"Of all the things we do, we have more freedom with respect to what we will think of, where we will place our mind, than anything else. And the freedom of thinking is a direct freedom wherever it is present.....
The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, but constantly occupies our mind as well as what we can or cannot even think of."
Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy.
"Now we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our actions flow..."
Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Love is an emotional response aroused in the willl by visions of the good."
~Dallas Willard
"The human heart must be plowed much more deeply."
Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
" .....to explicitly intend to make apprentices to Jesus could be quite upsetting to congregational life. Won't those who are mere members or converts find themselves in an embarrassing position? Second-class citizenship?
It is certainly true that the implicit understanding that nondisciple Christians have with their leaders and congregations will have to be brought to light and dealt with in some appropriate way."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
""Transformation usually includes a disconcerting reorientation.......
Change of itself just happens; spiritual transformation is an active process of letting go, living in the confusing dark space for a while, and allowing yourself to be spit up on a new and unexpected shore."
~ Richard Rohr
"We simply go along with the many "musts" and "oughts" that have been handed on to us, and we live with them as if they were authentic translations of the Gospel of Our Lord.
~ Henri Nouwen
"Much time is spent among Christians trying to smooth over hurt feelings and even deep wounds, given and received, and to get people to stop being angry, retaliatory, and unforgiving. But suppose, instead, we devoted our time to inspiring and enabling Christians and others to be people who are not offendable and not angry and who are forgiving as a matter of course. "Great peac," the psalmist says, "have they who love thy law. Nothing trips them up" (Psalm 119:165).
To intentionally make disciples is to open the door for people to become like that. That is why it is such a gift to humankind.
But really to intend this is no trivial matter, of course. It means a huge change of direction. The weight of the tradition of client, or consumer, Christianity, which now without thought dominates the local congregations and denominations of Christian people - indeed, the entire Christian culture - stands against any such intention- not consciously, perhaps, but just by the inertia of "how things are," of the daily rounds and what "has to get done."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"A gentle but firm non-cooperation with things that everyone knows to be wrong, together with a sensitive, nonofficious, nonintrusive, nonobsequious service to others, should be our usual overt matter."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"So as his disciple I am not necessarily learning how to do special religious things...... My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly defined limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. And it covers everything, "religious" or not.
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Not that the genuine presence of the Kingdom in a person can be hidden.... But it also cannot be canned, controlled, produced on demand, standardized, or brought to a point at which it can be dispensed by one human being to another."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Great religion seeks utter awareness and full consciousness, so that we can, in fact, receive all.....
The purpose of prayer and religious seeking is to see the truth about reality, to see what is. And at the bottom of what is is always goodness. The foundation is always Love."
Richard Rohr
"Great religion seeks utter awareness and full consciousness, so that we can, in fact, receive all.....
The purpose of prayer and religious seeking is to see the truth about reality, to see what is. And at the bottom of what is is always goodness. The foundation is always Love."
Richard Rohr
"The God of scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops. At the heart of the Gospel message is the story of a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross. Dignified or not, believable or not, ours is a God perpetually on bended knee doing everything it takes to convince a stubborn and petulant children they are seen and they are loved."
~Rachel Held Evans
"I’ve often said the Bible is the best book in the world and the worst book in the world. It is the worst when it is used for bullying and self-justification; it is the best when it is used for the healing of the world and for transformation of the self. Obviously, God intended the latter."
Richard Rohr
"A good and solid biblical teacher must come clean about their manner of interpretation early on, or you have no foundation for trusting what they say. Just saying, “It is in Scripture,” as most do, is largely meaningless, because anyone can find a workable “proof text” for whatever they want to believe somewhere in the Bible. This is why many have so little trust in Christians today."
Richard Rohr
"In so many places, there are signs of the Holy Spirit working at all levels of society. The church might well have done its work as leaven, because much of this reform, enlightenment, compassion, and healing is outside the bounds of organized religion. Only God is going to get the credit."
~ Richard Rohr
" Who teachers you? Whose disciple are you? Honestly
One thing is sure; you are somebody's disciple. You learn how to live from somebody else. There is no exceptions to this rule, for human beings are just the kind of creatures that have to learn and keep learning from others how to live. Aristotle remark that we owe more to our teachers than to our parents, for those our parents gave us life, our teachers taught us the good life."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy.
"I’ve come to see that what matters most is not our status but our trajectory, not where we are but where we’re going, not where we stand but where we’re headed. . . .
[Religion] is at its best when it leads us forward, when it guides us on our spiritual growth as individuals and in our cultural evolution as a species. Unfortunately, religion often becomes more of a cage than a guide, holding us back rather than summoning us onward, a buffer to constructive change rather than a catalyst for it."
~ Richard Rohr
"Another aspect of the phrase “from the bottom up” has to do with the biblical and Franciscan emphasis on the path of descent. Most of religion is ideological: it defines reality from the top down. It begins with a transcendent God up there in heaven, and then we try to explain everything down here in relationship to that transcendent God. But what Jesus actually taught was something much more akin to “from the bottom up.”
In other words, Jesus taught us to find God incarnate in this world, in our neighbor, in the Eucharist—that is, in the ordinary elements of this earth. That’s a very different notion of religion."
Richard Rohr
"Once we link salvation to moral worthiness or group belonging, the ego takes over and gets to decide who is worthy of salvation."
Richard Rohr
"Most of Christianity has been overly influenced by Plato, making body and soul enemies. I believe Christianity’s tragic flaw was not connecting salvation with creation itself."
Richard Rohr
"Christian denominations and world religions are realizing they are more alike than different. Consciousness is evolving. Christian theologians are predicting that this century will open up Trinitarian and practice-based spirituality, with a focus on the Holy Spirit, which many call “the forgotten member of the Trinity.” And we have a pope in Francis who is truly a man of the Gospel instead of a mere church man, someone at the top who genuinely cares about those at the bottom and our precious common home, the earth."
Richard Rohr
"Let’s be honest: religion has probably never had such a bad name. Christianity is now seen as “irrelevant” by many and often as part of the problem more than any kind of solution. Some of us are almost embarrassed to say we are Christian because of the negative images that word conjures in others’ minds. Young people especially are turned off by how judgmental, exclusionary, impractical, and ineffective Christian culture seems to be. The church seems hostile toward most science (the objective outer world) and thus unable to talk about its inner dimensions with any authority."
Richard Rohr
"..... And we must be frank: in their behavior and impact upon the world, Christians are not much different than other people.
The majority of Christians are not highly transformed people, but tend to reflect their own culture more than they operate as any kind of leaven within it. I speak especially of American Christians, because I am one."
Richard Rohr
"Teaching is ineffective because it is not Life Centered; there is no life because there is no example; there is no example because empty words have taken the place of faith and charity."
Carlo carretto
"Jesus doesn't loose any slep that we will forget that the eucharist is sacred. He is anxious that we forget it is ordinary. That it is a meal shared among friends."
(Father Greg Boyle. Interview with Krista Tippett. On Being podcast nov 22)
"I think that we are afraid of the incarnation. Part of it, the fear that drives us is that we have to have our sacred in a certain way. It has to be goldplated and cost of millions cost of thousands, there is something.... i don't know.
And so we have wrestled the cup out of Jesus' hand and replaced it with a chalice. Becuse who doesn't know that a chalice is more sacred than a cup. Never mind that Jesus never used a chalice."
(Father Greg Boyle. Interview woth Krista Tippett. On Being podcast nov 22)
"When they arrived back home, one of the girls ran into the house and exclaimed, “Hurrah ! There’s a war!” She was promptly slapped. The Bonhoeffers (parents) were not opposed to war, but neither would they celebrate it."
~ Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
"Most of what is wrong in human affairs simply can't be dealt with by law."
~Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"All one has to do to identify those who would mislead us he's watch what they do and pay little attention to what they say. What they do will be the unerring sign of who they are on the inside. Trees and plants manifest their nature in their fruit..... And what people do reveals, when thoroughly and honestly considered, the kind of person they really are."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"You don’t have to figure it all out or get everything right ahead of time. You just have to stay on the full journey. None of us know how to be perfect, but we can practice staying in union, staying connected."
~ Richard Rohr
"Safety and security is not a gospel value. We worship a God who becomes vulnerable in human form and dies rather than participate in the violence between brothers and sisters."
Andy Doyle. Bishop of Texas.
(Interview on Newsworthy With Norsworthy Podcast Nov 13, 2017)
"You can either take your own spiritual journey or someone else will take you on theirs."
~Ray Bryant
"But Luther brought Germans to a fuller engagement with their faith through singing too. He wrote many hymns—the most well-known being “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—and introduced the idea of congregational singing. Before Luther, no one outside the choir sang in church."
(Eric Meraxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy Paperback)
"As long as I am condemning my friends or relatives, or pushing my "pearls" on them, "I" and their problem."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"Before Luther’s Bible, there was no unified German language. It existed only in a hodgepodge of dialects. And Germany as a nation was an idea far in the future, a gleam in Luther’s eye . But when Luther translated the Bible into German, he created a single language in a single book that everyone could read and did read. Indeed, there was nothing else to read. Soon everyone spoke German the way Luther’s translation did."
(Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy)
"What is needed at the end of this great prayer is a ringing affirmation of the goodness of God and God's world. If your nerves can take it, you might (occasionally?) try Whoopee!" I imagine God himself will not mind."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"We need to focus our circle of responsibility. . . . That means letting go of the things you can’t control—which includes the decisions that popes, bishops, pastors, councils, and church boards may make. . . . [If] you can’t get your congregation to care about homeless people, you can get involved yourself. If you can’t get your congregation to treat gay folks with respect, you can do so around your kitchen table. If you can’t get your church to focus on cross-racial relationships, you can take a step this Sunday and visit a church where you’re the minority, and from there, begin to build relationships. You don’t need anyone’s vote or permission to do these things: you only need to exercise your own responsibility and freedom. . . "
~Richard Rohr
"...... right now I don’t want to know where I will be next year. In the past couple years, the unknowns have been what have shaped me into the person I am today. The unknowns have forced me to have faith.
Unknowns bring us to places that we never expected to be."
Emily Backode
(Taught Frazee's kids in Kadiolo, Mali.)
"Condemnation always involves some degree of self-righteousness and of distancing ourselves from the one we are condemning....."
The decision to step aside from it, neither giving it nor receiving nor receiving it, is a major turning point in one's life."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Without the single-minded attentiveness of prayer we will rarely hear anything worth repeating or catch a vision worth asking anyone else to gaze upon."
(The Spiritual Life. John H. Westerhoff & John Eusden)
"For too long we have thought of the Christian Life is essentially either involvement in political, economic, social concerns that wear us out and result in depression or activity which keeps the church intact and doctrinally pure. Our primary orientation cannot be an institution or some great cause or even other people, but first and forever to God......"
"Without the single-minded attentiveness of prayer we will rarely hear anything worth repeating or catch a vision worth asking anyone else to gaze upon."
(The Spiritual Life. John H. Westerhoff & John Eusden)
"It is hard for me to realize
That some growth is slow,
That all processes are not Swift. I cannot always discriminate
Between what takes time to develop and what can be rushed,
Because my sense of time is dulled.
I measure things in terms of happenings"
~ Howard Thurman. Deep is The Hunger
"Of course more than half the battle with condemnation is won once we have given up anger and contempt. Condemnation always involves some degree of self-righteousness and of distancing ourselves from the one we are condemning."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Now a moment's reflection is all that is required to make one realize how terribly powerful condemnation is. It knifes into vulnerable areas at the core of our being. That is why it hurts so badly and at the same time why we rely upon it so heavily. The decision to step aside from it, neither giving it nor receiving it, is a major turning point in one's life."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
".... been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parent."
~ C.S. Lewis
"He deeply desired for them to come back in a relational sense as sons, daughters, friends, and family members, but He knew that the hardness of heart and the hardness of life would make it impossible for them to see Him clearly or find a clear path back to Him. Sending prophets—or in our vernacular, preaching harder—wouldn’t get it done anymore. People had lost their ear for truth and couldn’t stomach any more baseless religion. Proclamation had run its course. Incarnation was now His only play."
(Hugh Halter. Flesh)
"Our driver, a local Haitian, tried to explain his own tension in watching his fellow citizens become savages: “I have known many of these thieves since I was a young man. Many were my closest friends. I see them now in alleyways, waiting to mug, hurt, and steal, but I still love them. I know them, and I know why they are broken.”
~ Hugh Halter. Flesh
"THERE IS A NOTION ABROAD that Christianity is on its last legs, or possibly already dead and just too weak to lie down.
This is confidently believed in Communist countries, and while spokesmen for the West are too polite to say so, one can hardly escape the feeling that they too believe the demise of the church to be a certain if embarrassing fact, the chief proof of her death being her failure to provide leadership for the world just when it needs it most.
Let me employ a pair of mixed and battered but still useful clichés and say that those who have come to bury the faith of our fathers have reckoned without the host. Just as Jesus Christ was once buried away with the full expectation that He had been gotten rid of, so His church has been laid to rest times without number; and as He disconcerted His enemies by rising from the dead so the church has confounded hers by springing again to vigorous life after all the obsequies had been performed over her coffin and the crocodile tears had been shed at her grave."
A. W. Tozer
"The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints."
A W. Tozer
"The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk."
A.W. Tozer
"The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His Godgiven instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone."
A.W. Tozer
"There are times when to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in our life we must walk alone, which goes contrary to our natural inclination. Sometimes we must walk away from the crowd, even the Christian crowd."
A.W. Tozer
"In sixteenth—century Holland, the Mennonites were outlawed and, when caught, often executed. One of them, Dirk Willens, was being chased across an icefield when his pursuer broke through and fell in. In response to his cries for help, Willens returned and saved him from the waters. The pursuer was grateful and astonished that he would do such a thing but nevertheless arrested him, as he thought it his duty to do. A few days later Willens was executed by being burned at the stake in the town of Asperen. It was precisely his Christlikeness that brought on his execution."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"... if we do not treasure earthly goods we must be prepared to be treated as more or less crazy. This is also true if we escaoe the delusions if responsibility and so are not governable by the opinions of those around us, even though we respect them in love."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"There us very little time and occasion for openness in most of our gatherings because we fear it. We think it may lead to confrontation, anger, and divisiveness. We are not open because we fear what others will think of us and do to us."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
".... the beliefs we actually hold concerning reality..... Lack of confidence in the Kingdom will force us to take the "pretty words" reading of the words of scripture. Many people simply put all of the scriptures and even religion as a whole in that category. Thus George Santayana once described religion as only "a lyric cry in the business of Life," a brief indulging in pleasant feelings.
The story is told of a man who lost his composure and cursed in the presence of his pastor. After an embarrassed silence, he looks sheepishly at the pastor and said, "Oh, it's all right, Pastor. I cuss a little and you pray a little, but neither one of us means anything by it."
The challenge to our faith in the kingdom is to mean something by our talk of it"
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"Fund-raisers know that it is much easier nowadays to get someone to build a building for some social institution, such as a hospital or college, than it is to get them to endow the maintenance on a building You can name the building after the contributors or their family, or at least put up a plaque with their name upon it. But you can't do that for the maintenance of the building; no one seems to want their name on a mop or a broom."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"The economy of the Kingdom of God is quite simple. Every new step into the Kingdom costs us everything we have gained to date. Every time we cross a new threshold, it costs us everything we now have. Every new step may cost us all the reputation and security we have accumulated up to that point. It costs us our life. A disciple is a follower, an acolyte, a student, an apprentice. A disciple of Jesus is always ready to take the next step with Him. If there is anything that characterizes Christian maturity, it is the willingness to become a beginner again for Jesus Christ. It is the willingness to put our hand in His hand and say, “I’m scared to death, but I’ll go with you. You’re the Pearl of great price.”
~ John Wimber
“We live, in fact, In a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
- C.S. Lewis
"Our skin is us to others. It’s what they see, and since our skin is able to bend and move, tighten and loosen, it is able to communicate hundreds of unique emotions, feelings, and thoughts. You can’t hide your skin. Most of our nerve endings are in our skin, so what happens to our flesh is usually obvious to someone watching us. We feel the world through our skin, and our flesh is the front door to our emotions.
(Hugh Halter. Flesh)
“I'm extremely concerned that we've become experts at the activities of church - to the point that we can do them without God. No matter what our favorite emphasis might be: worship, the gifts, making disciples, the lost, the poor, social justice, liturgy, unity, theology.... There's one thing that’s vastly more important than all of those activities combined – it’s Him. Intimate relationship with Him; with the Father who is rich in mercy and loves us with a great and lavish love.”
~ Tom Zawacki
"Every day people go to church trying to substitute or compensate for not responding to the situations of their lives as they require. People walk into church thinking they are living a spiritual life when what they need to do is leave and go home, and start sensibly addressing the broken parts of their lives that are hurting others."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Religion has always been an avenue that people have used to bargain for God’s blessing. If we do our part, we think that God will do his part and grant us our desires. The world can sometimes seem like a random and frightening place. People turn to God and religion in hope of finding some measure of security, protection, and favor. I get that.
However, the notion of pleasing or obeying God in order to gain favorable life circumstances as “God’s blessing” is false. God is not going to change the fact that the world is characterized by impermanence.....
The reason why people are so caught up with seeking favor from God is that they wrongly assume that peace and happiness has something to do with better life circumstances,......"
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge )
I fear we live in a similar time. Our culture is in danger of forgetting that God exists.
But God’s intention was that the church would be the sign that would help people never to forget. This is why some people talk about the church being “the hope of the world.” Technically, the church isn’t the hope of the world – Christ is (Col.1:27). But the church is the sign, the last hope for a world suffering from spiritual amnesia, saying “God exists.”
Michael Frost. Australia
" Loving those who love us and lavishing care and honor on those of our own group is something that traitorous oppressors, the mafia, and terrorists do. How then, could that serve to distinguish the goodness of someone born into God's family or the presence of a different kind of reality of life?
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"Laziness was another “mistake” I made on the path. Most people want a magic bullet. They are not truly willing to do their own personal work, and would prefer someone just give them the answer. They are hoping for a formula that promises that if they do ‘A’ then ‘B’ will happen."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"In my case, I left Christian fundamentalism behind but managed to create a different fundamentalism around whatever my new and improved understanding of God became. During one season I even became a Universalist fundamentalist – “God loves everyone . . . dammit! Maybe if you would get your head out of your religious ass, you would realize this!” In other words, each step of my journey became the new “it” or standard that I judged others by. Essentially I poured concrete over my latest epiphany, and it became the new religion. I wasn’t necessarily nasty or belligerent about it but there was a certain insistence, silent pride, and arrogance to it......
It’s no secret that any person who feels led astray and betrayed by their religion is likely to become its biggest critic. A person lives many years under the oppression of religion. In reaction to this, they over-correct and become an Atheist. There are lots of options between a hideous concept of God and concluding there is no God at all, but when you over-correct, you skid by all the stuff in the middle."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Spiritual living is not thinking about God while peeling a potato. Just peel the potato, and know that this is spiritual. God and life are inseparable."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"You must now take full responsibility for your spiritual journey. Perhaps you feel you gave too many years of your life away in vain to religion. Don’t make the mistake of giving away more years in your bitterness. You have to move on. Stop railing against religion. It will keep you stalled on your spiritual journey, and feed your ego’s need to feel superior. Your ego is sneaky and would like nothing more than to distract you from your true Self by convincing you to forge an identity of being super spiritual or anti-religion. Instead, practice simple avoidance or quiet noncooperation with organized religion, but don’t waste time or energy being oppositional to it."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"It is a common characteristic of an abusive church or religious group to have an authoritarian and control-oriented style of leadership. The leader is typically dogmatic, self-confident, arrogant, and is the spiritual focal point in the lives of his followers. The leader assumes he is more spiritually in tune with God than anyone else. To members of this type of church or group, questioning the leader is the equivalent of questioning God."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Breaking free from religion is one of the most difficult things a person will ever do. It involves standing on your own two feet, taking responsibility for your spiritual journey, and escaping the groupthink mentality, which is the assumption that something must be true just because a group of people believe it and no one wants to rock the boat by questioning it."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"The premise that we have to get somewhere, achieve something, change something, improve something, add something, subtract something in order to have relationship with God isn’t true."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
“It's a great difficulty for leaders to preach grace when their churches have employed them to administer the law.”
~ Phil Drysdale
"..... when I look back reflectively I realize that I contributed to the problem by making the following mistakes:
Putting church over community.
Putting orthodoxy over love.
Putting certainty over wonder.
Putting teaching over conversation. Putting polished over real.
Putting answers over questions.
Putting membership over friendship. Putting Christianity over Christ.
Putting knowledge over action.
Putting style over substance.
Putting appearance over authenticity. Putting functionality over beauty.
Putting religion over spirituality.
Putting numbers over individuals.
Putting holiness over humanity.
Putting accountability over acceptance. Putting Heaven over earth.
Putting meetings over relationships. Putting reputation over risk.
Putting charisma over compassion. Putting the Afterlife over the Herelife. Putting thinking over feeling.
Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge
“There is no mountain, sacred place, or church building where God expects to be worshipped."
Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge
"Once you untangle Jesus from the religious machinery of Christianity, you discover a profound and inclusive significance of Jesus for all humankind and the journey of life. No person is excluded from that kind of transformation, regardless of one’s religious context. Every person has a religious context in which the significance of Jesus can be experienced because the Truth of Jesus is not bound to any particular religious system. Jesus himself had a religious context (Judaism), which he both honored and critiqued."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Being led by the spirit of Truth that is inside you is not about constructing theology, but about living and being in a whole and complete relationship with yourself, God, others, and life. The spirit of Truth inside you is not there to lead you to correct concepts and ideas about God, but is there to guide you into the same truth that Jesus lived, expressed, and was."
Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge
"My heart is one with the body of Christ no matter where or how or why they gather, but this never hinders me from recognizing the seriousness of the errors of the institutional church approach. I'm not into isolationism, but I'm also not at peace with a system that has marginalized Jesus, usurped His headship, turned the body into passive spectators, robbed believers of billions of dollars to build expensive sheep sheds, and a leadership that lord's it over God's flock."
- Tom Sparks
"Deciding by consensus simply requires belief that unity, love, communication, and participation are more important in the Christian scheme of things than quick, easy decisions. It requires the understanding that, ultimately, the process is as important as the outcome. How we treat each other as we make decisions together is as important as what we actually decide."
- Christian Smith
"Religion often implies that one meets God atop a mountain or in a temple. Still today, people often refer to a church building as the “House of God.” But Joshua ben Adam (Jesus) taught that we meet God in one another. God’s spirit comes to expression in people, especially ordinary people doing ordinary things. Religion often sends people out to find God in “sacred things” – a certain place or day, religious gatherings, rituals, and experiences, or in the presence of religious clerics or spiritual gurus. And yet, Joshua ben Adam lived and taught that the living image of God is on display in everyday life in and through us and our expressions of compassion, love, care, and friendship with one another."
Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge
"There was a historical Jesus before institutional Christianity got a hold of him and did their extreme makeover. He was a much better Jesus than the one Christianity produced."
Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge
"True communication between cultures is a chancy thing especially where money is involved."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure: A Jorney On Two Rivers.)
(There is a religion-free Jesus who belongs to all of humankind. Christianity does not own or have first rights to Jesus. His truth has universal significance. It’s often the case that you have to disentangle Jesus from institutional Christianity in order to uncover his Truth."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Be humble. In your enlightenment you gained nothing, you attained nothing. You only saw the way things are and always have been, and will be."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"But there is nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it. The sense of self-righteousness that comes with our anger simply provokes more anger and self-righteousness on the other side."
~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"If Jesus were walking our patch of planet earth today, he would be paying extra special attention to the “Nones.” They would feel as though he understands them. His approach to them would make the religious insiders nervous. Around him, they would feel like insiders, not outsiders. And soon, they would be loving him."
~ Ken Wilson
"Stay in Jerusalem" Jesus. Sometimes it's easier to "I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord" than "I'll stay where you want me to stay"
(Leonard Sweet)
"Both the enlightened and ignorant person has difficulties and hardships. The difference is that the ignorant person is attached to their circumstances for peace, happiness, and well-being and the enlightened person is not. Which is easier – striving 24/7 to get your life to line up the way you want it, or not being attached to a preference of how it must be?
You think that your peace, well-being, and happiness has something to do with your life lining up. That’s your spiritual ignorance. Wouldn’t it be better to take peace, well-being, and happiness into each moment, whatever that moment holds?'
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"There is nothing to insert into your life to make it more spiritual. There is only the need for you to dissolve the line between “sacred” and “secular.” There is no such line; we just made it up in our head. God is inseparable from every moment of life and living."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"The human experience involves pain. That’s the way that is. If you cut your hand open while slicing an onion, there will be pain. No amount of transformation or enlightenment is ever going to change this. If you lose a loved one, there will be emotional or psychological pain. No amount of transformation or enlightenment is ever going to change this. If a close friend or spouse betrays you, it will hurt. No amount of transformation or enlightenment is ever going to change this."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"When the Holy Spirit shows up, He doesn't come to sit in the back room and behave Himself."
~ Randy Clark
"Our struggle with sin is so deep that it was not enough for God to forgive us, so he also unzipped us and got inside of us by his Spirit."
(Paul David Tripp)
"...... all things are characterized by impermanence and subject to change. Most people have to work through a lot of disappointment, suffering, and heartache to get to that realization, but once it happens, it is a profound shift in how we perceive reality and experience life.:
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Likewise, you have a lifetime of experiences, circumstances, conditions, and choices, which makes you a Titanic-sized ship of habit energy that cannot be turned around on a dime. Your daily choices and responses are governed by deeply ingrained ways of thinking and being. You have a fixed and habitual mode of perceiving and understanding the world, and old habits die hard."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Hell is a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement and where everyone has a grievance."
~ C.S. Lewis
"It is only by believing in God that we can criticize the Government. Once abolish God, and the Government becomes God. The truth is that irreligion is the opium of the people. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world. But, above all, they worship the strongest thing in the world."
G. K. Chesterton,
Christendom in Dublin
"You did not bear the shame
You resisted
Sacrificing your life
For Freedom, Justice and Honor"
From the German Resistance Memorial, Berlin
We instinctively contrast the ministry with the laity, the priesthood with the people, the professional with the amateur. But the New Testament church knew nothing of this. This is perfectly astounding when you recall that every society in the world, including Israel, had had its specialized holy seasons, holy places, and holy people. In Christianity, all three were abolished. The keeping of holy days was a matter of indifference to the early Christians. They had no holy buildings, but met in private houses--the incarnation of God had made the secular sacred. As for holy people, why, all believers were called to be that holy people, that universal priesthood envisioned long ago in the Old Testament but never hitherto realized. The mediation of Jesus has abolished the need for an intermediary caste of priests: all can have access to God in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ; all have the priestly responsibility of interceding for man to God; all have the prophetic task of speaking God's message to men. There is no priestly body within Christianity. It is a one-class society, though you would never guess as much, so grossly has conformity to pagan and Old-Testament models distorted this unique facet of Christ's community.
... Michael Green (b. 1930), "Mission and Ministry"
"There are a lot of churches that are not even on the battlefield yet because they aren't good enough to be attacked by the devil. Many churches are not good enough to come into real spiritual warfare as the enemy doesn't have to attack them because they do a pretty good job of attacking themselves.
The devil can simply come up and press a few buttons of the flesh, and resentment, and bitterness, and ambition, and pride, and arrogance, and offense, and unteachable behavior, and as long as he continues to press those buttons then we'll never deal with the battle field that is out there, as long as he's dealing with the battlefield in here."
Jesus said these words in Luke 22."Who is more important, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who who sits at the table of course. But, not here, for i am among those who serves. I have come as one who serves........"
(Pastor Andrew Brice. Summerside Community Church. Sunday, Sept 24, 2017)
"Some men choose a job they know they can do well and easily, and don't even approach the fullest giving of their gift. Their lives are relatively secure and comfortable, but dead. They lack the aliveness, the depth, and the inspirational energy that is the sign of a man living at his edge."
David Deida
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
(Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey)
"We also live in an age of entitlement; personal fulfillment, we believe, is our due. In the West, sex is a right linked to our individuality, our self-actualization, and our freedom. Thus, most of us now arrive at the altar after years of sexual nomadism. By the time we tie the knot, we’ve hooked up, dated, cohabited, and broken up. We used to get married and have sex for the first time. Now we get married and stop having sex with others. The conscious choTice we make to rein in our sexual freedom is a testament to the seriousness of our commitment. By turning our back on other loves, we confirm the uniqueness of our “significant other”: “I have found The One. I can stop looking.” Our desire for others is supposed to miraculously evaporate, vanquished by the power of this singular attraction."
(Why Happy People Cheat: A good marriage is no guarantee against infidelity.
ESTHER PEREL
OCTOBER 2017 ISSUE The Atlantic)
"Jesus didn’t psychologize or spiritualize people’s pain. He didn’t even try to explain it in light of God. Jesus faced pain and tasted the depths of it. He leaned into it, endured it, and fully met others in their hurt and heartache. Jesus cared. He did give a damn. Jesus felt it all deeply.
Being human means we go through life embracing it all fully and feeling it all deeply. That we don’t hide and try to protect ourselves. That we live. That we show up. That we laugh. That we cry. That we hurt. That we heal. That we care. That we love. And then, that we wake up the next morning and sign up to be human all over again. That is being IN the world."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"The Religion-Free Bible paraphrase of the shortest verse of the Bible, “Jesus wept,” captures this: “Anguish climbed from the bottom of his gut up through his chest and throat, and into his eyes with a power that even he could not contain. A lone tear quietly dropped from his eyelash and as it inched down his face, he was now inseparably a part. In the length of his face, the heartache of humankind washed through him like rain. Jesus knew full well the human experience and how it sometimes felt like your heart was being ripped right out of your chest. Life is beautiful. But life was also agonizing. That was the deal, and there was nothing Jesus could ever do to change that. Gravity had its way with this solitary tear and as it fell from his chin to the ground, Jesus was undone with sadness and compassion that seemed to stretch across every wound and scar that had ever been suffered. No divinity could save him now from his own human heart. Jesus wept.”
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"The leading social commentator now teaches that despair and rage are an essential element in the struggle for justice. He and others who teache thus are sowing the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind, the tornado. Indeed, we are reaping it now in a nation increasingly sick with rage and resentment of citizen toward citizen. And often the rage and resentment resentment is upheld as justified......"
Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy
"Many think I’m so concerned about organized religion because I’ve been hurt by the worst of it. That isn’t quite true. I think its greatest danger comes not when it is obviously flawed, but when it works well— giving people an aesthetic experience or a place to park their guilt, and missing out on a real engagement with the King of Glory. When it convinces us that sitting in the same room or greeting each other briefly in the parking lot is real fellowship, we’ll miss the greater joy of supportive relationships that will help us all respond better to what God is doing in us....
What I love about the work of the Spirit in our day is that it is not being driven by an organization, a book or a charismatic speaker. God’s Spirit is creating a hunger in his people that defies the confines of religion or a particular way of doing things, and seeks to drink deeply of his presence and share an effective life with other fellow travelers."
Wayne Jacobsen
Everywhere I go now, people ask me about the ‘house church movement,’ hoping it will provide the answer to their hunger for real body life. While I greatly prefer relational environments to institutional ones, every time I hear the word ‘movement’ my heart sinks. I’m convinced that the day we call what God is doing a movement is the day it has already begun to die. I’ve seen many movements come and go —Charismatic, discipleship, deliverance, healing, intercession, spiritual warfare, prophetic, worship, and apostolic just to name a few. All of them came up hollow in the end, not because God wasn’t in some of it, but because people hijacked his work to serve their own needs and ambitions.
Calling something a movement inflates our own sense of importance and separates us from the multi- faceted working of God that transcends any particular way of doing things.
Wayne Jacobsen
Like it or not, the church is finally becoming much more universal in its teaching. Marginalized and oppressed groups have a wealth of insights to offer us in reading the Gospel. The New Testament is being rediscovered by altogether different sets of eyes, raising very different questions and perspectives that we just never thought about before. We are just beginning to honor the voices of women, minorities, and many groups that have not had access to the power, privilege, and comforts of past theologians."
Richard Rohr
“There are many who agonize over the church. The good news is that the church Jesus is building is alive and well. It is the religious system that is unraveling before our eyes.”
~ Don Nori Sr.
"These 'little' people, without any of the character or qualifications humans insist are necessary, are the only ones who can actually make the world work. It is how things are among them that determines the character of every age and place."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The Twisted, misshappen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat, and the old--
For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy. Pg 123)
I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…
I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.
That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.
I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem."
Brian Zahnd
"The church is meant to be a force of evangelism but has become a field of evangelism instead"
British Methodist Samuel Chadwick (1860-1932)
"The reason why so few find the Truth is because we impose our conditions and preferences upon it. We insist the Truth must look a certain way, including the path we take to get to it. You have a “Yeah, but” problem. You say you want to know the truth but you have conditions. Yeah, I want to know the Truth… BUT it must nicely fit into, complement or be consistent with certain beliefs and understandings I never plan on giving up, BUT it must not put me at odds with my family, friends, or faith tradition, BUT it must be something I can figure out in, with, and through my mind, BUT it must produce the outcomes I want on my terms. The Truth will not bend to satisfy your conditions. The path is simple except for your preferences."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"It is not hard to see the concrete and oppressive form that the flight from God takes today. There is, for example, no field of expertise in human affairs where interaction with God is a part of the subject matter or practice that must be mastered in order to be judged competent. This is true of chemistry and public administration, but it is also true of education, nursing, police work, and often, astonishingly, Christian Ministry itself. It is true of marriage and parenting. Just observe how people are taught and certified or judged competent in any of these fields, and you will be staring the flight from God straight in the face.
All of us live in such a world, for we live by our competencies. Our souls are, accordingly, soaked with secularity....
The real world has little room for a god of sparrows and children."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"We can still stand for and offer holy matrimony between a man and a woman as a sacred ordinance given by God, while accepting that the state has endorsed a wider view of marriage."
- the Anglican Primate of Australia, Philip Freier
"The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future.
But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real."
— Aral Vorkosigan, Shards of Honor
"I saw my mother as a little six-year-old girl kneeling on the windowsill of the orphanage in Montreal. Her nose was pressed against the glass; she was begging God to send her a mommy and daddy who would whisk her away and love her without condition. As I looked, I believe I finally saw my mother; she was a ragamuffin too. And all my resentment and anger fell away."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)
"This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It’s not cheap. It’s free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)
My message, unchanged for more than fifty years, is this: God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.....
Some have labeled my message one of “cheap grace.”In my younger days, their accusations were a gauntlet thrown down, a challenge. But I’m an old man now and I don’t care."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)
"I have said countless times that losing our illusions is difficult because illusions are the stuff we live by. We believe we’re invincible until cancer comes knocking, or we believe we’re making a comeback until we tumble down the stairs. God strips away those falsehoods because it is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace )
"In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves."
-- Henri Nouwen
"I knew that it was going to cost me. It wasn't about, ah, you know, it wasn't a free ride. There (this) was going to be very very costly, and it was, and it is, and it will continue to be, I hope. Because anything worthwhile has to cost you something otherwise you're left to question its value."
~ Martin Sheen in a podcast interview with Krista Tippett. June 22, 2017. Concering his return to his faith and Catholicism.
"Max left the treatment center a broken man but also a changed man. I left the center known as “a tough nut to crack.” I was clean and sober but far from honest."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace )
“The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It’s all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you’ve inflicted on others.”
~ Thomas Keating
"In his (Jesus) world, astonishingly, there is nothing evil we must do in order to thrive. "
( Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
" I must, in a little time, go to God. What comforts me in this life is that I now see him by faith; and I see him in such a manner as might make me say sometimes, 'I believe no more, but I see'"
(Brother Lawrence. Toward the end of his life)
"Persons rarely become present where they are not heartily wanted. Certainly that is true for you and me. We prefer to be wanted, warmly wanted, before we reveal our souls or even come to a party."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"Similarly, God is, without special theophanies, seen everywhere by those who have lived for him. No doubt God wants us to see him. That is part of his nature as outpouring love. Love always wants to be known.....
Seeing is no simple thing, of course. Often a great deal of knowledge, experience, imagination, patience, and receptivity are required."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy.)
"Interestingly, "growing up" is largely a matter of learning to hide your spirit behind your face, eyes, and language so that we can evade and manage others to achieve what we want and avoid what we fear. By contrast, the child's face is a constant epiphany because it doesn't yet know how to do this. It cannot manage its face. This is also true of adults in moments of great feeling which is one reason why feeling is both greatly treasured and greatly feared.
Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their "childlikeness." What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment org gift."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"People were either doing the things that the person or people in charge wanted done, or they weren’t allowed to do much of anything. There was no freedom to truly shape their own community...
All of these data have convinced me that there is a truly sizable subset of congregants, and the recently dechurched, who desire to be active participants in a community of believers but aren’t willing to be the mouthpiece of someone else’s vision.
Too often, they say, church staff and pastors are willing to empower lay leaders, paid staff, and volunteers to do meaningless, mundane, and unfulfilling work while the senior pastor retains all of the authority and ability to make creative, meaningful decisions on behalf of the congregation."
Josh Packard Phd
Interview with Cora 66 year old Grandmother.
"It was fine as long as I was doing what I was told. As long as I was plugged into what someone else had put forth, it was no problem. But when I wanted to do something on my own, it was a different story. The last thing I tried to do was start a little group to help the elderly people in our congregation, where we would just go and mow lawns and wash windows and things for people who needed it. But that never came about. There were so many rules and regulations just to mow lawns that I backed off of it. It’s weird, because we were such a big church you would think this little thing would be easy. But I talked to the missions minister, and he told me to come up with a name for my group, propose a budget, write a mission statement, come to the board hearing, and figure out a way to report back every month. I told him, “Really? I just want to mow lawns. Why do we have to do all that?”He told me the board didn’t like things going on in the church unless they could oversee them. And here’s the kicker: They weren’t offering me anything in return. No budget, no help recruiting or organizing. It was just about control. So by that time, I was like, “OK, never mind. I’ll just do this on my own.”
(Church Refugees: Josh Packard Phd)
He found the nail........ and began tapping.....
"We see ample evidence throughout this chapter that people are willing to engage in communities of accountability, but only with people who have earned that right by living with them , walking with them, and being in conversation with them on an ongoing basis.
We also see that people with long and active church histories don’t need a pastor or church leadership to point out where they’ve failed or fallen short of God’s will. They know. They’ve sat through countless sermons , Sunday school lessons, small group discussions, and Bible studies. They’re acutely aware when they fall short of God’s desire for their lives. When people in the church point out their failings, it simply feels like piling on. What these people need from church is a community that will support them as they try to grow closer to God. They want support and help figuring out how they can live the lives they believe God wants for them."
(Church Refugees. Josh Packard Phd)
"God has many that the church does not have and the church has many that God does not have."
- St. Augustine
"So we must understand that God does not love us without liking us - through gritted teeth as Christian love is sometimes thought to do."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"While attending to a Sudanese woman wounds, from being brutally abused in unspeakable ways by Sudanese soldiers during the civil war, a western nurse was asked by this woman.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm here becuase I'm a member of an ancient tribe and in my tribe we beleive that every person is an image of God and that is why I am here."
The nurse replied.
"But the real Jesus of history was a lightning rod. He got angry. He was the greatest debunker of religious hierarchies and traditions, and the greatest desacralizer of holy places, times, people, rituals, priests and things, that this world has ever seen. The religious establishment hurriedly condemned him to death for blasphemy, while the secular powers executed him for sedition.
“Nice” is overrated. “Nice” is being “amiably pleasant, pleasing, and agreeable.” Not exactly the word I would use for Jesus when he was turning over tables in the temple. Jesus did not do this nicely. Jesus was a person of deep love and compassion, but the word “nice” doesn’t fit him. “Defiant” and “subversive” fit much better."
You're too nice.
Religion taught you that you should be nice, considerate, polite, amiable, and selfless. An antonym for “nice” is “improper.” “Improper” is defined as: “not being in accord with acceptable behavior and procedures; not in keeping with conventional mores.” Yep, that was Jesus! The road to Truth has improper written all over it. People traveling this road are a threat to all the nice people. Don’t expect them to be nice anymore, at least to you. Your world works because it hinges on you being nice. There will not be a crowd cheering you on. Knowing Truth is not a popularity contest, and the road to your freedom and end of suffering will be lined with people expressing disapproval. Every step on the path of Truth is an act of non-conformity.
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
There is the story of a disciple who approached his teacher and asked, “It seems to me that by having good friends and advancing together with them, one has already halfway attained the way of enlightenment. Is this way of thinking correct?” The teacher replied, “This way of thinking is not correct. Having good friends and advancing together with them is not half the enlightened way but all the enlightened way.”
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)
"Central to the understanding and proclamation of the Christian gospel today, as in Jesus' day, is a re-visioning of what God’s own life is like and how the physical cosmos fits into it. It is a great and important task to come to terms with what we really think when we think of God. Most hinderances to the faith of Christ actually lie, I believe, in this part of our minds and souls."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"In the world of Faith the heavens above the city are friendly and
are the upper chamber of every house "
(Max Picard. The Flight From God)
"Ragamuffins do not complain about the feeble preaching and the lifeless worship of their local church. They are happy to have a place to go where they can mingle with other beggars at the door of God’s mercy."
(Brennan Manning. The Ragamuffin Gospel)
"The Kingdom Must Make Sense. But this cannot come about unless what Jesus himself believed, practiced, and taught makes sense to us. And his message must come to us free of the deadening legalisms, political sloganeering, and dogmatic traditionalisms long proven by history to be soul-crushing dead.
ends."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"The disappearance of Jesus as teacher explains why today in Christian churches——of whatever leaning—little effort is made to teach people to do what he did and taught. Once again, it is a natural
consequence of our basic message. Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a "Christian Education Program” on how to "love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who Spit on you and make your life miserable"? Matt. 5:44"
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"This is the ragamuffin’s secret, which nominal Christians do not understand, but for which martyrs have given their lives. For the sake of the kingdom of God, thousands upon thousands have had their possessions confiscated, homelands seized, and families, careers, and good names sacrificed. The nominal just don’t get it. They hear the Word of God, but it does not speak to them interiorly. The unseen world does not exist. The love story of the Bible is nice for children in Sunday school but not for rational adults. Faith is a relic of the Middle Ages. You can’t pay the rent, cook soup, or purchase a computer with religion. What matters is muscle, intelligence, connections, and stronger battalions. The rest is opium for the people. The nominal do not know the secret. The treasure is hidden from their eyes. The values and lifestyle of the ragamuffin rabble are simply incomprehensible. It is the ragamuffin alone who rightly comprehends what life is really all about. No effort is too great, no venture too daring, no sacrifice too painful for the sake of the kingdom. Her greatest risk is still too small."
(Brennan Manning. The Ragamuffin Gospel)
"Catherine LaCugna ends her giant theological tome with this one simple sentence; it’s taken her two-and-a-half inches of book to get to this one line, and its simplicity might overwhelm you, but I can’t end in any better place than she does: The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth.
That’s the job description of God. That’s what it’s all about. And the only thing that can keep you out of this divine dance is fear and doubt, or any self-hatred.
What would happen in your life—right now—if you accepted what God has created and even allowed? Suddenly, this is a very safe universe. You have nothing to be afraid of. God is for you. God is leaping toward you! God is on your side, honestly more than you are on your own."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth."
(Catherine LaCugna. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life)
"You can’t manufacture this by any right conduct, dear reader. You can’t make God love you one ounce more than God already loves you right now. You can’t. You can go to church every day for the rest of your life. God isn’t going to love you any more than God loves you right now. You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. Do the most terrible thing—steal and pillage, cheat and lie—and God wouldn’t love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow is constant, total, and 100 percent toward your life. God is for you. We can’t diminish God’s love for us. What we can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity’s whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance. That’s why all spirituality comes down to how you’re doing life right now. How you’re doing right now is a microcosm of the whole of your life."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Without the free flow of the Holy Spirit, religion becomes a tribal sorting system, spending much time trying to define who’s in and who’s out—who’s right and who’s wrong. And surprise, we’re always on the side of right! What are the odds?
Yet refining, and any sorting that may or may not need to be done— that is the work of God. It’s not our problem. It really isn’t. Your problem isn’t to decide who is going to heaven and who is going to hell, especially when you realize those are mostly present-tense descriptions before they are ever future destinations. Your job is simply to exemplify heaven now. God will take it from there. Here is the remedy when you find it hard to exemplify heaven now: Let love happen. Remember, you cannot “get there”; you can only be here."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Ken Wilber points out that much church organization is at the “mythic-membership” level of consciousness, which often breeds complacency to real human suffering, in-group smugness, and little else.
I’ve been a priest for over forty-five years now; sometimes when I look out over the crowd at Mass, I can see a passive resistance over much of the congregation’s faces. Even when I’m giving what I take to be a risky and life-giving message. They are conditioned to expect nothing. They’ve gotten so used to these gatherings not being meaningful that they no longer know how to allow them to touch their heart or change their mind. The Holy Spirit is again the Missing Person of the Blessed Trinity."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Precisely because they aren’t trying to push or promote themselves, a true Spirit person often occurs as “terrifying.” They won’t manipulate you, and you always know you can’t manipulate them. Saints living in the circle (trinitarian) dance of love are often a scary anomaly. They are not subject to our usual system of rewards, punishments, and payoffs. They’re not in it for “filthy lucre,” like most of the rest of us are......
Many Spirit people strike fear in the hearts of the guardians of the status quo—or of any kind of privilege. Once you are in the “general dance,” as Thomas Merton called it, you have no need to make your attention-grabbing movements over in the corner."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"In the Divine Economy, all is useable, even our mistakes and our sin. This message shouts from the cross, and we still did not hear it!"
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Being is an active verb, and God is an event of communion? Could it be true? God does not decide to love, therefore, and God’s love can never be determined by the worthiness or unworthiness of the object. But God is Love itself. God cannot not love, because love is the nature of God’s very being."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"The Spirit’s passion is to bring her anointing of humanity in Jesus to full and personal and abiding expression in us [as unique persons], and not only in us personally, but in our relationship with the Father through the Son, and in our relationships with one another, and indeed with the earth and all creation…. 254 Until the whole cosmos is a living sacrament of the great dance of the triune God."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Right at the heart of this alienation lies the absence of Jesus the teacher from our lives. Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but him. We are ready to believe that the "latest studies" have more to teach us about love and sex than he does, and that Louis Rukeyser knows more about finances. "Dear Abby" can teach us more about how to get along with our family members and co-workers, and Carl Sagan is a better authority on the cosmos. We lose any sense of the difference between information and wisdom, and act accordingly.
Where we spontaneously look for "information" on how to live shows how we truly feel and who we really have confidence in."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
Dallas Willard
"We have so persistently dissembled the power of the Gospel. . . that it is pardonable if those who judge of it by us
should doubt whether it is anything more efficacious and inspiring than the pathetic guesses which adorn the writings of philosophy."
(Canon B.F. Westcott. The Gospel Of Resurrection.)
"Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the gospel of God. The one all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality. Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell - it is redemption....
God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character."
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest"Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel...." 1 Cor 1:17. Paul states here that the call of God is to preach the gospel. But remember what Paul means by "The Gospel", namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are inclined to make sanctification the goal of our preaching..... We are not commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification - we are commissioned to lift up Jesus (See John 12:32) it is an injustice to say that Jesus Christ labored to make me a saint, Jesus Christ labored in redemption to redeem the whole world and to place it perfectly whole and restored before the throne of God."
"It is a failure to understand Jesus and his words as reality and vital information about life that explains why, we do not routinely teach those who profess allegiance to him how to do what he said was best.......
Whatever the ultimate explanation of it, the most telling thing about the contemporary Christian is that he or she simply has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teachings of Christ is of any vital importance to his or her life,and certainly not that it is in any way essential."
~ Dallas Willard. The Diving Conspiracy
“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through— listen to this music.”
Fourteenth-century Sufi mystic Hafiz
"I don’t think you can understand Scripture in any honest way unless you know that its primary arc is a salvation of history and creation itself, and today’s individualism is regressive. All the covenants are with the people collectively— the “house” and the future. Individuals like Abraham, Noah, and David are only the instruments."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance )
"The Indwelling Spirit is this constant ability of humanity to keep going, to keep recovering from its wounds, to keep hoping and trying again. I think one thing we love so much about young children is their indomitable hope, curiosity, and desire to grow. They fall down, and soon they’re all grins again. Another generation is going to try again to live life to the fullest. But too often, by the time they’re my age they don’t smile so much at all, and we ask, “What happened between six and sixty?”
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"(Jesus words) They are essentially subversive of the established arrangements and ways of thinking. That is clear from the way they first entered the world, their initial effects, and how they are preserved in the New Testament writings and live on in his people. He himself described his words as "spirit and life" (John 6:63) They invade our real world with a reality even more than it is, which explains why human beings then and now have to protect themselves against them."
(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)
"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace )
"So I told him, told him everything, about my disgust with my own motives and my thoughts of walking away from it all. In that moment he said a powerful thing, a life-changing thing: “You are on the threshold of receiving the greatest grace of your life. You are discovering what it means to be poor in spirit. Brother Brennan, it’s okay not to be okay.”My gut reaction was, This guy’s a loon. But then he led me to the first Beatitude as translated from the New English Bible: How blessed are those who know that they are poor, the kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)
"The village didn’t have running water, so each morning I would ride out in a donkey-driven buckboard with a water tank in the back. I would later return with the prized possession, water. To say I was popular with the people is an understatement. One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological. It was not more rhetoric that Jesus demanded but personal renewal, fidelity to the gospel, and creative conduct."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)
"Life has no real opposite; death is merely a transitioning, which takes trust every time we walk through it."
Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"By and large, what human beings want is resurrection without death, answers without doubt, light without darkness, the conclusion without the process."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"In the second person of the Trinity, we have the visible epiphany of the Unmanifest One. First in the form of creation itself— which is “the Christ” in our shorthand— and secondly in personal form, whom we call “Jesus.” Someone who reverences the first epiphany (apophatic, sat) is surely best prepared to rightly reverence the second— kataphasis, chit. Up to now, we’ve led many people to love Jesus, but many less were led to recognize, honor, and love the Christ. The major future task of Christian theology and practice is to finally join the two together."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the gospel is the greatest temptation of all.
~ Henri Nouwen
"During President Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, he memorialized Pope John Paul II’s momentous 1979 visit to the city.
For many historians, the Polish-born pope’s Mass in Victory Square, more than anything else, set in motion the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall a decade later and the dissolution of the Soviet Union soon thereafter. The people in attendance knew exactly what President Trump meant when he spoke of how the millions of Poles attending that Mass “did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: ‘We want God.’”
The Dangers of Arrogant Ignorance, by Jonah Goldberg. July 7, 2017 12:00 AM. National Review
"For Christians, "guilt by association" is NOT A THING. If your friendships aren't diverse enough to bewilder others, you're doing it wrong."
Jonathan Martin
"God for us, we call you Father.
God alongside us, we call you Jesus.
God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.
You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,
Even us and even me."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"Most of us do not know the ground of silence before speaking, the spaciousness around words, the inner repose after words, the humility that words should require."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"This now-evident pattern is why so many of our contemporary spiritual teachers say that most of our problems are psychological in their manifestation, but spiritual in their solution. Most Christians of the Middle Ages more easily trusted the spiritual solution than we do, but they seldom had the vocabulary to describe the psychological manifestations as we do today. We articulate the psychological dimensions so well, and in so many ways, that contemporary people are trapped in sophisticated and helpful descriptions of the manifestations but have no One to surrender it all to. There is no Receiver Station, because we jumped off the divine waterwheel and withdrew from the dance."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"People accuse me of all kinds of things, both wonderful and terrible. They’re usually half-right, of course. But invariably, they’re talking about themselves, and they can’t see it. This principle of likeness has positive and negative manifestations— what you see over there is what you are in here. Always. Mistrustful people don’t know how to trust themselves or anybody else, and so they lay it on you."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"Hateful people see hatred everywhere else, have you noticed that? They’re always thinking someone’s out to screw them over, someone’s trying to hurt them. They create problems wherever they go. We call them “high-maintenance” people."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
"If you are still a black-and-white, rigid thinker who needs certitude and control at every step—well, the Trinity will feel out of reach. Grace shows up where logic breaks down, so you won’t go very far. No matter what passage is given to you, you will interpret it in a stingy, vengeful, controlling way—because that’s the way you do life."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine
"God cannot not see his Son Jesus in you. You are the body of Christ. You are bone of God’s bone, and that’s why God cannot stop loving you. That’s why no amount of effort will make God love you any more than God loves you right now. And despite your best efforts to be terrible, you can’t make God love you any less than God loves you right now."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance.
"The trouble with so much conventional religion is this cultural attitude of, “Well, I’ll forgive when they’ve earned it, when they’ve proven themselves.”That’s not forgiveness—that’s a deal! God loves you precisely in your obstinate unworthiness, when you’re still a mixture of good and bad, when you’re gloriously in flux. You’re not a perfectly loving person, and God still totally loves you. When you can participate in that mystery of being loved, even as the mixed bag that you are, you can receive the gift of the forgiveness. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only magnetic center that knows how to forgive other people—especially when people have really screwed you, really betrayed you, really abandoned you, really humiliated you. And sooner or later, this happens to all of us."
~Richard Rohr. The Divine
True liberation is letting go of our small self, letting go of our cultural biases, and letting go of our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things, and it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is even letting go of our need to know and our need to be right—which we only discover with maturity. We become free as we let go of our three primary energy centers: our need for power and control, our need for safety and security, and our need for affection and esteem.
-Richard Rohr
"How nice it is to stand in a room by the sea, drinking Scotch whiskey, listening to familiar words, and watching the clowning of friends who love one another. It is like a reunion
of combat soldiers."
(The Saddest Pleasure. Moritz Thomsen)
"She was not really beautiful, but there was a tremendous calm power behind her pleasant but ordinary features. It was an absence of hang-ups a sense of joyful acceptance, a glow of pleasure at the miracle of being alive.
ln one second she communicated to me the rare and beautiful sense of being completely human."
(The Saddest Pleasure. Moritz Thomsen)
Imagine what the world would be like if we treated others with inherent and equal dignity and respect, seeing the divine DNA in ourselves and everyone else too—regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, appearance, or social class. Nothing less offers the world any lasting future.
-Richard Rohr
All the conflicts and contradictions of life must find a resolution in us before we can resolve anything outside ourselves. Only the forgiven can forgive, only the healed can heal, only those who stand daily in need of mercy can offer mercy to others. At first it sounds simplistic and even individualistic, but it is precisely such transformed people who can finally effect profound and long-lasting social change
-Richard Rohr
(Sorry for blowing up your newsfeeds with Rohr, just too good not to share)
"We are called to embody the love of God in our lives. Not just talk about it or think about it or pray about it. We must live it in our guts, our muscles, our hearts, our eyes, our ears, and our tongues. We manifest that love when we share the ordinary rhythm of life with others who are likewise seeking to grow in love and compassion."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance )
"Rational certitude is exactly what the Scriptures do not offer us. They offer us something much better and an entirely different way of knowing: an intimate relationship, a dark journey, a path where we must discover for ourselves that grace, love, mercy, and forgiveness are absolutely necessary for survival— in an always and forever uncertain world."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Two people excited about the same thing are the beginning of almost everything new, creative, and risky in our world. Surely this is what Jesus meant by his first and most basic definition of church as “two or three gathered.”"
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Two people excited about the same thing are the beginning of almost everything new, creative, and risky in our world. Surely this is what Jesus meant by his first and most basic definition of church as “two or three gathered.”
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"It seems to me that the only people who can handle power are those who don’t need it too much, those who can equally let go of it and share it. In fact, I’d say that at this difficult moment in history, the only people who can handle power are those who have made journeys through powerlessness."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"Stop idolizing the so-called “1 percent.” There’s nothing worthwhile up there that is not also down here. Worst of all, it has given 99 percent of the world an unnecessary and tragic inferiority complex.
Trinity says that God’s power is not domination, threat, or coercion, but instead is of a totally different nature, one that even Jesus’ followers have not yet adjusted to. If the Father does not dominate the Son, and the Son does not dominate the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit does not dominate the Father or the Son, then there’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power, which should have entirely changed Christian politics and relationships.
There’s no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinity of trust and mutuality. This has the power to change all relationships: in marriage, in culture, and even in international relations."
(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)
"This is precisely the behavior we’d expect in a binary system— a place of “two-ness” in opposition. At best, when we’re finished yelling at each other, we might try to compromise and form some kind of “synthesis” position out of our dialectic. This is how the philosopher Hegel saw the world: one of dueling dualisms. But the Law of Three asks the question we’ve been asking: What if we don’t live in a binary universe, but instead a ternary universe? If three-ness captures the essence of the cosmos more than two-ness, it means that we can hold our first-force or second-force perspectives iith earnestness, while fully awaiting some third force to arrive and surprise us all out of our neat little boxes."
~ Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance
