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To Remember The Past Is To See That We Are Here Today By Grace, That We Have Survived As A Gift.
-Frederick Buechner
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To Remember The Past

Frederick Buechner
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To Remember The Past Is To See That We Are Here Today By Grace, That We Have Survived As A Gift.

Understanding the Quote: "to remember the past is to see that we are here today..."

This quote by Frederick Buechner reflects deeply on the theme of past. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Past, Grace, Today, 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 past and grace. 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.

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Topic
Past
Grace
Today
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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...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.
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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
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If What Makes You Happy Is Going Out And Living It Up And Spending All Your Money On Wine, Women, And Song, The World Doesn't Need That. But On The Other Hand, If You Give Your Life To Good Works - You Go And Work In A Leper Colony And It Doesn't Make You Happy - The Chances Are You're Not Doing It Very Well.
Song
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One Of The Blunders Religious People Are Particularly Fond Of Making Is The Attempt To Be More Spiritual Than God
Spiritual
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Pay Mind To Your Own Life, Your Own Health, And Wholeness. A Bleeding Heart Is Of No Help To Anyone If It Bleeds To Death.
Heart
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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
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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
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Remember Me Not For The Ill I've Done But For The Good I've Dreamed.
Done
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We Find By Losing. We Hold Fast By Letting Go. We Become Something New By Ceasing To Be Something Old.
Inspirational
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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.
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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
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If Our Pain Doesn't Destroy Us, It Just Might Transform Us Into Truly Human Beings At Last.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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Words Spoken In Deep Love Or Deep Hate Set Things In Motion In The Human Heart That Can Never Be Reversed.
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If You Want To Be Holy, Be Kind.
Want
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Vocation Is The Place Where The World's Greatest Need And A Person's Greatest Joy Meet.
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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.
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God Doesn't Reveal His Grand Design. He Reveals Himself.
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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.
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You Do Not Need To Understand Healing To Be Healed Or Know Anything About Blessing To Be Blessed.
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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
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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.
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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.
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To Be Bored To Death Is A Form Of Suicide.
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I'm A Hopeless Prayer. I Think Somewhere In There I Spend A Great Deal Of Time At It.
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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.
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The World Needs People Who Save Lives.
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Faith Is Stepping Out Into The Unknown With Nothing To Guide Us But A Hand Just Beyond Our Grasp.
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I Loved Rain For Making Home Seem Home More Deeply, And I Suspect That Is Why, From As Far Back As I Can Remember, I Also Loved Those Books I Read And The People I Met In Them And The Worlds They Opened Up To Me. 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.
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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.
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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.
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. . 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.
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From The Simplest Lyric To The Most Complex Novel And Densest Drama, Literature Is Asking Us To Pay Attention. Pay Attention To The Frog. Pay Attention To The West Wind. Pay Attention To The Boy On The Raft, The Lady In The Tower, The Old Man On The Train. In Sum, Pay Attention To The World And All That Dwells Therein And Thereby Learn At Last To Pay Attention To Yourself And All That Dwells Therein.
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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.
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The Past Is The Place We View The Present From As Much As The Other Way Around.
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Beneath The Worst The World Can Do, There Is Always The Glimmer Of The Best.
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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.
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The Sacred Moments, The Moments Of Miracle, Are Often The Everyday Moments.
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Becoming A Christian Was Terribly Helpful To Me. I Can't Imagine Finding My Way Without It. I Think It Can Be Very Crucially Important To Ally Yourself With Some Religion.
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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.
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Resurrection Means That The Worst Thing Is Never The Last Thing.
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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.
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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.
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Being A Good Steward Of Your Pain. . . . It Involves Being Alive To Your Life. It Involves Taking The Risk Of Being Open, Of Reaching Out, Of Keeping In Touch With The Pain As Well As The Joy Of What Happens Because At No Time More Than At A Painful Time Do We Live Out Of The Depths Of Who We Are Instead Of Out Of The Shallows.
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And Because God's Love Is Uncoercive And Treasures Our Freedom - If Above All He Wants Us To Love Him, Then We Must Be Left Free Not To Love Him - We Are Free To Resist It, Deny It, Crucify It Finally, Which We Do Again And Again. This Is Our Terrible Freedom, Which Love Refuses To Overpower So That, In This, The Greatest Of All Powers, God's Power, Is Itself Powerless.
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You Enter The Extraordinary By Way Of The Ordinary
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Way
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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
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Done
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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.
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I'm Trying To Listen To My Past, Listen To What's Most Deeply Going On Inside Myself, My Creative Set Of Fictional Characters, A Fictional World - To Listen To That World, To Search.
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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.
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At The Evening Of Our Day, We Shall Be Judged By Our Loving.
Evening
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Through The Power That Memory Gives Us Of Thinking, Feeling, Imagining Our Way Back Through Time We Can At Long Last Finally Finish With The Past In The Sense Of Removing Its Power To Hurt Us And Other People And To Stunt Our Growth As Human Beings.
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You Can Never Be Sure Whether You Are Discovering The Truth Or Inventing It.
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Justice Is The Grammar Of Things. Mercy Is The Poetry Of Things.
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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.
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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.
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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
Not To Love Is, Psychically, Spiritually, To Die. To Live For Yourself Alone, Hoarding Your Life For Your Own Sake, Is In Almost Every Sense That Matters To Reduce Your Life To A Life Hardly Worth The Living, And Thus To Lose It.
Love Is
Hoarding
Matter
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
By And Large A Good Rule For Finding Out Is This: The Kind Of Work God Usually Calls You To Is The Kind Of Work A) That You Need Most To Do And B) The World Most Needs To Have Done. If You Really Get A Kick Out Of Your Work, You've Presumably Met Requirement A), But If Your Work Is Writing Tv Deodorant Commercials, The Chances Are You've Missed Requirement B).
Writing
Needs
Done
Listen. Your Life Is Happening. You Are Happening. Think Back On Your Journey. The Music Of Your Life.
Journey
Thinking
Life Is
... In The Long Run, There Can Be No Joy For Anybody Until There Is Joy Finally For Us All
Running
Long
Joy
...words Are Not Only Meaning But Music And Magic And Power.
Magic
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
Pray Anyway. Who Knows What God Can Do Through Your Prayer?
Prayer
Praying
Knows
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
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
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.
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Half
What Makes You, In The Deepest Sense Of The Word, Happy? That's What You Should Be Doing, If The Other Part Is Also Met - If It Is Something The World Needs.
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World
Should
A God In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush.
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Latin
Hands
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
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.
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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
For As Long As You Remember Me, I Am Never Entirely Lost.
Long
Remember
Lost
Envy Is The Consuming Desire To Have Everybody Else As Unsuccessful As You Are.
Envy
Desire
Unsuccessful
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
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
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
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
Don't Let Your Life Just Go In One Eye And Out The Other.
Eye
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
The Story Of Any One Of Us Is In Some Measure The Story Of Us All
Stories
. . . [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
It Is Not The Objective Proof Of God's Existence That We Want But The Experience Of God's Presence. That Is The Miracle We Are Really After, And That Is Also, I Think, The Miracle That We Really Get.
Thinking
Miracle
Want
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
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
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
For Outlandish Creatures Like Us, On Our Way To A Heart, A Brain, And Courage, Bethlehem Is Not The End Of Our Journey But Only The Beginning - Not Home But The Place Through Which We Must Pass If Ever We Are To Reach Home At Last.
Christmas
Home
Heart
Almost Nothing That Makes Any Real Difference Can Be Proved.
Real
Differences
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Birth Of Jesus Made Possible Not Just A New Way Of Understanding Life But A New Way Of Living It.
Jesus
Understanding
Way
Your Vocation Lies In The Intersection Of The World's Deep Need And Your Deep Joy.
Lying
Joy
Needs
To Remember The Past Is To See That We Are Here Today By Grace, That We Have Survived As A Gift.
Past
Grace
Today
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Theology, Like Fiction, Is Largely Autobiographical.
Fiction
Theology
We Have God's Joy In Our Blood.
Blood
Joy
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
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
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
Here And There Even In Our World, And Now And Then, Even In Ourselves, We Catch Glimpeses Of A New Creation, Which, Fleeting As Those Glipmses Are Apt To Be, Give Us Hope Both For This Life And For Whatever Life May Await Us Later On.
Our World
Giving
Here And There
I've Written A Lot Of Autobiography, Which Also Involved Listening.
Listening
Autobiography
Involved
She Was Right That Reality Can Be Harsh And That You Shut Your Eyes To It Only At Your Peril Because If You Do Not Face Up To The Enemy In All His Dark Power, Then The Enemy Will Come Up From Behind Some Dark Day And Destoy You While You Are Facing The Other Way.
Eye
Dark
Reality
Beneath Our Clothes, Our Reputations, Our Pretensions, Beneath Our Religion Or Lack Of It, We Are All Vulnerable Both To The Storm Without And The Storm Within.
Clothes
Storm
Reputation
The Place God Calls You To Is The Place Where Your Deep Gladness And The World’s Deep Hunger Meet.
Healing
Godly
Generosity
In The Christian Sense, Love Is Not Primarily An Emotion But An Act Of The Will. When Jesus Tells Us To Love Our Neighbors, He Is Not Telling Us To Love Them In The Sense Of Responding To Them With A Cozy Emotional Feeling. You Can As Well Produce A Cozy Emotional Feeling As You Can A Cough Or Sneeze. On The Contrary, He Is Telling Us To Love Our Neighbors In The Sense Of Being Willing To Work For Their Well-being Even If It Means Sacrificing Our Well-being To That End.
Christian
Jesus
Mean
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
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
To Be Wise Is To Be Eternally Curious.
Wise
Curious
Being Wise
If Preachers Decide To Preach About Hope, Let Them Preach Out Of What They Themselves Hope For.
Preacher
Preaching
Reach Out
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
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
Thus, When You Wake Up In The Morning, Called By God To Be A Self Again, If You Want To Know Who You Are, Watch Your Feet. Because Where Your Feet Take You, That Is Who You Are.
Morning
Self
Feet
The Trouble With Steeling Yourself Against The Harshness Of Reality Is That The Same Steel That Secures Your Life Against Being Destroyed Secures Your Life Also Against Being Opened Up And Transformed By The Holy Power That Life Itself Comes From. You Can Survive On Your Own. You Can Grow Strong On Your Own. You Can Even Prevail On Your Own. But You Cannot Become Human On Your Own.
Strong
Reality
Steel
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
The World Speaks Of Holy Things In The Only Language It Knows, Which Is Worldly Language.
World
Language
Speak
Faith Is The Assurance That The Best And Holiest Dream Is True After All.
Dream
Assurance
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
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 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
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
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
If You Talk About Sin, You Don't Have To Use The First Person Singular, But Speak Out Of That Part Of Yourself Which Knows What It Means To Become Estranged From People You Love. Speak In Your Own Voice About Things That You In Your Own Life Have In One Way Or Another Experienced.
Mean
Speaks Out
Voice
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
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
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
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
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
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
Maybe It's All Utterly Meaningless. Maybe It's All Unutterably Meaningful. If You Want To Know Which, Pay Attention To What It Means To Be Truly Human In A World That Half The Time We're In Love With And Half The Time Scares The Hell Out Of Us. Any Fiction That Helps Us Pay Attention To That Is Religious Fiction. The Unexpected Sound Of Your Name On Somebody's Lips. The Good Dream. The Strange Coincidence. The Moment That Brings Tears To Your Eyes. The Person Who Brings Life To Your Life. Even The Smallest Events Hold The Greatest Clues.
Meaningful
Dream
Religious
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
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
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
Where Your Deep Gladness Meets With The Deep Hunger Of The World, There You Will Find A Further Calling.
Purpose
Calling
World
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
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
Here And There And Not Just In Books We Catch Glimpses Of A World Of Once Upon A Time And They Lived Happily Ever After, Of A World Where There Is A Wizard To Give Courage And A Heart, An Angel With A White Stone That Has Written On It Our True And Secret Name, And It Is So Easy To Dismiss It All That It Is Hardly Worth Bothering To Do. ... But If The World Of The Fairy Tale And Our Glimpses Of It Here And There Are Only A Dream, They Are One Of The Most Haunting And Powerful Dreams That The World Has Ever Dreamed.
Dream
Powerful
Book
Lust Is The Craving For Salt Of A Man Who Is Dying Of Thirst.
Men
Lust
Dying
If You Have Never Known The Power Of God's Love, Then Maybe It Is Because You Have Never Asked To Know It - I Mean Really Asked, Expecting An Answer.
Mean
Answers
Expecting
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
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
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
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
The Jesus Who Is The One Whom We Search For Even When We Do Not Know That We Are Searching And Hide From Even When We Do Not Know That We Are Hiding.
Jesus
Hiding
Knows
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
In His Holy Flirtation With The World, God Occasionally Drops A Handkerchief. These Handkerchiefs Are Called Saints.
Flirting
Saint
World
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
He [jesus] Speaks In Parables, And Though We Have Approached These Parables Reverentially All These Many Years And Have Heard Them Expounded As Grave And Reverent Vehicles Of Holy Truth, I Suspect That Many If Not All Of Them Were Originally Not Grave At All But Were Antic, Comic, Often More Than Just A Little Shocking.
Jesus
Years
Littles
Jesus Didn't Come To Merely Speak Words That Were True, He Is The Word That Makes Us True.
Jesus
Speak
Toleration Is Often Just Indifference In Disguise.
Indifference
Disguise
Toleration
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
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
Many An Atheist Is A Believer Without Knowing It Juast As Many A Believer Is An Atheist Without Knowing It. You Can Sincerely Believe There Is No God And Live As Though There Is. You Can Sincerely Believe There Is A God And Live As Though There Isn't.
Atheist
Believe
Knowing
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
Five Friends I Had And Two Of Them Snakes.
Snakes
Two
Five Friends
We Learn To Praise God Not By Paying Compliments But By Paying Attention.
Attention
Compliment
Praise
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
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
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
If It Seems A Childish Thing To Do, Do It In Remembrance That You Are A Child.
Children
Remembrance
Things To Do
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
The Magic Of Words Is That They Have Power To Do More Than Convey Meaning; Not Only Do They Have The Power To Make Things Clear, They Make Things Happen.
Magic
Make Things Happen
Clear
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
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
The Incarnation Is “a Kind Of Vast Joke Whereby The Creator Of The Ends Of The Earth Comes Among Us In Diapers Until We Too Have Taken The Idea Of The God-man Seriously Enough To Be Scandalized By It, We Have Not Taken It As Seriously As It Demands To Be Taken.
Taken
Men
Ideas
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
It's All So Verbal In The Protestant Church. You've Heard These Words A Million Times Before. Maybe People Are Leaving The Church Because They Find The Church Has Nothing That They're Looking For.
People
Leaving
Church
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
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
Here Is The World. Beautiful And Terrible Things Will Happen. Don't Be Afraid.
Inspirational
Life
Beautiful
Your Vocation In Life Is Where Your Greatest Joy Meets The World's Greatest Need.
Joy
Needs
World
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
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
Wether You Call On Him Or Don't Call On Him, God Will Be Present With You.
Gods Will
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
Whenever You Find Tears In Your Eyes, Especially Unexpected Tears, It Is Well To Pay The Closest Attention.
Eye
Tears
Attention
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
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
It’s Less The Words They Say Than Those They Leave Unsaid That Split Old Friends Apart.
Old Friends
Splits
Unsaid
In The Silence Of A Midwinter Dusk, There Is A Sound So Faint That For All You Can Tell It May Be Only The Sound Of The Silence Itself. You Hold Your Breath To Listen. You Are Aware Of The Beating Of Your Heart. The Extraordinary Thing That Is About To Happen Is Matched Only By The Extraordinary Moment Just Before It Happens. Advent Is The Name Of That Moment.
Heart
Names
Extraordinary Moments
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
Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You.
Prayer
Best Prayer
Faith In God Is Less Apt To Proceed From Miracles Than Miracles From Faith In God.
Miracle
Faith In God
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