Category: Speaking to the Soul

“I think that’s a cue we can take from children – the cue to invite others to join us. To come and see. It’s always a joy to see friends invite friends and to share their enthusiasm. God’s story of love and grace for us and the world is one to be told.”

“We can be the worst of the stumbling blocks. And if you doubt that, I give you the so call Christian Nationalist movement. Or the harshness of biblical literalist. But even in a less extreme case, in our everyday ministry with our own parish family, we can be petty, judgmental, cruel, forgetting that God is in charge, and preaching humility isn’t just a way to have power over the weak. We are all flawed, and deep down a little afraid, struggling, hungry for God’s love.”

“Baseless hatred is not just about hating someone for no reason. It includes not doing anything to help others who are being treated cruelly.”

“When I think of things that are going on right now, the shootings, the stabbings, the deaths of children, the painful and fatal diseases, the traumas of losing children and parents, it makes me wonder how anyone can say that a loving God wills things like this to happen. All those scenarios seem to be huge mountains, and we don’t seem to have enough faith to move it, even if we were able.”

“Some of these veggies are probably more familiar to the Hmong or African-American gardening interns, but learning to cook them is a small realignment of my attention towards my neighbors and their families. It is a reminder that what I like is not normative for being a Minnesotan or American, wringing that prized individualism right out of me in a patriotic way.”

“I like to imagine that Dominic’s evangelism was not of the badgering sort, that he was not confrontational but curious. I like to imagine that he listened deeply to the Cather innkeeper, that he found places where there was a connection, maybe even an agreement about something, some common ground, perhaps in their commitment to a simple life, to authentically lived beliefs. I see Dominic as completely present and engaged, first listening and then passionately and articulately sharing his own story.”

“Faith enables us to move forward and live our lives without certainty. Trust is an act of will and of hope, a decision we make to account someone or something trustworthy even in the face of uncertainty.”

“Now it’s August and we’ve picked an abundance of cherry tomatoes from the volunteer plant. We’ve delighted in the sun-ripened tomatoes and given thanks for their bounty, not from the work of our hands, but from the work that happens when we open our eyes to God’s abundance in our midst.”

“What those friends of Jesus saw and heard on the mountain when Jesus transfigured was their future selves holding the spark of the Spirit, becoming the temple. That is what we bring to our physical houses and churches to make these places holy. We are the temple.”

“This story is about greed, a lot of Jesus’s parables are. But it is also about the unseen people in the story:  Who grew the crops, who would build the barns, why does the man have no one to talk to?”