May 2012
35 posts
4 tags
“[A]ll forms of love come with characteristic sufferings and lonelinesses: Every form of love has its own kind of cross.”
— Eve Tushnet, The Botany Club: Gay Kids in Catholic Schools, The American Conservative (via discourseoflove)
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“I often hear that it’s okay for the Church to require (most) priests to be celibate, since they chose that way of life, but it’s cruel to require celibacy of gay people since we didn’t choose to be gay. This isn’t a good way to think about vocation—you don’t always choose what God is asking of you, and it’s rare that the greatest sacrifices in your life are the ones you chose entirely freely.”
—...
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“We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star....
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“The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus — especially the Ascension, since it is the final affirmation of the hands-off policy implicit in the other two — proclaim that no meddling, divine or human, spiritual or material, can save the world. Its only salvation is in the mystery of the King who dies, rises, and disappears, and who asks us simply to trust his promise that, in him, we...
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“Don’t give in to discouragement. No more must you do so when you try to settle a marriage crisis or convert a sinner and don’t succeed. If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about people’s opinion. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. It is very difficult to practice because we all want to see the...
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“Faith and doubt are inseparable. There is a long history, and common experience, that back that up. When your faith has no room for the dark night of the soul, then you are just left with—religion, something that takes its place in your life among other things—like a job and a hobby, something soft and comfortable.
Doubt is God’s way of helping you not go there. But it is a tough...
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“Postmodernism is not a reaction to religious authority as much as it is a reaction to modernity (hence, post-modern). And in some respects, I think the postmodern critique has been necessary and effective, and many people write about this. Modernism has been guilty of some arrogance—often seen in the scientific or scholarly world, where there can be a tone of having ‘figured it all...
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“We’ve heard this many times: ‘Let go and let God.’ It’s true—but ‘letting go’ might be more than we bargained for. We must be taught, for we will not willingly go there ourselves. When we are not letting go, when we try to stay in control of something, cling to something as Mother Teresa says, that’s when God turns off the light and makes it...
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“Doubt is usually cumulative; it creeps in. God, the Bible, your faith, stop making sense, and so you toss it all away. But here is the point. You say that God and all that Jesus stuff just don’t work in the world you live in. But maybe the God and Jesus that aren’t working aren’t the real thing. What if what isn’t working isn’t God at all, but our version....
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“Don’t try to run away from doubt. Don’t try to fix it. Try not to think of it as the enemy. Pass through it—patiently… and honestly… and courageously… . When you are in doubt, you are in a period of transformation. Welcome it as a gift—which is hard to do to if your entire universe is falling down around you. God is teaching you to trust him, not yourself. He...
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“Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran theologian, executed for a failed plot to kill Hitler), in his book, The Cost of Discipleship has an often quoted line: ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.’ Dying is a way of talking about conversion as well as a daily process of Christian living.
Christians never stop dying.
That process can be very painful and...
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“There is a benefit of doubt. Let me put that more strongly: there are things doubt can do spiritually that nothing else can do. Doubt is not the enemy, but a gift of God to move us from trusting ourselves to trusting him. Doubt feels like God is far away or absent, but it is actually a time of ‘disguised closeness’ to God that moves us to spiritual maturity. Doubt is not a sign...
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“I find no other way to really learn about myself and grow than to remain open to recognizing my sins, confessing them and asking God to cleanse me from them. I find over and over this Scripture proven to be true: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ [1 John 1:9]. What I cannot do for myself, God...
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“God help us to find our confession; The truth within us that is hidden from our mind; The beauty or the ugliness we see elsewhere But never in ourselves; The stowaway that has been smuggled Into the dark side of the heart, Which puts the heart off-balance and causes it pain, Which wearies and confuses us, Which tips us in false directions and inclines us to destruction, The load that is not...
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“One of the most difficult things about learning to live in Christ is overcoming the tendency to live by feelings and over-rationalized imaginations… . [K]nowledge alone is no guarantee of actions. This is the reason why so many campaigns to educate people about the adverse effects of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol fail; and why successful programs like Alcoholics Anonymous begin by...
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“Beauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. Think of what it’s like to behold a gorgeous sunset, or the ocean at dawn. Remember the ending of a great story. We yearn to linger, to experience it all our days. Sometimes the beauty is so deep it pierces us with longing. For what? For life as it was meant to be. Beauty reminds us of an Eden we have never...
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“[I]n Friendship… we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian,...
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“Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between ‘things’ and ‘God’ as if God were another ‘thing’ and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely...
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“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own...
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“[T]hey that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.”
— Psalm 9:10 (King James Version)
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“[M]y whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put . But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship. You give me no chance to acquire the trained habit—habito...
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“[Churchgoers] don’t go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best—if you like, it ‘works’ best—when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it....
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“We all know that most beloved verse in the scripture, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ But we also know that, if it was that simple, we wouldn’t need the rest of the Bible. The poignancy of what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say to Nebuchadnezzar is finally not just what we...
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“[M]aybe you’re sitting here tonight thinking, ‘Perhaps I’m the only person here whose faith is fragile, whose prayer life is a bombsite, whose lifestyle is unrecognizable as Christian, who just can’t seem to find God anywhere near a church. I feel like the ultimate exception.’ Well if so, you’re a gift to this community, because there ain’t anyone...
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“What salvation doesn’t mean is freedom from care, anxiety, fear, pain, or threat. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego don’t avoid the fiery furnace. Christians don’t believe they’re immune from suffering, sealed off from worry, aloof from conflict, inoculated against panic, exempt from grief. Quite the opposite. As this story makes clear, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego...
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“The 2005 movie The Notebook portrays an old man driving to a care home to see a woman who lives there. In flashback we discover the story of an unlikely romance. Noah’s a country boy. Allie’s from the city. Noah doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. Allie’s dad has more money than God. It’s the South in the 1940s. There’s no way old wealth is going to...
