shape

"Believe in the holy contour of life"

Jack Kerouac

too serious

"All misery of this world comes from the fact that people take themselves too seriously."

Thomas Theodor Heine

embody

“If leadership fails to embody the message, no one is going to follow.”


Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
The Shaping of Things to Come

resident gifting

"We arrive in this world with birthright gifts -- then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.

We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then -- if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss -- we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed."


Parker J. Palmer
"Let Your Life Speak"

this day's bread

Give us this day our bread of this day
and which this day alone can give us,
at the same time that this very day is given to us.

Jean-Luc Marion

consumerism

"Consumerism is an all-consuming attitude"
Rodney Clapp

thriving church

“The thriving church grows because growth is never its primary purpose. Mission is its primary purpose. Increasing participation and membership is a side effect – but it is an inevitable side effect. In the universal yearning for self-worth, inner meaning, and a noble destiny, people always discover that it is far more meaningful actively to give life away to the world, than passively to preserve life within the institution.”

Thomas G. Bandy from Kicking Habits

leadership

"If the Spirit of God is amongst the people of God then the role of leadership is not command and control, nor is the role of leadership to come up with the right plan. The role of leadership is to create the table… to cultivate the environments… to call into being the spaces where the people of God can begin to dream and imagine and experiment. And that’s not a […] program; it’s a way of life."

Dr. Alan Roxburgh

harmony

"The outward harmony that we desire between our economy and the world depends finally upon an inward harmony between our own hearts and the originating spirit that is the life of all creatures, a spirit as near us as our flesh and yet forever beyond the measure of this obsessively measuring age. We can grow good wheat and grow good bread only if we understand that we do not live by bread alone."
Wendell Berry

practice

"A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life."
Wendell Berry

inimitable

"Almost any other apologetic for the Christian faith can be memorized, rehearsed, and delivered without effect except the apologetic of love. Love, which of its essence seeks only the good of others and is willing to pay the high price of self-forgetfulness is a product that is hard to imitate or counterfeit."

John Powell, S.J.

church perspective (Mayhew)

"The church is not an institution 'out there', which I support. It is the community that enfolds and identifies who I am as an individual."

Ray Mayhew

prophetic contradiction

“The most powerful thing you can hear, and the only thing that ever persuades any of us in our own lives, is if you meet somebody whose story contradicts the thing you think you know. At that point it’s possible to question what you know, because the authenticity of their experience is real enough to do it.” Ira Glass

The gift of prophecy is not always expressed in words about future things. Sometimes it means living out the story God is writing into you and me... Being present to Presence in a manner that clarifies aspects of the Spirit’s narrative... Becoming human renditions of new ways of being...

Havel's Hope

~~
“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world.
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense,
is not the same as joy that things are going well,
or willingness to invest in enterprises
that are obviously heading for success,
but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.”

Vaclav Havel

worshipping and becoming

"That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

miracle

"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Albert Einstein

worry

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength."
Corrie Ten Boom

mindset

“It is impossible to solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.”
Albert Einstein

obedience

Obedience is not the acknowledgement that an unintelligent being gives to an intelligent one. It is the compliment that a lover pays to a beloved. If obedience rested solely on the recognition of a superior intelligence, it would not last a week. We can always persuade ourselves that we know better...
Hubert van Zeller

ebb and flow

"Dear Lord, today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: 'It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.' You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair.

O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea. Amen."

Henri Nouwen
From A Cry for Mercy