Background Image
...
If You Don't Have Doubts You're Either Kidding Yourself Or Asleep. Doubts Are The Ants-in-the-pants Of Faith. They Keep It Alive And Moving.
-Frederick Buechner
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

If You Don't Have

Frederick Buechner
...
If You Don't Have Doubts You're Either Kidding Yourself Or Asleep. Doubts Are The Ants-in-the-pants Of Faith. They Keep It Alive And Moving.

Understanding the Quote: "if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. doubts..."

This quote by Frederick Buechner reflects deeply on the theme of moving. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Moving, Doubt, Alive, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Frederick Buechner interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner is celebrated for insightful thoughts on moving and doubt. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 5
Topic
Moving
Doubt
Alive
More From Frederick Buechner
I Think Most People, If I Asked, Would Say, "yes, Of Course I Believe." But I Think For A Great Many Of Them It Doesn't Really Make Much Difference In Terms Of Either What They Do With Their Lives Or With Their Own Inner Well-being. They Believe Because So Did Grandfather, And That's The Same Church They've Been Going To All These Years.
Believe
Thinking
Differences
. . . [t]o Live Not With Hands Clenched To Grasp, To Strike, To Hold Tight To A Life That Is Always Slipping Away The More Tightly We Hold It, But . . . To Live With The Hands Stretched Out Both To Give And Receive With Gladness.
Peace
Hands
Giving
Life Is Grace. Sleep Is Forgiveness. The Night Absolves. Darkness Wipes The Slate Clean, Not Spotless To Be Sure, But Clean Enough For Another Day's Chalking.
Sleep
Night
Grace
To Be Wise Is To Be Eternally Curious.
Wise
Curious
Being Wise
The Original, Shimmering Self Gets Buried So Deep That Most Of Us End Up Hardly Living Out Of It At All. Instead We Live Out All The Other Selves, Which We Are Constantly Putting On And Taking Off Like Coats And Hats Against The World’s Weather
Self
Weather
World
The First Ministers Were The Twelve Disciples. There Is No Evidence That Jesus Chose Them Because They Are Brighter Or Nicer Than Other People. Their Sole Qualification Seems To Have Been Their Initial Willingness To Rise To Their Feet When Jesus Said, "follow Me."
Jesus
Feet
People
Your Life And My Life Flow Into Each Other As Wave Flows Into Wave, And Unless There Is Peace And Joy And Freedom For You, There Can Be No Real Peace Or Joy Or Freedom For Me. To See Reality-not As We Expect It To Be But As It Is-is To See That Unless We Live For Each Other And In And Through Each Other, We Do Not Really Live Very Satisfactorily; That There Can Really Be Life Only Where There Really Is, In Just This Sense, Love.
Love
Life
Romantic
When A Man Leaves Home, He Leaves Behind Some Scrap Of His Heart. . . . It's The Same With A Place A Man Is Going To. Only Then He Sends A Scrap Of His Heart Ahead.
Home
Heart
Men
For Some People, Going To Church Is Going Home. In A Very Profound Sense, I Would Say The Same Thing. Home Is Where Christ Is.
Home
People
Profound
Religion Points To That Area Of Human Experience Where In One Way Or Another Man Comes Upon Mystery As A Summons To Pilgrimage.
Men
Way
Mystery
You Can't Be Too Careful What You Tell A Child Because You Never Know What He'll Take Hold Of And Spend The Rest Of His Life Remembering You By.
Children
Remember
Be Careful
Sin And Grace, Absence And Presence, Tragedy And Comedy, They Divide The World Between Them And Where They Meet Head On, The Gospel Happens.
Christian
Religious
Grace
What's Prayer? It's Shooting Shafts Into The Dark. What Mark They Strike, If Any, Who's To Say? It's Reaching For A Hand You Cannot Touch. The Silence Is So Fathomless That Prayers Like Plummets Vanish Into The Sea. You Beg. You Whimper. You Load God Down With Empty Praise. You Tell Him Sins That He Already Knows Full Well. You Seek To Change His Changeless Will. Yet Godric Prays The Way He Breathes, For Else His Heart Would Wither In His Breast. Prayer Is The Wind That Fills His Sail. Else Drift With Witless Tides. And Sometimes, By God's Grace, A Prayer Is Heard.
Prayer
Heart
Dark
If You Are Going To Proclaim The Christian Faith, Speak About Those Dimensions Of It Which You['ve] Had Some Experience With.
Christian
Dimensions
Speak
What Deadens Us Most To God's Presence Within Us, I Think, Is The Inner Dialogue That We Are Continually Engaged In With Ourselves, The Endless Chatter Of Human Thought.
Thinking
Endless
Dialogue
The World Needs People Who Save Lives.
People
Needs
World
It Is Impossible To Conceive How Different Things Would Have Turned Out If That Birth Had Not Happened Whenever, Wherever, However It Did For Millions Of People Who Have Lived Since, The Birth Of Jesus Made Possible Not Just A New Way Of Understanding Life But A New Way Of Living It. It Is A Truth That, For Twenty Centuries, There Have Been Untold Numbers Of Men And Women Who, In Untold Numbers Of Ways, Have Been So Grasped By The Child Who Was Born, So Caught Up In The Message He Taught And The Life He Lived, That They Have Found Themselves Profoundly Changed By Their Relationship With Him.
Jesus
Children
Men
It's Not As If I Knew Answers Which I Am Going To Set Down In The Form Of A Novel Or A Memoir Or A Sermon. It's, Rather, I'm Going To Search Myself For What I Might Have To Say In This Area.
Answers
Might
Form
Faith Is Not Being Sure Where You're Going, But Going Anyway.
Spiritual
Spirituality
The Grace Of God Means Something Like: Here Is Your Life. You Might Never Have Been, But You Are Because The Party Wouldn't Have Been Complete Without You.
Life
God
Christian
I Don't Know That It Makes Any Difference Whether It's At This Time Or A Hundred Years Before Or A Hundred Years Later. I Think Always It's A Matter Of Simply Listen[ing] To What Is Going On Around You And In Your Own Experience. Try To Understand What's Happening, Or If Not To Understand It, At Least To Appreciate The Reality Of It.
Thinking
Reality
Differences
I Don't Think Christ Would Give A Hoot Whether You Mentioned Christ To Them Or Not. What Matters - I'm Speaking Arrogantly And Absurdly - To Him Is, Are You Living The Kind Of Life That I Embodied? Whether You Believe In Christ Or Don't, Who Cares?
Believe
Thinking
What Matters
Prayers Out Of, Very Often, Not The Most Religious Part Of Me, But The Most Anxious Part Of Me, The Most Desperately Loving, Fearing Part Of Me.
Religious
Prayer
Anxious
Jesus Is Apt To Come, Into The Very Midst Of Life At Its Most Real And Inescapable Moments. Not In A Blaze Of Unearthly Light, Not In The Midst Of A Sermon, Not In The Throes Of Some Kind Of Religious Daydream, But...at Supper Time, Or Walking Along A Road...he Never Approached From On High, But Always In The Midst, In The Midst Of People, In The Midst Of Real Life And The Questions That Real Life Asks.
Religious
Jesus
Real
If You Want To Be Holy, Be Kind.
Want
Be Kind
Holy
My Story Is Important Not Because It Is Mine, God Knows, But Because If I Tell It Anything Like Right, The Chances Are You Will Recognize That In Many Ways It Is Also Yours… It Is Precisely Through These Stories In All Their Particularity, As I Have Long Believed And Often Said, That God Makes Himself Known To Each Of Us More Powerfully And Personally. If This Is True, It Means That To Lose Track Of Our Stories Is To Be Profoundly Impoverished Not Only Humanly But Also Spiritually.
Mean
Long
Track
I Believe With The Best Of Who I Am In God, But I Sometimes Think If Anybody Would Watch Me And [they] Didn't Believe A Damn Thing, They Would Have A Very Hard Time Deciding Which Of Us Is Which.
Believe
Thinking
Hard Times
Toleration Is Often Just Indifference In Disguise.
Indifference
Disguise
Toleration
They Are Prepared For A God Who Strikes Hard Bargains But Not For A God Who Gives As Much For An Hour's Work As For A Day's. They Are Prepared For A Mustard-seed Kingdom Of God No Bigger Than The Eye Of A Newt But Not For The Great Banyan It Becomes With Birds In Its Branches Singing Mozart. They Are Prepared For The Potluck Supper At First Presbyterian But Not For The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.
Eye
Giving
Bird
. . Some Moment Happens In Your Life That You Say Yes Right Up To The Roots Of Your Hair, That Makes It Worth Having Been Born Just To Have Happen. Laughing With Somebody Till The Tears Run Down Your Cheeks. Waking Up To The First Snow. Being In Bed With Somebody You Love... Whether You Thank God For Such A Moment Or Thank Your Lucky Stars, It Is A Moment That Is Trying To Open Up Your Whole Life. If You Turn Your Back On Such A Moment And Hurry Along To Business As Usual, It May Lose You The Ball Game. If You Throw Your Arms Around Such A Moment And Hug It Like Crazy, It May Save Your Soul.
Running
Stars
Crazy
The Birth Of Jesus Made Possible Not Just A New Way Of Understanding Life But A New Way Of Living It.
Jesus
Understanding
Way
All 'isms' Run Out In The End, And Good Riddance To Most Of Them. Patriotism For Example. [...] If In The Interest Of Making Sure We Don't Blow Ourselves Off The Map Once And For All, We End Up Relinquishing A Measure Of National Sovereignty To Some International Body, So Much The Worse For National Sovereignty. There Is Only One Sovereignty That Matters Ultimately, And It Is Of Another Sort Altogether.
Running
Blow
Example
The Pride That Keeps Us From Forgiving Is The Same Pride Which Keeps Us From Accepting Forgiveness.
Pride
Forgiving
Accepting
You Do Not Need To Understand Healing To Be Healed Or Know Anything About Blessing To Be Blessed.
Blessed
Healing
Blessing
If Preachers Decide To Preach About Hope, Let Them Preach Out Of What They Themselves Hope For.
Preacher
Preaching
Reach Out
A God In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush.
Faith
Latin
Hands
When Someone We Love Suffers, We Suffer With That Person, And We Would Not Have It Otherwise, Because The Suffering And The Love Are One, Just As It Is With God's Love For Us.
Helping Others
Suffering
Persons
It Is The First Day Because It Has Never Been Before And The Last Day Because It Will Never Be Again. Be Alive, If You Can, All Through This Day - Today - Of Your Life. What's To Be Done? What's To Be Done? Follow Your Feet. Put On The Coffee. Start The Orange Juice, The Bacon, The Toast. Then Go Wake Up Your Children And Your Spouse. Think About The Work Of Your Hands. Live In The Needs Of The Day.
Children
Coffee
Thinking
You Hear As Many Things As You Would Imagine. I Hear Voices Of People I Loved Once. I Hear Moments That Took Place. I Hear Silences.
Voice
People
Silence
If We Are To Love Our Neighbors, Before Doing Anything Else We Must See Our Neighbors. With Our Imagination As Well As Our Eyes, That Is To Say Like Artists, We Must See Not Just Their Faces But The Life Behind And Within Their Faces. Here It Is Love That Is The Frame We See Them In.
Eye
Artist
Imagination
When You Remember Me, It Means You Have Carried Something Of Who I Am With You, That I Have Left Some Mark Of Who I Am On Who You Are. It Means That You Can Summon Me Back To Your Mind Even Though Countless Years And Miles May Stand Between Us. It Means That If We Meet Again, You Will Know Me. It Means That Even After I Die, You Can Still See My Face And Hear My Voice And Speak To Me In Your Heart.
Heart
Mean
Who I Am
In Honesty You Have To Admit To A Wise Man That Prayer Is Not For The Wise, Not For The Prudent, Not For The Sophisticated. Instead It Is For Those Who Recognize That In Face Of Their Deepest Needs, All Their Wisdom Is Quite Helpless. It Is For Those Who Are Willing To Persist In Doing Something That Is Both Childish And Crucial.
Wise
Prayer
Honesty
Whenever You Find Tears In Your Eyes, Especially Unexpected Tears, It Is Well To Pay The Closest Attention. They Are Not Only Telling You Something About The Secret Of Who You Are But, More Often Than Not, God Is Speaking To You Through Them Of The Mystery Of Where You Have Come From And Is Summoning You To Where, If Your Soul Is To Be Saved, You Should Go To Next.
Eye
Soul
Secret
I'm Not Religious In The Sense That I Do Not Subscribe To Any Particular Set Of Religious Dogma. I Don't Go To Church. I Don't Read The Bible. But I Believe That The Word "spirit" With A Capital S Points To An Ultimate Reality Which I Give My Heart To.
Religious
Believe
Heart
The Gospel Writers Are Not Really Interested Primarily In The Facts Of The Birth But In The Significance, The Meaning For Them Of That Birth Just As The People Who Love Us Are Not Really Interested Primarily In The Facts Of Our Births But In What It Meant To Them When We Were Born And How For Them The World Was Never The Same Again, How Their Whole Lives Were Changed With New Significance.
People
World
Facts
Joy Is A Mystery Because It Can Happen Anywhere, Anytime, Even Under The Most Unpromising Circumstances, Even In The Midst Of Suffering, With Tears In Its Eyes.
Healing
Eye
Joy
Of The Seven Deadly Sins, Anger Is Possibly The Most Fun. To Lick Your Wounds, To Smack Your Lips Over Grievances Long Past, To Roll Over Your Tongue The Prospect Of Bitter Confrontations Still To Come, To Savor To The Last Toothsome Morsel Both The Pain You Are Given And The Pain You Are Giving Back--in Many Ways It Is A Feast Fit For A King. The Chief Drawback Is That What You Are Wolfing Down Is Yourself. The Skeleton At The Feast Is You.
Kings
Fun
Pain
At Least To Look Back Over Their Own Lives, As I Have Looked Back Over Mine, For Certain Themes And Patterns And Signals That Are So Easy To Miss When You're Caught Up In The Process Of Living Them. If God Speaks To Us At All Other Than Through Such Official Channels As The Bible And The Church, Then I Think He Speaks To Us Largely Through What Happens To Us, So Listen To What Has Happened To You-for The Sound, Above All Else, Of His Voice.
Thinking
Voice
Missing
Five Friends I Had And Two Of Them Snakes.
Snakes
Two
Five Friends
Your Vocation Lies In The Intersection Of The World's Deep Need And Your Deep Joy.
Lying
Joy
Needs
God In His Unending Greatness And Glory And Man In His Unending Littleness, Prepared For The Worst But Rarely For The Best, Prepared For The Possible But Rarely For The Impossible.
Greatness
Men
Impossible
Snobs Are People Who Look Down On Other People, But That Does Not Justify Our Looking Down On Them. Who Can Say What Dark Fears Of Being Inferior Lurk Behind Their Superior Airs Or What They Suffer In Private For The Slights They Dish Out In Public?
Dark
Air
People
It’s Less The Words They Say Than Those They Leave Unsaid That Split Old Friends Apart.
Old Friends
Splits
Unsaid
Like Buddha Under The Bo Tree, Jesus, On His Tree, Has His Eyes Closed Too. The Difference Is This. The Pain And Sadness Of The World That Buddha's Eyes Close Out Is The Pain And Sadness Of The World That The Eyes Of Jesus Close In.
Jesus
Pain
Sadness
My Prayer Is Spasmodic, Occasional, Desperate. It Has A Great Deal To Do With My Children's Physical Well-being - That When They're Traveling In The Air The Plane Not Crash, Things Like That.
Prayer
Children
Air
There Is A Fragrance In The Air, A Certain Passage Of A Song, An Old Photograph Falling Out From The Pages Of A Book, The Sound Of Somebody's Voice In The Hall That Makes Your Heart Leap And Fills Your Eyes With Tears. Who Can Say When Or How It Will Be That Something Easters Up Out Of The Dimness To Remind Us Of A Time Before We Were Born And After We Will Die?
Song
Easter
Book
We Cannot Make The Kingdom Of God Happen, But We Can Put Out Leaves As It Draws Near. We Can Be Kind To Each Other. We Can Be Kind To Ourselves. We Can Drive Back The Darkness A Little. We Can Make Green Places Within Ourselves And Among Ourselves Where God Can Make His Kingdom Happen.
God
Darkness
Green
Much As We Wish, Not One Of Us Can Bring Back Yesterday Or Shape Tomorrow. Only Today Is Ours, And It Will Not Be Ours For Long, And Once It Is Gone It Will Never In All Time Be Ours Again. Thou Only Knowest What It Holds In Store For Us, Yet Even We Know Something Of What It Will Hold. The Chance To Speak The Truth, To Show Mercy, To Ease Another’s Burden. The Chance To Resist Evil, To Remember All The Good Times And Good People Of Our Past, To Be Brave, To Be Strong, To Be Glad.
Strong
Past
Yesterday
What Makes Me A Believer Is That From Time To Time, Going Back Almost As Far As My Memory Will Go Back, There Have Been Glimpses I've Had. Sometimes Literally A Glimpse Which Made Me Suspect The Presence Of Something Extraordinary And Beyond The Realm Of The Immediate. That's What I Think A Lot Of What My Writing Has Been, My Preaching Has Been - Trying To Listen To That Voice Again, To See Those Moments Again.
Memories
Writing
Thinking
... The World Can Give You These Glimpses As Well As Fairy Tales Can--the Smell Of Rain, The Dazzle Of Sun On White Clapboard With The Shadows Of Ferns And Wash On The Line, The Wildness Of A Winter Storm When In The House The Flame Of A Candle Doesn't Even Flicker.
Rain
Winter
Flames
We Are Children, Perhaps, At The Very Moment When We Know That It Is As Children That God Loves Us - Not Because We Have Deserved His Love And Not In Spite Of Our Undeserving; Not Because We Try And Not Because We Recognize The Futility Of Our Trying; But Simply Because He Has Chosen To Love Us. We Are Children Because He Is Our Father; And All Of Our Efforts, Fruitful And Fruitless, To Do Good, To Speak Truth, To Understand, Are The Efforts Of Children Who, For All Their Precocity, Are Children Still In That Before We Loved Him, He Loved Us, As Children, Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Jesus
Children
Father
Words Spoken In Deep Love Or Deep Hate Set Things In Motion In The Human Heart That Can Never Be Reversed.
Hate
Heart
Deep Love
Justice Is The Grammar Of Things. Mercy Is The Poetry Of Things.
Justice
Mercy
Grammar
Each One Of Us Could Describe His Or Her Life As A Sacred Journey. You Are Journeying From The Beginning To The End, And What Makes It Sacred Is That In The Process Of This Journey You Encounter The Holy In Various Forms Which, Unless You Have Your Eyes Open, You Might Not Even Notice.
Eye
Journey
Might
The Preaching Is Part Of The Reason I Don't Go To Church. Plus, I Don't Know, It Was Never Part Of My Tradition.
Church
Tradition
Reason
I Suspect That Jesus Spoke Many Of His Parables As A Kind Of Sad And Holy Joke And That That May Be Part Of Why He Seemed Reluctant To Explain Them Because If You Have To Explain A Joke, You Might As Well Save Your Breath.
Jesus
May
Might
On Her Deathbed, Gertrude Stein Is Said To Have Asked, 'what Is The Answer?' Then, After A Long Silence, 'what Is The Question?' Don't Start Looking In The Bible For The Answers It Gives. Start By Listening For The Questions It Asks.
Long
Giving
Silence
To Forgive Somebody Is To Say One Way Or Another, "you Have Done Something Unspeakable, And By All Rights I Should Call It Quits Between Us. Both My Pride And My Principles Demand No Less. However, Although I Make No Guarantees That I Will Be Able To Forget What You've Done, And Though We May Both Carry The Scars For Life, I Refuse To Let It Stand Between Us. I Still Want You For My Friend.
Forgiveness
Pride
Rights
Your Vocation In Life Is Where Your Greatest Joy Meets The World's Greatest Need.
Joy
Needs
World
Avarice, Greed, Concupiscence And So Forth Are All Based On The Mathematical Truism That The More You Get, The More You Have. The Remark Of That It Is More Blessed To Give Than To Receive Is Based On The Human Truth That The More You Give Away In Love, The More You Are. It Is Not Just For The Sake Of Other People That Tells Us To Give Rather Than Get, But For Our Own Sakes Too.
Blessed
People
Giving
...words Are Not Only Meaning But Music And Magic And Power.
Magic
Remember Me Not For The Ill I've Done But For The Good I've Dreamed.
Done
Remember
Ill
I Don't Go To Church All That Regularly, And One Reason I Don't Is Very Often When I Go I Am Bored Out Of My Wits. I Find Myself Being Addressed By Preachers Who, I Assume, Were Led By Some Initial Passion For Christ, For The Truth, For God, For "the More." That's What Got Them There. But That Has Gotten Buried Under All The Debris Of Having To Run A Church, Of Concerns.
Running
Passion
Bored
The World Says, The More You Take, The More You Have. Christ Says, The More You Give, The More You Are.
Giving
World
Christ
The Difference To Me Is Not Between The Believers On One Hand And The Nonbelievers On The Other Hand. It's Between People Who Carry In Their Hearts Some Sense Of What The Word "god," At Least To Me, Means, Which Is A Loving, Creating, Everlastingly Renewing Presence Deeply Concerned With The Well-being Of The Earth And All Its Creatures.
Mean
Heart
Differences
God Knows We Have Our Own Demons To Be Cast Out, Our Own Uncleanness To Be Cleansed. Neurotic Anxiety Happens To Be My Own Particular Demon, A Floating Sense Of Doom That Has Ruined Many Of What Could Have Been, Should Have Been, The Happiest Days Of My Life, And More Than A Few Times In My Life I Have Been Raised From Such Ruins, Which Is Another Way Of Saying That More Than A Few Times In My Life I Have Been Raised From Death - Death Of The Spirit Anyway, Death Of The Heart - By The Healing Power That Jesus Calls Us Both To Heal With And To Be Healed By.
Jesus
Healing
Heart
No Words Come Easily To My Lips. I Think Ultimately - What I Like To Think Is That I'm In Some Sense Hearing The Mystery Itself.
Thinking
Hearing
Lips
To Believe In Christ Is To Give Your Heart To Christ, Which Means Not To Affirm Things About Christ, But It's Like What You Mean When You Say, "i Believe In My Friend."
Believe
Mean
Heart
The Shield Was Another Of The Fear's Names. According To Laughter, It Means He Shields The Seed Of Abraham The Way A Man Starting A Fire Shields The Flame. When Sarah Was About To Die Childless, The Fear Gave Her A Son. When Abraham Was About To Slaughter The Son, The Fear Gave Him The Ram. He Is Always Shielding Us Like A Guttering Wick, Laughter Said, Because The Fire He Is Trying To Start With Us Is A Fire That The Whole World Will Live To Warm Its Hands At. It Is A Fire In The Dark That Will Light The Whole World Home.
Laughter
Home
Mean
To Be A Saint Is To Be A Little Out Of One's Mind, Which Is A Very Good Thing To Be A Little Out Of From Time To Time. It Is To Live A Life That Is Always Giving Itself Away And Yet Is Always Full.
Giving
Mind
Saint
Almost Nothing That Makes Any Real Difference Can Be Proved.
Real
Differences
The Jesus I Follow Is The Peacemaker, Is One Who Says Forgive Your Enemies, Who Worries About The Poor, Who Worries About The Poorest Of The Poor Instead Of The Richest Of The Rich.
Jesus
Worry
Enemy
God Created Us In Joy And Created Us For Joy, And In The Long Run Not All The Darkness There Is In The World And In Ourselves Can Separate Us Finally From That Joy, Because Whatever Else It Means To Say That God Created Us In His Image, I Think It Means That Even When We Cannot Believe In Him, Even When We Feel Most Spiritually Bankrupt And Deserted By Him, His Mark Is Deep Within Us. We Have God's Joy In Our Blood.
Running
Believe
Mean
If You Want To Talk About Grace, If You Want To Talk About Revelation, Talk About Your Life With Some Depth, Which Doesn't Mean Lurid Revelations As Much As Simply Looking At Your Own Deep Experiences And Describing Them As They Are.
Mean
Grace
Depth
Grace Is Something You Can Never Get But Only Be Given.
Faith
Grace
Given
When Friends Speak Overmuch Of Times Gone By, Often It's Because They Sense Their Present Time Is Turning Them From Friends To Strangers. Long Before The Moment Came To Say Goodbye, I Think, We Said Goodbye In Other Words And Ways And Silences. Then When The Moment Came For It At Last, We Didn't Say It As Should Be Said By Friends. So Now At Last, Dear Mouse, With Many, Many Years Between: Goodbye.
Goodbye
Thinking
Years
What Gets Me Back To Church, I Think, Is Thinking Maybe This Time That Question "is It True?" Will Be Answered, Not Just In Terms Of Somebody Saying, "yes, It's True," But Something Will Happen In A Sermon Or Maybe Shuffling Up To The Eucharist, Or In The Old Lady Who's Sitting Beside Me With A Bible - Maybe Something Will Happen Which Will Show Me That It's True. So I Go Back Thinking, Maybe This Time I'll Be Lucky.
Thinking
Church
Saying Yes
Turn Around And Believe That The Good News That We Are Loved Is Better Than We Ever Dared Hope, And That To Believe In That Good News, To Live Out Of It And Toward It, To Be In Love With That Good News, Is Of All Glad Things In This World The Gladdest Thing Of All. Amen, And Come Lord Jesus.
Jesus
Believe
News
My Story Is Important Not Because It Is Mine, God Knows, But Because If I Tell It Anything Like Right, The Chances Are You Will Recognize That In Many Ways It Is Also Yours.
Important
Stories
Way
Stop Trying To Protect, To Rescue, To Judge, To Manage The Lives Around You... Remember That The Lives Of Others Are Not Your Business. They Are Their Business. They Are God's Busineess... Even Your Own Life Is Not Your Business. It Also Is God's Business. Leave It To God.
Judging
Trying
Remember
To Believe Is Not Intellectual Assent: "yes, I Believe In Jesus. I Will Sign My Name To The Nicene Creed. I Believe It All" - Which You Could Do, [but] It Would Have No Effect On Who You Were Or What You Did. It Is, Rather, To Give Your Heart.
Jesus
Believe
Heart
In New England, Especially, [faith] Is Like Sex. It's Very Personal. You Don't Bring It Out And Talk About It.
Sex
England
New England
It's Very Easy In A Way, Horrible In Some Ways, But Simply To Give Up The Whole Thing, To Say, "well, The Hell With It, As Far As I'm Concerned Life Is Pointless And [so] Live The Fullest, Most Successfully Self-fulfilling Life You Can And Let The Rest Go Hang" - I've Never Reached That Point In My Life.
Giving Up
Self
Way
Love Yourself Not In Some Egocentric, Self-serving Sense But Love Yourself The Way You Would Love Your Friend In The Sense Of Taking Care Of Yourself, Nourishing Yourself, Trying To Understand, Comfort, And Strengthen Yourself.
Love You
Self
Trying
Laugh Till You Weep. Weep Till There's Nothing Left But To Laugh At Your Weeping. In The End It's All One.
Inspiring
Laughing
Ends
Don't Look Down On Them For Looking Down On Us. Look At Them, Instead, As Friends We Don't Know Yet And Who Don't Yet Know What They Are Missing In Not Knowing Us.
Knowing
Missing
Looks
We Have God's Joy In Our Blood.
Blood
Joy
Maybe At The Heart Of All Our Traveling Is The Dream Of Someday, Somehow, Getting Home.
Dream
Home
Heart
Doubts Are The Ants In The Pants Of Faith. They Keep It Awake And Moving.
Religious
Moving
Doubt
The Kind Of Work God Usually Calls You To Is The Kind Of Work (a) That You Need Most To Do And (b) That The World Most Needs To Have Done....the Place God Calls You To Is The Place Where Your Deep Gladness And The World's Deep Hunger Meet
Needs
Done
World
And There Are Other Dangers Potentially More Dangerous Than Even Nuclear War. There Is Aids. There Is Terrorism. There Are Drugs And More To The Point The Darkness Of Our Time That Makes People Seek Escape In Drugs. There Is The Slow Poisoning Of What We Call "the Environment" Of All Things As If With That Absurdly Antiseptic Phrase We Can Conceal From Ourselves That What We Are Really Poisoning Is Home, Is Here, Is Us.
War
Home
People
Even The Saddest Things Can Become, Once We Have Made Peace With Them, A Source Of Wisdom And Strength.
Inspirational
Hurt
Source
It Is Important To Tell Our Secrets Too Because ... It Makes It Easier For Other People To Tell Us A Secret Or Two Of Their Own, And Exchanges Like That Have A Lot To Do With What Being A Family Is All About And What Being Human Is All About.
Two
People
Secret
I Not Only Have My Secrets, I Am My Secrets. And You Are Yours. Our Secrets Are Human Secrets, And Our Trusting Each Other Enough To Share Them With Each Other Has Much To Do With The Secret Of What It Means To Be Human.
Mean
Trusting Each Other
Secret
You Can Kiss Your Family And Friends Good-bye And Put Miles Between You, But At The Same Time You Carry Them With You In Your Heart, Your Mind, Your Stomach, Because You Do Not Just Live In A World But A World Lives In You.
Relationship
Family
Smile
Don't Let Your Life Just Go In One Eye And Out The Other.
Eye
You Can Survive On Your Own; You Can Grow Strong On Your Own; You Can Prevail On Your Own; But You Cannot Become Human On Your Own.
Strong
Grows
Humans
We Find By Losing. We Hold Fast By Letting Go. We Become Something New By Ceasing To Be Something Old.
Inspirational
Letting Go
Positivity
That's Five Friends, One Each For Jesu's Wounds, And Godric Bears Their Mark Still On What's Left Of Him As In Their Time They All Bore His On Them. What's Friendship, When All's Done, But The Giving And Taking Of Wounds?
Giving
Done
Bears
The Trouble With Really Seeing And Really Hearing Is That Then We Really Have To Do Something About What We Have Seen And Heard.
Hearing
Trouble
Heard
Your Calling Is Where Your Own Greatest Joy Intersects With The Needs Of The World.
Joy
Needs
Calling
A Miracle Is When The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts. A Miracle Is When One Plus One Equals A Thousand.
Miracle
Plus
Thousand
You Enter The Extraordinary By Way Of The Ordinary
Ordinary
Way
Extraordinary
Like Adam, We Have All Lost Paradise; And Yet We Carry Paradise Around Inside Of Us In The Form Of A Longing For, Almost A Memory Of, A Blessedness That Is No More, Or The Dream Of A Blessedness That May Someday Be Again.
Dream
Memories
Paradise
The Grace Of God Means Something Like: Here Is Your Life. You Might Never Have Been, But You Are Because The Party Wouldn't Have Been Complete Without You. Here Is The World. Beautiful And Terrible Things Will Happen. Don't Be Afraid. I Am With You. Nothing Can Ever Separate Us. It's For You I Created The Universe. I Love You. There's Only One Catch. Like Any Other Gift, The Gift Of Grace Can Be Yours Only If You'll Reach Out And Take It. Maybe Being Able To Reach Out And Take It Is A Gift Too.
Life
Beautiful
Party
Faith Is Homesickness. Faith Is A Lump In The Throat. Faith Is Less A Position On Than A Movement Toward, Less A Sure Thing Than A Hunch. Faith Is Waiting.
Waiting
Movement
Hunches
I Am Such A Person Of Words. I've Spent So Much Of My Life Trying To Get It Right, Say It Right, Say It Eloquently, Say It Truthfully, Say It Honestly, That When I Hear It Said In Ways That None Of Those Adverbs Would Describe I Find Myself So Repelled That It Almost Shuts My Mind Off.
Mind
Trying
Way
God Himself Does Not Give Answers. He Gives Himself.
Giving
Doe
Answers
Without Somehow Destroying Me In The Process, How Could God Reveal Himself In A Way That Would Leave No Room For Doubt? If There Were No Room For Doubt, There Would Be No Room For Me.
Destroying Me
Doubt
Would Be
Gail Godwin Has Written A Book About The Heaviest Matters Of Loss, Grief, And Loneliness With A Touch So Light That I Was As Often Deeply Amused By It As I Was Deeply Moved.
Loneliness
Grief
Book
A Christian Is One Who Points At Christ And Says, 'i Can't Prove A Thing, But There's Something About His Eyes And His Voice. There's Something About The Way He Carries His Head, His Hands, The Way He Carries His Cross-the Way He Carries Me.'
Christian
Eye
Hands
The Fearsome Blessing Of That Hard Time Continues To Work Itself Out In My Life In The Same Way We're Told The Universe Is Still Hurtling Through Outer Space Under The Impact Of The Great Cosmic Explosion.... I Think Grace Sometimes Explodes Into Our Lives Like That-sending Our Pain, Terror, Astonishment Hurtling Through Inner Space Until By Grace They Become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris To Give Us Our Bearings, To Bring Us Into Something Like Full Being At Last.
Pain
Thinking
Hard Times
Jesus, Remember Me When You Come Into Your Kingdom, The Good Thief Said From His Cross (luke 23:42). There Are Perhaps No More Human Words In All Of Scripture, No Prayer We Can Pray So Well.
Jesus
Prayer
Thieves
To Be Bored Is To Turn A Cold Shoulder To Engage All That God Is And Has For You In The Moment.
Bored
Cold
Moments
Of All Powers, Love Is The Most Powerful And The Most Powerless. It Is The Most Powerful Because It Alone Can Conquer That Final And Most Impregnable Stronghold Which Is The Human Heart. It Is The Most Powerless Because It Can Do Nothing Except By Consent.
Powerful
Heart
Love Is
Theology, Like Fiction, Is Largely Autobiographical.
Fiction
Theology
Speak In Your Own Voice And Speak About Things That You Have In Some Sense Witnessed, Not Just Things You Read About Or Have Been Taught About In Seminary. To Talk About The Resurrection, Think About Those Moments Where In Some Way You Have Been Resurrected.
Thinking
Voice
Way
Everybody Prays Whether [you Think] Of It As Praying Or Not. The Odd Silence You Fall Into When Something Very Beautiful Is Happening Or Something Very Good Or Very Bad. The Ah-h-h-h! That Sometimes Floats Up Out Of You As Out Of A Fourth Of July Crowd When The Sky-rocket Bursts Over The Water. The Stammer Of Pain At Somebody Else S Pain. The Stammer Of Joy At Somebody Else's Joy. Whatever Words Or Sounds You Use For Sighing With Over Your Own Life. These Are All Prayers In Their Way.
Life
Beautiful
Prayer
When A Child Is Born, A Father Is Born. A Mother Is Born, Too Of Course, But At Least For Her It's A Gradual Process. Body And Soul, She Has Nine Months To Get Used To What's Happening. She Becomes What's Happening. But For Even The Best-prepared Father, It Happens All At Once. On The Other Side Of A Plate-glass Window, A Nurse Is Holding Up Something Roughly The Size Of A Loaf Of Bread For Him To See For The First Time.
Mother
Daughter
Dad
Whenever You Find Tears In Your Eyes, Especially Unexpected Tears, It Is Well To Pay The Closest Attention.
Eye
Tears
Attention
At The Evening Of Our Day, We Shall Be Judged By Our Loving.
Evening
Judged
Think Of These Pages As Graffiti Maybe, And Where I Have Scratched Up In A Public Place My Longings And Loves, My Grievances And Indecencies, Be Reminded In Private Of Your Own. In That Way, At Least, We Can Hold A Kind Of Converse.
Love
Thinking
Age
To Confess Your Sins To God Is Not To Tell [god] Anything [god] Doesn't Already Know. Until You Confess Them, However, They Are The Abyss Between You. When You Confess Them, They Become The Bridge.
Bridges
Sin
Abyss
Listen To Your Life. All Moments Are Key Moments.
Spiritual
Inspirational Life
Keys
If You Don't Have Doubts You're Either Kidding Yourself Or Asleep. Doubts Are The Ants-in-the-pants Of Faith. They Keep It Alive And Moving.
Moving
Doubt
Alive
Compassion Is Sometimes The Fatal Capacity For Feeling What It Is Like To Live Inside Somebody Else's Skin. It Is The Knowledge That There Can Never Really Be Any Peace And Joy For Me Until There Is Peace And Joy Finally For You Too.
Forgiveness
Peace
Ignorance
If It Seems A Childish Thing To Do, Do It In Remembrance That You Are A Child.
Children
Remembrance
Things To Do
What's Lost Is Nothing To What's Found, And All The Death That Ever Was, Set Next To Life, Would Scarcely Fill A Cup.
Next
Cups
Lost
...words Are In A Way Our Godly Sharing In The Work Of Creation, And The Speaking And Writing Of Words Is At Once The Most Human And The Most Holy Business We Engage In.
Writing
Godly
Way
To Remember The Past Is To See That We Are Here Today By Grace, That We Have Survived As A Gift.
Past
Grace
Today
Wether You Call On Him Or Don't Call On Him, God Will Be Present With You.
Gods Will
The Life I Touch For Good Or Ill Will Touch Another Life, And In Turn Another, Until Who Knows Where The Trembling Stops Or In What Far Place My Touch Will Be Felt.
Life
Happiness
Lonely
Grace Is Something You Can Never Get But Can Only Be Given. There's No Way To Earn It Or Deserve It Or Bring It About Anymore Than You Can Deserve The Taste Of Raspberries And Cream Or Earn Good Looks. A Good Night's Sleep Is Grace And So Are Good Dreams. Most Tears Are Grace. The Smell Of Rain Is Grace. Somebody Loving You Is Grace.
Good Night
Dream
Rain
In A World Where There Are No Longer Books We Have Almost All Of Us Read, The Movies We Have Almost All Of Us Seen Are Perhaps The Richest Cultural Bond We Have. They Go On Haunting Us For Years The Way Our Dreams Go On Haunting Us. In A Way They Are Our Dreams. The Best Of Them Remind Us Of Human Truths That Would Not Seem As True Without Them. They Help To Remind Us That We Are All Of Us Humans Together.
Dream
Book
Years
One Of The Blunders Religious People Are Particularly Fond Of Making Is The Attempt To Be More Spiritual Than God
Spiritual
Religious
People
We Find By Losing. We Hold Fast By Letting Go. We Become Something New By Ceasing To Be Something Old. This Seems To Be Close To The Heart Of That Mystery. I Know No More Now Than I Ever Did About The Far Side Of Death As The Last Letting-go Of All, But Now I Know That I Do Not Need To Know, And That I Do Not Need To Be Afraid Of Not Knowing. God Knows. That Is All That Matters.
Death
Letting Go
Heart
Like A House In The Rain, Books Were Havens Of Permanence And Protection From Whatever It Was That As A Child I Needed Protection From.
Children
Rain
Book
Vocation Is The Place Where The World's Greatest Need And A Person's Greatest Joy Meet.
Joy
Needs
World
Romantic Love Is Blind To Everything Except What Is Lovable And Lovely, But Christ's Love Sees Us With Terrible Clarity And Sees Us Whole. Christ's Love So Wishes Our Joy That It Is Ruthless Against Everything In Us That Diminishes Our Joy. The Worst Sentence Love Can Pass Is That We Behold The Suffering Which Love Has Endured For Our Sake, And That Is Also Our Acquittal. The Justice And Mercy Of The Judge Are Ultimately One.
Love
Justice
Judging
Listen To Your Life. See It For The Fathomless Mystery It Is. In The Boredom And Pain Of It, No Less Than In The Excitement And Gladness: Touch, Taste, Smell Your Way To The Holy And Hidden Heart Of It, Because In The Last Analysis All Moments Are Key Moments, And Life Itself Is Grace.
Life
Spiritual
Pain
The Story Of Any One Of Us Is In Some Measure The Story Of Us All
Stories
To Journey For The Sake Of Saving Our Own Lives Is Little By Little To Cease To Live In Any Sense That Really Matters, Even To Ourselves, Because It Is Only By Journeying For The World's Sake - Even When The World Bores And Sickens And Scares You Half To Death - That Little By Little We Start To Come Alive.
Journey
Scare
Half
Principles Are What People Have Instead Of God. To Be A Christian Means Among Other Things To Be Willing If Necessary To Sacrifice Even Your Highest Principles For God's Or Your Neighbour's Sake The Way A Christian Pacifist Must Be Willing To Pick Up A Baseball Bat If There's No Other Way To Stop A Man From Savagely Beating A Child. Jesus Didn't Forgive His Executioners On Principle But Because In Some Unimaginable Way He Was Able To Love Them. 'principle' Is An Even Duller Word Than 'religion'.
Christian
Baseball
Jesus
And Now Brothers, I Will Ask You A Terrible Question, And God Knows I Ask It Also Of Myself. Is The Truth Beyond All Truths, Beyond The Stars, Just This: That To Live Without Him Is The Real Death, That To Die With Him The Only Life?
Christmas
Jesus
Easter
To Be Commanded To Love God At All, Let Alone In The Wilderness, Is Like Being Commanded To Be Well When We Are Sick, To Sing For Joy When We Are Dying Of Thirst, To Run When Our Legs Are Broken. But This Is The First And Great Commandment Nonetheless. Even In The Wilderness - Especially In The Wilderness - You Shall Love Him.
Faith
Running
Sick
A Christian Isn't Necessarily Any Nicer Than Anybody Else, Just Better Informed.
Christian
Preaching And Writing - It's The Same. Whether I'm Writing To Speak Or Writing To Be Read In A Book, It's The Same Thing.
Book
Writing
Speak
Faith Is The Assurance That The Best And Holiest Dream Is True After All.
Dream
Assurance
We Must Be Careful With Our Lives, For Christ's Sake, Because It Would Seem That They Are The Only Lives We Are Going To Have In This Puzzling And Perilous World, And So They Are Very Precious And What We Do With Them Matters Enormously.
World
Matter
Sake
I Could, Of Course, Have Done No More If No Less Than Affiliated Myself In One Way Or Another With A Particular Church, Could Have Simply Read Books About Christianity, Talked To Christian People, Set Out To Discover Something About What A Christian Life Is Supposed To Involve And Then Tried As Best I Could To Live One. But, On The One Hand, That Didn't Seem Enough To Me, And On The Other, It Seemed To Much.
Christian
Book
Hands
He Also Said We Should Carve In The Year And Place Where I Was Born, But I Said No. As A Man Dies Many Times Before He's Dead, So Does He Wend From Birth To Birth Until, By Grace, He Comes Alive At Last.
Men
Years
Grace
Lust Is The Craving For Salt Of A Man Who Is Dying Of Thirst.
Men
Lust
Dying
Your Life And My Life Flow Into Each Other As Wave Flows Into Wave, And Unless There Is Peace And Joy And Freedom For You, There Can Be No Real Peace Or Joy Or Freedom For Me.
Real
Joy
Wedding Toast
Pray Anyway. Who Knows What God Can Do Through Your Prayer?
Prayer
Praying
Knows
One Life On This Earth Is All That We Get, Whether It Is Enough Or Not Enough, And The Obvious Conclusion Would Seem To Be That At The Very Least We Are Fools If We Do Not Live It As Fully And Bravely And Beautifully As We Can.
Earth
Fool
Enough
Our Stories Are All Stories Of Searching. We Search For A Good Self To Be And For Good Work To Do. We Search To Become Human In A World That Tempts Us Always To Be Less Than Human Or Looks To Us To Be More. We Search To Love And To Be Loved. And In A World Where It Is Often Hard To Believe In Much Of Anything, We Search To Believe In Something Holy And Beautiful And Life-transcending That Will Give Meaning And Purpose To The Lives We Live.
Beautiful
Believe
Self
When [our Secrets] Are Sad And Hurtful Secrets, Like My Father's Death, We Can In A Way Honor The Hurt By Letting Ourselves Feel It As We Never Let Ourselves Feel It Before, And Then, Having Felt It, By Laying It Aside; We Can Start To Take Care Of Ourselves The Way We Take Care Of People We Love.
Hurt
Father
People
You Can Never Be Sure Whether You Are Discovering The Truth Or Inventing It.
Discovering
Discovering The Truth
Inventing
Resurrection Means That The Worst Thing Is Never The Last Thing.
Mean
Lasts
Resurrection
I Say, “you May Be Right, But Don’t Knock It Until You’re Tried It. Don’t Say, ‘i Think It’s Worthless; Therefore I’m Not Going To Spend Any Time Looking Into Myself The Way One Who Prays Does.'” Maybe That’s An Even Worse Mistake Than Praying Might Be.
Mistake
Doe
Might
Lord, I Believe; Help My Unbelief' Is The Best Any Of Us Can Do Really, But Thank God It Is Enough.
God
Faith
Religious
Our Father. We Have Killed Him, And We Will Kill Him Again, And Our World Will Kill Him. And Yet He Is There. It Is He Who Listens At The Door. It Is He Who Is Coming. It Is Our Father Who Is About To Be Born. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Jesus
Father
Our World
Despair Has Been Called The Unforgivable Sin-not Presumably Because God Refuses To Forgive It, But Because It Despairs Of The Possibility Of Being Forgiven.
Sadness
Sins Not
Unforgivable Sin
If We Are A People Who Pray, Darkness Is Apt To Be A Lot Of What Our Prayers Are About. If We Are People Who Do Not Pray, It Is Apt To Be Darkness In One Form Or Another That Has Stopped Our Mouths.
Prayer
People
Darkness
All Other Days Have Either Disappeared Into Darkness And Oblivion Or Not Yet Emerged From It. Today Is The Only Day There Is.
Darkness
Today
Oblivion
The Best Moments Any Of Us Have As Human Beings Are Those Moments When For A Little While It Is Possible To Escape The Squirrel-cage Of Being Me Into The Landscape Of Being Us.
Squirrels
Landscape
Littles
Listen To Your Life. Listen To What Happens To You Because It Is Through What Happens To You That God Speaks...it's In Language That's Not Always Easy To Decipher, But It's There Powerfully, Memorably, Unforgettably.
Language
Speak
Easy
I Don't Know How To Save My Own Life, So Anything They've Found In What I've Written That Saved Theirs - I Can't Take Responsibility For It.
Responsibility
Found
Know How
People Will Buy Snake Oil From Anybody Who Seems To Be Selling It In A Persuasive Way.
Snakes
Oil
People
The World Speaks Of Holy Things In The Only Language It Knows, Which Is Worldly Language.
World
Language
Speak
It Is As Impossible For Man To Demonstrate The Existence Of God As It Would Be For Even Sherlock Holmes To Demonstrate The Existence Of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Men
Would Be
Impossible
In Other Words To Live Eternal Life In The Full And Final Sense Is To Be With God As Christ Is With Him, And With Each Other As Christ Is With Us.
Finals
Christ
Eternal Life
I Pray For People I Love When They Are Sick. I Pray That Way.
People
Sick
Way
It Was The Upward-reaching And Fathomlessly Hungering, Heart-breaking Love For The Beauty Of The World At Its Most Beautiful, And, Beyond That, For That Beauty East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon Which Is Past The Reach Of All But Our Most Desperate Desiring And Is Finally The Beauty Of Beauty Itself, Of Being Itself And What Lies At The Heart Of Being.
Beautiful
Lying
Heart
Pay Attention To The Things That Bring A Tear To Your Eye Or A Lump In Your Throat Because They Are Signs That The Holy Is Drawing Near.
Eye
Drawing
Grace
Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You.
Prayer
Best Prayer
Unbelief Is As Much Of A Choice As Belief Is. What Makes It In Many Ways More Appealing Is That Whereas To Believe In Something Requires Some Measure Of Understanding And Effort, Not To Believe Doesn't Require Much Of Anything At All.
Atheist
Believe
Choices
I Don't Want To Give The Impression That I'm A Great Bible Reader. I Don't Sit Down Every Day And Read For An Hour Through The Bible. But I Really Do Read It With A Great Deal Of Pleasure... Which Is The Last Thing I Would Have Suspected. So I Read It Sometimes As A Devotional, But Really More, Not For Fun, But Because It's Fascinating.
Fun
Giving
Want
In His Holy Flirtation With The World, God Occasionally Drops A Handkerchief. These Handkerchiefs Are Called Saints.
Flirting
Saint
World
We Are In Constant Danger Of Being Not Actors In The Drama Of Our Lives But Reactors, To Go Where The World Takes Us, To Drift With Whatever Current Happens To Be Running The Strongest.
Running
Drama
Actors
Faith In God Is Less Apt To Proceed From Miracles Than Miracles From Faith In God.
Miracle
Faith In God
Remember Jesus Of Nazareth, Staggering On Broken Feet Out Of The Tomb Toward The Resurrection, Bearing On His Body The Proud Insignia Of The Defeat Which Is Victory, The Magnificent Defeat Of The Human Soul At The Hands Of God.
Jesus
Easter
Hands
People Are Disturbed Not By Things But By The View They Take Of Them. They May Forget What You Said, But They Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel.
Views
People
May
Wherever People Love Each Other And Are True To Each Other And Take Risks For Each Other, God Is With Them And For Them And They Are Doing God's Will.
People
Risk
Love Each Other
Jesus Didn't Come To Merely Speak Words That Were True, He Is The Word That Makes Us True.
Jesus
Speak
If The Truth Is Worth Telling, It Is Worth Making A Fool Of Yourself To Tell It.
Fool
Truth Is
Making A Fool Of Yourself
There Is No Event So Common Place But That God Is Present Within It, Always Hidden, Always Leaving You Room To Recognize Him Or Not To Recognize Him.
Leaving
Events
Rooms
... In The Long Run, There Can Be No Joy For Anybody Until There Is Joy Finally For Us All
Running
Long
Joy
Part Of The Inner World Of Everyone Is This Sense Of Emptiness, Unease, Incompleteness, And I Believe That This In Itself Is A Word From God, That This Is The Sound That God’s Voice Makes In A World That Has Explained Him Away. In Such A World, I Suspect That Maybe God Speaks To Us Most Clearly Through His Silence, His Absence, So That We Know Him Best Through Our Missing Him.
Believe
Missing Him
Voice
Lord, Catch Me Off Guard Today. Surprise Me With Some Moment Of Beauty Or Pain So That At Least For The Moment, I May Be Startled Into Seeing That You Are Here In All Your Splendor, Always And Everywhere, Barely Hidden, Beneath, Beyond, Within This Life I Breathe.
Pain
May
Today
Trending Author
Jane Addams
Samuel Johnson
Sharon Olds
Michael Mayer
Ali Smith
Richard John Neuhaus
Category
Information