The Bible, In The Book Of Ecclesiastes, The Only Practical Advice Given About Living A Meaningful Life Is To Find A Job You Like, Enjoy Your Marriage, And Obey God. It’s As Though God Is Saying, Write A Good Story, Take Somebody With You, And Let Me Help.

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.

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.

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

A Story Is A Character Who Wants Something And Overcomes Conflict To Get It.

If You Want To Bond With Your Friends, Do Something Very Hard With Them, Something That You Won't Be Able To Do Alone.

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

We Live In A World Where Bad Stories Are Told, Stories That Teach Us Life Doesn't Mean Anything And That Humanity Has No Great Purpose. It's A Good Calling, Then, To Speak A Better Story. How Brightly A Better Story Shines. How Easily The World Looks To It In Wonder. How Grateful We Are To Hear These Stories, And How Happy It Makes Us To Repeat Them.

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... *so Soon You Will Be In That Part Of The Book Where You Are Holding The Bulk Of The Pages In Your Left Hand, And Only A Thin Wisp Of The Story In Your Right. *we Get One Story, You And I, And One Story Alone....it Might Be Time For You To Go. It Might Be Time To Change, To Shine Out.

And If These Mountains Had Eyes, They Would Wake To Find Two Strangers In Their Fences, Standing In Admiration As A Breathing Red Pours Its Tinge Upon Earth's Shore. These Mountains, Which Have Seen Untold Sunrises, Long To Thunder Praise But Stand Reverent, Silent So That Man's Weak Praise Should Be Given God's Attention.

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

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

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.

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.

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

He Thought About The Story His Daughter Was Living And The Role She Was Playing Inside That Story. He Realized He Hadn't Provided A Better Role For His Daughter. He Hadn't Mapped Out A Story For His Family. And So His Daughter Had Chosen Another Story, A Story In Which She Was Wanted, Even If She Was Only Being Used. In The Absence Of A Family Story, She'd Chosen A Story In Which There Was Risk And Adventure, Rebellion And Independence.

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

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.

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

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.

You Never Question The Truth Of Something Until You Have To Explain It To A Skeptic.

Meaning Is Something We Experience More Than We Attain. It's Like Finding A Nice, Easy Current In A River That Carries You Through Life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

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.

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.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements.

As A Human, I Am Flawed In That It Is Difficult For Me To Consider Others Before Myself. It Feels Like I Have To Fight Against This Force, This Current Within Me That, More Often Than Not, Wants To Avoid Serious Issues And Please Myself, Buy Things For Myself, Feed Myself, Entertain Myself, And All Of That.

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

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.

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.

And So I Have Come To Understand That Strength, Inner Strength, Comes From Receiving Love As Much As It Comes From Giving It.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In The Age Of Information, Ignorance Is A Choice.

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 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.

The Mountains Themselves Call Us Into Greater Stories.

If I Have A Hope, It's That God Sat Over The Dark Nothing And Wrote You And Me, Specifically, Into The Story And Put Us In With The Sunset And The Rainstorm As Though To Say, “enjoy Your Place In My Story. The Beauty Of It Means You Matter, And You Can Create Within It Even As I Have Created You.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And I Found Jesus Very Disturbing, Very Straightforward. He Wasn't Diplomatic, And Yet I Felt Like If I Met Him, He Would Really Like Me. Don, I Can't Explain How Freeing That Was, To Realize That If I Met Jesus, He Would Like Me. I Never Felt Like That About Some Of The Christians On The Radio. I Always Thought If I Met Those People They Would Yell At Me. But It Wasn't Like That With Jesus.

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.

...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.

Before I Studied Story, I Was Trying To Write A Novel, And It Was Terrible. It Wasn't Going Anywhere, And I Couldn't Figure Out What I Was Trying To Do. It Was Really Hard; Much Harder Than I Thought It Was Going To Be. Now That I've Studied Story, I Think I'd Have A Different Approach And Maybe I Could Actually Get It Done.

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?'

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

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

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.

When One Of My Friends Becomes A Christian, Which Happens About Every 10 Years Because I Am A Sheep About Sharing My Faith, The Experience Is Euphoric. I See In Their Eyes The Trueness Of The Story.

It Is Hard For Us To Admit We Have A Sin Nature Because We Live In This System Of Checks And Balances. If We Get Caught, We Will Be Punished. But That Doesn't Make Us Good People; It Only Makes Us Subdued. Just Think About The Congress And Senate And Even The President. The Genius Of The American System Is Not Freedom; The Genius Of The American System Is Checks And Balances. Nobody Gets All The Power. Everybody Is Watching Everybody Else. It Is As If The Founding Fathers Knew, Intrinsically, That The Soul Of Man, Unwatched, Is Perverse.

I Stay Away From Churches In Which I Feel Like I Have To Pretend I'm A Better Person Than I Am. That Sort Of Thing Moves My Faith Backwards.

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

And Through A Dark Night Of The Soul, I Came To Realize That Salvation Happens Through A Mysterious, Indefinable, Relational Interaction With Jesus In Which We Become One With Him. I Realized Christian Conversion Worked More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Concepts Of Ideas. This Is Not To Say There Are No True Ideas, It Is Only To Say There Is Something Else, Something Beyond.

Falling In Love

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

Grace Only Sticks To Our Imperfections. Those Who Can’t Accept Their Imperfections Can’t Accept Grace Either.

Sometimes You Have To Watch Somebody Love Something Before You Can Love It Yourself.

I Posted Chapters Online And Let People Give Feedback, And I Was Surprised At How Much Of That Feedback I Actually Used For The Book.i Posted Chapters Online And Let People Give Feedback, And I Was Surprised At How Much Of That Feedback I Actually Used For The Book. It Was A Different Process For Me, But I Liked It.

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

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

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.

I'm Not A Pastor; I've Never Been On Staff At A Church.

I Love Writing Books - I Really Do. If I Could Just Quit Everything And Work On A Book Every Day, I Would Love That Most.

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."

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

Most Of Us Are Waiting. We're Waiting For Something Interesting To Happen. And I Think We're Going To Wait Forever If We Don't Do Something More Interesting With Our Lives.

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.

Of His New Book, Don Says: “it Might Be The Greatest Book Ever Written. I Don’t Think Anybody Is Going To Read A Book Again After They Read My New One. I Think God Is Proud Of Me. I Am Going To Make A Killing Off This Thing And I’m Going To Use The Money To Go To Space.

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.

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.

Moral #1: "if You Work Hard, Stay Focused, And Never Give Up, You Will Eventually Get What You Want In Life." Moral #2: Sometimes The Things We Want Most In Life Are The Things That Will Kill Us.

A Story Is Based On What People Think Is Important, So When We Live A Story, We Are Telling People Around Us What We Think Is Important.

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

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.

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

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.

Most Great Art Is Freedom Within Form. Without Form, We Are Amateurs, Without Freedom, We Are Robots.

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.

I Think, In The Grand Epic, Jesus Is The Hero Of Our Stories. And Our Stories, As They Were, Are Subplots In A Grand Epic And Our Job Is Not To Be The Hero Of Any Story. Our Job Is To Be A Saint In A Story That He Is Telling.

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

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.

I Kept Imagining These People, Just Living Their Daily Lives, And Then Having Them Suddenly Ended In Unjust Tragedy. When We Watch The News, We Grieve All Of This, But When We Go To The Movies, We Want More Of It. Somehow We Realize That Great Stories Are Told In Conflict, But We Are Unwilling To Embrace The Potential Greatness Of The Story We Are Actually In. We Think God Is Unjust, Rather Than A Master Storyteller.

The Economy Is Turning Around, So That's Going To Help A Little Bit.

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.

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It Blew My Mind That What I Was Thinking Was Actually Applicable To People's Lives, And It Certainly Revolutionized Family.

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

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

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.

Truth Grew In My Mind Like A Fungus, And Though I Tried To Sleep It Out, There Was No Resisting The Epiphanies.

Sometimes When I Watch My Dog, I Think About How Good Life Can Be, If We Only Lose Ourselves In Our Stories. Lucy Doesn't Read Self-help Books About How To Be A Dog; She Just Is A Dog. All She Wants To Do Is Chase Ducks And Sticks And Do Other Things That Make Both Her And Me Happy. It Makes Me Wonder If That Was The Intention For Man, To Chase Sticks And Ducks, To Name Animals, To Create Families, And To Keep Looking Back At God To Feed Off His Pleasure At Our Pleasure.

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.

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.

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.

I Had Always Suspected Language Was Quite Limited In Its Ability To Communicate The Intricate Mysteries Of Truth.

Ability To Communicate

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

Unconditional Love

I Posted The First Three Chapters And I Had Enough People Say That Chapter Two Was Dragging That I Cut It Out Just Before The Book Went To Press. And I'm Glad I Did. The Book Is A Lot Better Without It.

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.

Without A Positive Male Role Model In Your Life It Is Extremely Difficult To Become A Man Who Benefits His Family And Benefits Society.

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

And When You Find Love, Or When You Are Mature Enough To Understand It, The Feeling You Get Is Gratitude.

To Be In A Relationship With God Is To Be Loved Purely And Furiously. And A Person Who Thinks Himself Unlovable Cannot Be In A Relationship With God Because He Can't Accept Who God Is; A Being That Is Love. We Learn That We Are Lovable Or Unlovable From Other People. That Is Why God Tells Us So Many Times To Love Each Other.

The Very Scary Thing About Religion, To Me, Is That People Actually Believe God Is Who They Think He Is.

People Want To Join A Great Story. If You Want To Lead, Tell One With Your Life.

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.

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

I'm The Kind Of Person Who Wants To Present My Most Honest, Authentic Self To The World, So I Hide Backstage And Rehearse Honest And Authentic Lines Until The Curtain Opens.

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.

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.

Sometimes The Story We're Telling The World Isn't Half As Endearing As The One That Lives Inside Us.

Instead Of Asking What It Feels Like To Follow God Or Be Used By God, We Should Be Asking Who God Is, And Whether We Really Know Him. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself.

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 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.

God Made A Whole Beautiful Earth And Decided To Put You In It, To Experience All Of This Beauty. You Can't Do That Watching Television All The Time.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

For Me, The Beginning Of Sharing My Faith With People Began By Throwing Out Christianity And Embracing Christian Spirituality, A Nonpolitical Mysterious System That Can Be Experienced But Not Explained.

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

Falling In Love

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 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.

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

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

We Don't Think Much About How Our Love Stories Will Affect The World, But They Do. Children Learn What's Worth Living For And What's Worth Dying For By The Stories They Watch Us Live. I Want To Teach Our Children How To Get Scary Close, And More, How To Be Brave. I Want To Teach Them That Love Is Worth What It Costs.

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

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.

I Had Some Friends Commenting Me Books, But Mostly It Was People I Didn't Know. But They're Fans. They're Fans Of The Books, So They Have A Working Knowledge Of How I Write, And They Know What They Like And What They Don't Like. I'm Really Grateful For Their Feedback.

When We Talk About The Decline Of The American Family, I Think We Have To Go Back To The Industrial Revolution.

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

I Am Something Of A Recluse By Nature. I Am That Cordless Screwdriver That Has To Charge For Twenty Hours To Earn Ten Minutes Use. I Need That Much Downtime.

Every Creative Person, And I Think Probably Every Other Person, Faces Resistance When They Are Trying To Create Something Good...the Harder The Resistance, The More Important The Task Must Be.

We Don't Think Of Our Flaws As The Glue That Binds Us To The People We Love, But They Are. Grace Only Sticks To Your Imperfections.

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

To Change The World You'll Need A Pen.

Changing The World

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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

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 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.

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

There Is A Time When Every Person Who Encounters Jesus, Who Believes Jesus Is The Son Of God, Decides That They Will Spend Their Life Following Him. Some People, Like The Apostle Paul, Make This Decision The Minute They Meet Him, The Minute They Become A Christian. Others, Like The Apostle Peter, Endure Years Of Half-hearted Commitment And Spiritual Confusion Before Leaping In With All Their Passion. Still Others May Enjoy Some Benefits Of God's Love And Grace Without Entering Into The True Joy Of A Marriage With Their Maker.

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

If What You Are Doing Is Important, You Will Encounter Resistance. If What You Are Doing Isn't Important It Will Be Easy.

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

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