{mostly on fiction, poetry, spirituality, biblical studies and theology}
… people need certainties, more than ever in these disturbed and disoriented times. … Even if those certainties bring hurt to them and others.
This is another quote from C. J. Sansom’s Revelation, once again said of the rejection of new medical knowledge during Tudor times. Yet again it strikes me how true this still rings today.
Luke’s Gospel is … the most forgiving of all four Gospels. Every chance he gets, Luke has Jesus forgiving people, right up to the thief on the cross and the prayer for his persecutors. … Mercy and inclusivity – Jesus’ ministry to outcasts, to gentiles, to the poor – are emphasized a great deal in Luke. … Luke’s sacred text is also called the gospel of women. Far more than any other evangelist, Luke brings women into Jesus’ life and shows Jesus’ unique way of relating to women. He wants to make Jesus available to the forgotten and diminished, and women usually were.
And sadly still all too often are.
The quote is from Richard Rohr’s ‘Daily Meditations’.
Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
(Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse)
Brilliant!
It is a feature of reconciliation that the person offering forgiveness cannot expect the other party fully to understand the depths of their offence.
Samuel Wells, Power and Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection
(Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love)
ooking for something else, I stumbled across some quotes I copied from Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack some time ago. This book had a profound impact upon me at a time of the most intense inner turmoil. Rereading the extracts many months later, I was once again touched by the deep wisdom found in these lines.
On forgiveness and kindness:
Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, [God’s] purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.
And again on forgiveness, but also on relationships and how forgiveness, while important, is not the whole story:
Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.
The next thought follows on from the previous reference to change:
Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.
Some further reflections on relationships – and the problem of power:
Each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. That is why you cannot love two people the same. It simply is not possible. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you. And the more you know another, the richer the colors of that relationship.
Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself – to serve.
And, moving on to different issues, some interesting observations on law, control, superiority and certainty:
Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control. … [The law] grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, [God has] a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. … I miss God who was my friend. I don’t even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky.
Thus Jeanette Winterson in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, an autobiographical novel that tells the story of Winterson’s painful break with her fundamentalist, pentecostal upbringing.
Brief thoughts & quotes … 