We are full of it.... we are full of hot air, bologna, theology, hyper-spirituality, and the fact is that we aren't doing anything other than congratulating ourselves on the profundity of our revelations.
Between 70 and 80 percent of evangelicals in America, by the time they are twenty-one, will leave the faith and never return. Did you hear that? We are not even reaching our own children.
It's like we have a broken down car and we're trying to sell it to the world, saying, buy our product.
Our product stinks. We have nothing to sell but our Bible opinions. And how is the world responding to our bible opinions?
But we're going to keep doing it because we've got the "Bible."
But we're not delivering on the life, the love, the power, the truth, the Incarnate....(sigh!) ..... we are not delivering on Jesus as a general rule."
Seventy to eighty percent of our own children should be a terrifying statistic. It should cause us to sit back and say,
"Dear God how many hours, how much money is being poured into this thing called Christianity, and my own children aren't even serving the lord?"
This is broken Saints. It's broken! It's broken, broken, broken! But we're going to have an evangelism outreach, we are going to pass out... [pamplets or flyers]
Oh my!
- Stephen Crosby!
"Classical spiritual writers warn us, after we have broken the Pleasure Principle and reached a mature level of discipleship, the old temptations will resurface with a Vengeance, just in subtler forms....
Their first warning concerns the danger of reverting to immaturity because of the longing for another honeymoon ........ One of the demons that we must wrestle with after we have made lifelong commitments is the powerful temptation to experience yet another honeymoon."
- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire
"Coming out of Walmart in Charlottetown yesterday I heard a woman in her seventies going on: "Oh baby, did you miss me?" In kind of the voice sometimes used when talking to a baby or a pet. I looked over and saw an eager dog awaiting her arrival. I thought nothing of it all. When the woman realized I had seen and heard her she became very embarrassed that she thought I thought she was addressing her husband in that lovey tone of voice instead of her dog. I thought as I walked away what a strange world we live in that it would be an embarrassment to call her husband by lovey names in that voice and yet normal to address the dog in that manner."
Gordon Weatherby. Jan, 28th, 2019
"The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience."
- Edward Abbey,
"I have not written about my many, many companions on the Way, but today, the day before I arrive in Santiago, I wanted you to meet Victor.
Victor and his wife walked the Camino in 2013, just after she started her treatment for Ovarian Cancer.
Six months ago, Victor’s wife Elsa, lost her fight… and Victor lost Elsa.
Tomorrow he will arrive at the Cathedral in Santiago after walking for and with Elsa, surrounded by his memories of her.
Over the hour or so that we walked Victor talked and talked about his many weeks on the Camino and all the people he had been able to share with about his devout God-loving wife and how SHE had blessed so very many people (he was always careful to clarify that it was SHE who was blessing people and he was just the vessel.)
When it came time for us to part, I looked at Victor and I blessed his trip and then right before I turned to walk away, I said, “Victor, you blessed all those people also. You. God is using you, as well as Elsa, to bless people.”
At these words, this strong, former law enforcement officer started to get very emotional, his eyes welling with tears.
My friend Connor has taught me to not be afraid to lean into people when they get emotional, so, before I knew what I was doing, I looked Victor square in the eyes and said, “There is an old poem that goes like this:
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which HE looks compassion on the world
Yours are the feet on which he walks to do good
Yours are the hands with which HE blesses all the world."
- Tony Kriz. http://tonykriz.com/yours-are-the-hands-for-victor/.
"Ah, you boys! You children, little sucking-pigs, to my thinking… I never thought a woman ugly in my life- that’s been my rule! Can you understand that? How could you understand it? You’ve milk in your veins, not blood. You’re not out of your shells yet. My rule has been that you can always find something devilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn’t find in any other. "
- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.
This position certainly represents a change on my part. I recall with embarrassment sitting around a seminar table at the University of Wisconsin in the early sixties. The professor had not yet arrived for our seminar in formal logic, and one of the class members was talking about his divorce proceedings Without being asked for my opinion, I ventured to say, "Divorce is always wrong."
Looking back on it, the strangest thing of all was that no one objected to what I said or even to my saying it. Everyone seemed accepting of it. Of course that was because my words represented a cultural assumption of those days. But in fact I was vastly ignorant of the things men and women do to one another."
- Dallas Willard. Divine Conspiracy.
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher and Priest of Apollo and Guardian of the Oracle of Delphi.
"The Roman who was taken to task by his friends for repudiating a chaste wealthy and handsome wife, showed them his shoe and said, "Although this is new and handsome, none of you know where it pinches me.""
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.
We have also heard of servant girls who have refused the embraces of their masters, and of private individuals who have scorned an amour with queens, when Love has had dominion in their hearts.....
For a noble woman united by Love to her lawful husband would prefer the embraces of bears and dragons to those of any other man."
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals
“As in a marriage, love doesn’t stand still.”
~ N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began
"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image."
— Thomas Merton
"A marriage vow is saying, "I know that you're trouble! Me too! So we won't leave, no matter what happens. Well that's one hell of a vow. But that's why it's a vow. That's why you take it infront of a bunch of people. That's why it's supposed to be a sacred act. What's the alternative? What's the alternative?
Everything is mutable and changable at any moment. Go ahead and live your life like that and see what you're like when you are fifty. Jesus, it's dismal. Two or three divorces. You're family us fragmented. You've got no continuity of narrative. And it's not good for the kids, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a form if voluntary slavery i suppose.
It's also the equilivant to the adoption of a responsibility. And there is more too it than that. If you can't (won't) run away, you can solve your problems.
Because, it might be, I'm stuck with you, so how about we fix things. Because the alternative is that we are going to be in a boxing match for the next forty years. That's your alternative.
So, and you think you're going to fix your problems without something like that hanging over your head? There isn't a chance. You'll just avoid them
That is what people do. It's really hard to solve problems, especially in a relationship.
.... do you think you will do that (sort it out) unless there is a good reason?
No! We better sort this out because we are going to be carrying it around for the next forty years. That, maybe, is enough motivation so that you actually try hard to solve a problem.
It's a lot easier to say, " Ha, we're not going there." But then, good, you'll have it every day, every goddam day for the rest of your life."
Jordan Peterson
"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)
"There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends."
(Homer, The Odyssey)
"There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet. A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive."
(Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
"Is it so much that love asks -- that one day you be somebody's strength, the next day their babe-in-arms?"
(Robert Brault)
