Worship Makes Costly Demands

"In our fallenness we continually turn in upon ourselves to seek fulfilment without self-offering. Worship makes costly demands on our time and energy. It calls us from the inertia of self-centeredness."

- The rule of the Society of St John the Evangelist. 

"Left to our own devices we will develop a comfortable spirituality that fails to challenge us. Perhaps it will be perfectly crafted for our own needs, but leaves out those of others." 
- Debra K. Farrington. Living Faith Day by Day. 

Mankind Will Shake An Unfamiliar Hand, And Find It Wounded

"And those who know the ancient star song
watch with singing for the sign of footprints in the galaxies,
through which the little planet rides
in routine cycles of despair.
But Joy seldom sleeps for long.
And someday, in a lonely moment,mankind will shake an unfamiliar hand,and find it wounded."

- Calvin Miller. The Singer: A Classic Retelling Of Cosmic Conflict

The Gospel of Intellectuals and Farmers

"The fourteenth chapter of the book of Acts puts Paul in Lystra. Now Lystra was an uneducated Agrarian community. And Paul's message was identical there as it was in Athens, but not as labored. He expected uneducated farmers to understand the same message that he expected the Greek intellectuals to understand. Now he didn't say it the same way, but he did say the same message."

- Dr James D. Strauss. 1990. LCS Chapel Service.

Futile Top Dredge the Graveyard For A Messiah

"Habeas Corpusis a weak and futile law. But earthlings never seem to learn that it is futile to dredge the graveyard for a messiah."

-Dr James D. Strauss. LCS Chapel Sermon "1990

You Have No Other Control But Response.

"Audiences do not determine the message.

Only how to respond to it.

But Audiences do not determine the consequences of how they respond to it.

So, the last word is not in an audiences hands.

It's in God's hands."

- Dr. James D. Strause. 1990 LCS Chapel Sermon.

"A vision is too often "done" to institutions by a leader, making it a passive rather than participatory process. In some ways we need to learn how not to have a vision, even to make things purposely vague, which allows everyone space to shape the vision so that they are not being treated as objects......"

- Leonard Sweet. Nudge.

No Vision!

"A denominational executive always asks his clergy, “So, what’s your vision?” When he saw me one day in an elevator, we chatted and sure enough, “So, Sweet, what’s your vision?” I replied, “Sir, I don’t have a vision.” He was incredulous: “What! How can you possibly say that? You must have a vision. Aren’t you one of the church’s visionaries? You‘re a leader, aren’t you?”

“No, Bishop. I’m not a leader. I’m a follower. I’m following a vision, but it’s not my vision. The vision is Jesus. I grew up singing a hymn I take literally: ‘Be Thou My Vision, O Lord of my life.”

- Nudge. Leonard Sweet 

Let's Call Church what Church Is

“Let’s make a pact to use the term church only the way God uses it, not for humanity’s faltering institutions, but for the living, breathing family that thrives in the earth.”

- Kevin Smith

I Don't Know Where the Bulldozer Has Buldozed their Bones

"I am one of the few Holocost surrivers still left......  I am really moved that I have this opportunity to be here (pause), for my family. 

Because i don't know where the wind has blown their ashes. And I don't know where the bulldozer has buldozed their bones."

- Dr. Eva Olsson. 91 year old Holocaust Survivor speaking in Edmonton at the Rememberance Day Ceremonies.

Forbidden To Sew Of Study Law

"The center where they work is named after Amel Zenoune-Zouani, once a twenty-two-year-old law student with the same dreams of a legal career that I had in the nineties. She was killed at a faux barrage outside the town in January 1997 because she refused to abandon her studies. I try to find her family in Sidi Moussa in 2010 but am unable to locate them. I think of Amel Zenoune dead in the street when I look at the covered heads of every one of the teachers today in Sidi Moussa. Her death was meant to make them all obey. But Amel lives on in every small act of female resistance here, like going out to sew when going out to sew is forbidden."

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. 

Busy With Gossip

"Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and your father.""

- Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace