All Quotes By Tag: Christianity

“Wherefore the present age is given up as a reproach to the heathen, and for what cause the people whom thou hast loved is given over unto ungodly nations?!”

“How strange it is beholding this,and, very confident,proclaim that such magnificenceoccurred by accident.”

“Nevertheless now have I asked thee but only of the fire and wind, and of the day where-through thou hast passed, and of things from which thou canst not be separated, and yet canst thou give me no answer of them.”

“Thine own things, and such as are grown up with thee, canst thou not know; How should thy vessel then be able to comprehend the way of the Highest, and, the world being now outwardly corrupted to understand the corruption that is evident in my sight?”

“It were better that we were not at all, than that we should live still in wickedness, and to suffer, and not to know wherefore.”

“I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision to remain silent split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church. That I had to check my heart and mind at the door.”

“Turns out, I wasn’t the only one struggling with doubt. I wasn’t the only one questioning my church’s position on homosexuality and gender roles, and a whole host of other issues. I wasn’t the only one who felt lonely on Sunday mornings.”

“I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realisation that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate.”

“Faith is a sacred fruit.”

“The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it’s the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above.”

“We often conceive of worldly life as merely a kind of default existence that anyone who is not specially called to monasticism or ordination sipmly ends up leading. We assume that it is only the monk, nun or priest who has a special call, while the married woman, for instance, has merely been passed by. […] But we must not allow ourselves to approach it merely in these terms. Instead, every one of us should, indeed must, treat lay life as a calling just the way we think of monasticism and ordination. We must sit down with ourselves and with God in prayer to discern if life in the world really is what we are meant for, and if we discover that it is, we must reat this call with the same seriousness with which we would treat a call to a hermit’s life in the desert. We are not lay people simply because we happen not to be monks or priests. We are lay people because God wills that we lead a life weeking our salvation through the world.”

“Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they’re nothing but luxuries for people who’ve never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death – ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons.”

“My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn’t necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him.”

“The godly shall desired God.”

“God never cease to exist because His invisibility is doubted.”