‘God is not nearly as afraid of our life in the wilderness as we are. Because the wilderness carves a person. Changes her. Forces him to take account, to consider himself. To become yourself more fully.’
“‘I don’t know why it should affect me in this way. Perhaps, it reminds me that life really is a beautiful fairy tale.'” (from The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg)
“And therein lies the irony. We pray to God to accomplish the weeding while God prays to us to accomplish the weeding. Both And.”
“Try as I might to treat my fishing as prayer, to maintain centered focus, I think it was not I but God who was praying. True, enough – there has not been a day in my life spent outdoors that did not feel like a day spent in prayer. To paraphrase the apostle, I find it impossible to peek into the heavens without experiencing the Divine. God was with me, I’m sure of it, but not so much in the bobber of my concentration as above me. In the eagle. In the hawk and osprey. Along the shore, in the deer. Watching me curiously.”
“When the metaphoric seas of change lap at our deck we spend untold time and energy, enormous resources, protecting something that nature and God insist must be change? And now, September is here during a year of shifting sands. I feel the fall chill in the air. Life has been altered in untold ways, yet all most people seem to hope for is a return to the ephemeral normal. But there is no such thing as “normal,” there never was.”
“Never alone, which means it is not for me to say, I believe in God, the Father Almighty (even faith is a gift), but, I belong to God the Father Almighty.”
“As I watched the children, my mind drifted to Jesus, and how he might have played as a child. How little we know about his world prior to the age of 30. And yet, this Son of God, Son of Man, this child of heaven, I am certain on lazy summer days would have jumped into sprays of water, or pulled buckets from wells to toss water onto the head of his cousin John, or splashed in the shallows of the Sea of Galilee with his siblings. Do I hear Joseph, do I see Mary, at first telling the boys to slow down? To be careful? Not to disturb the others at the well, the women and men fishing the Sea? Relenting, and laughing, now they start splashing water at Jesus rather than chide him.”
“Like the preacher, the Christian must trust – must trust the grace of God and Jesus as the Christ that God is with her. That God guides and redeems and sanctifies even bad decisions. But second – and perhaps most importantly – it is the smallness of life that counts – living life at the cell-level. It is the one, Jesus said, who is faithful in small things who will be faithful in big things. It is the one who invites Christ into the small areas of life, who is honest and lives with integrity in the little challenges and events – who will find himself honest and full of integrity when facing the large challenges. That person is the one who wanders down the path of life with purpose and grace.”
“The myth of the fall of humanity, as relayed early in the Book of Genesis, discloses God’s tender side.”
“But, along came Cornelius, with his very Roman household. They listened to Peter proclaim Good News of God in Christ, and before any of them affirmed faith or gave permission, the Holy Spirit fell unbidden upon them. (Acts 10:44-48) It seems that God refuses to be bound by anyone’s understanding of the way religion ought to be practiced.”