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Eugene H. Peterson

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“(from chapter 16, "Catacombs Presbyterian Church"): "When is this going to happen? How long do we have to wait? When does construction begin? Jesus's response was 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.' In other words, it's none of your business. Your question is irrelevant. That kind of information is of no use to you. It would probably confuse you, might discourage you, and would certainly distract you.”

WaitingChurchPastor
Book:The Pastor: A Memoir
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“I want my prayers, and the prayers of my friends, to ricochet off the rock faces of mountains, reverberate down the corridors of shopping malls, sound ocean deeps, water arid deserts, find a foothold in fetid swamps, encounter poets as they search for the accurate word, mingle their fragrance with wildflowers in Alpine Meadows, sing with the looms of Canadian lakes.”

OpennessGlory Of God
Book:Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
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“The Holy Scriptures are story-shaped. Reality is story-shaped. The world is story-shaped. Our lives are story-shaped. 'I had always,' wrote G.K. Chesterton in accounting for his Christian belief, 'felt life first as a story, and if there is a story, there is a story-teller.' We enter this story, following the story-making, storytelling Jesus, and spend the rest of our lives exploring the amazing and exquisite details, the words and sentences that go into the making of the story of our creation, salvation, and life of blessing. It is a story chock full of invisibles and intricate with connections. Imagination is required.”

ScriptureStorytellersProphetic Imagination
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Paul Ricoeur has wonderful counsel for people like us. Go ahead, he says, maintain and practice your hermaneutics of suspicion. It is important to do this. Not only important, it is necessary. There are a lot of lies out there; learn to discern the truth and throw out the junk. But then reenter the book, the world, with what he calls 'a second naivete'.' Look at the world with childlike wonder, ready to be startled into surprised delight by the profuse abundance of truth and beauty and goodness that is spilling out of the skies at every moment. Cultivate a hermaneutic of adoration - see how large, how splendid, how magnificent life is. And then practice this hermaneutic of adoration in the reading of Holy Scripture. Plan on spending the rest of our lives exploring and enjoying the world both vast and intricate that is revealed by this text.”

WorshipScriptureSpiritual ReadingProphetic Imagination
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Obedience is the thing, living in active response to the living God. The most important question we ask of this text is not, 'What does this mean?' but 'What can I obey?' A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances.”

ScriptureObedience To GodSpiritual ReadingProphetic Imagination
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping tidal rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large and easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventory and elections. Advent is buried under 'shopping days before Christmas.' The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends our living and dying, our rebirths and blessing in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community visible and invisible. When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching, listening to God's revelation taking shape before an din them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit.”

SpiritualityCommunityChurchWorshipScriptureLiturgyProphetic ImaginationGlobal Church
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Nós queremos que você seja responsável por dizer e representar, em nosso meio, aquilo em que acreditamos sobre Deus, o reino e o evangelho. Nós cremos que o Espírito Santo está entre nós e dentro de nós. Cremos que o Espírito de Deus continua a pairar sobre o caos do mal do mundo e o nosso pecado, moldando uma nova criação e novas criaturas. Cremos que, por sua vez, Deus não é um espectador divertido e alarmado com os destroços da história do mundo, mas um participante dela. Cremos que tudo, especialmente tudo que parece destroço, é material que Deus está usando para fazer uma vida de louvor. Cremos em tudo isso, mas não o vemos. Vemos, como Ezequiel, esqueletos desmembrados, esbranquiçados sob um impiedoso sol babilônico. Nós vemos muitos ossos que já pertenceram a crianças que riam e dançavam, a adultos que faziam amor e planos, a crentes que levavam suas dúvidas à igreja e ali cantavam seus louvores — e pecavam. Nós não vemos os dançarinos, os amantes ou os cantores — na melhor hipótese, temos apenas fugazes vislumbres deles. O que vemos são ossos. Ossos secos. Vemos pecado e julgamento sobre o pecado. Assim parece. Assim parecia a Ezequiel; assim parece a qualquer pessoa com olhos para ver e cérebro para pensar; e assim parece a nós. “Mas nós cremos em outra coisa. Cremos que esses ossos se juntam formando seres humanos conectados, com tendões e músculos, que falam, cantam, riem, trabalham, creem e bendizem o seu Deus. Cremos que isso aconteceu da maneira como Ezequiel pregou e cremos que ainda acontece. Cremos que isso aconteceu em Israel e acontece na Igreja. Cremos ser parte do acontecimento ao cantarmos nossos louvores, escutarmos com fé a Palavra de Deus, recebermos a nova vida de Cristo nos sacramentos. Cremos que a coisa mais importante que acontece ou pode acontecer é não estarmos mais desmembrados, mas sermos lembrados no corpo ressurreto de Cristo. “Precisamos de ajuda para manter nossas crenças nítidas, precisas e intactas. Não confiamos em nós mesmos — nossas emoções nos seduzem a praticarmos infidelidades. Sabemos que somos lançados em um difícil e perigoso ato de fé e que existem fortes influências desejosas de dissolvê-lo ou destruí-lo. Queremos que você nos ajude: seja nosso pastor, um ministro de palavra e dos sacramentos, no meio da vida deste mundo. Ministre-nos com a Palavra e com os sacramentos em todas as diferentes partes e estágios de nossas vidas — em nosso trabalho e diversão, com nossos filhos e nossos pais, no momento do nascimento e no da morte, em nossas celebrações e tristezas, naqueles dias em que a manhã irrompe sobre nós num banho de luz do sol, e naqueles outros dias em que só garoa. Essa não é a única tarefa na vida de fé, mas é a sua tarefa. Nós encontraremos outro alguém para fazer as outras tarefas importantes e essenciais. Esta é a sua: Palavra e sacramento.”

Espiritualidade
Book:The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction
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“A exegese contemplativa não é algo novo. Ela é o tipo de exegese que foi praticada durante a maior parte da vida da igreja. Isso significa que o remédio para a nossa vergonha exegética não é a inovação, mas a recuperação. A recuperação da exegese contemplativa não significa abandonar um único item atual de fato exegético ou visão. Tendo, como temos, a responsabilidade de proclamar e ensinar o texto da Escritura, somos obrigados a saber o máximo possível sobre ele, em todos os aspectos: gramatical, teológico, histórico. O pastor exegeticamente descuidado deveria ser processado, se houvesse uma maneira de fazê-lo, com a mesma diligência e os mesmos fundamentos usados para o cirurgião que utiliza um bisturi contaminado. A exegese contemplativa não ignora ou denigre a exegese técnica — é diligente quanto a ela. Todavia, como Melville dizia aos EUA mais de cem anos atrás, técnica não é cura; informação não é conhecimento. Há algo vivo num corpo, num livro.”

Espiritualidade
Book:O Pastor segundo Deus: a integridade pastoral vista por vários ângulos
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“Todos deveriam conhecer a verdade de que ninguém é dotado de tamanha prudência e sabedoria a ponto de ser adequado a si mesmo na orientação de sua própria vida espiritual. A soberba é um guia cego e engana a muitos. A luz de nosso próprio julgamento é fraca e não conseguimos prever todos os perigos ou armadilhas e erros aos quais estamos propensos na vida do espírito.”

Espiritualidade
Book:O Pastor segundo Deus: a integridade pastoral vista por vários ângulos
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“The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus. Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation.”

ChurchWorshipLiturgyObedience To GodSpiritual Reading
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studies with would often say, 'For us Jews studying the bible is more important than obeying it because if you don't understand it rightly you will obey it wrongly and your obedience will be disobedience. This is also true.”

ScriptureObedience To GodSpiritual Reading
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption. Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions.”

CommunityChurchWorshipScriptureLiturgySpiritual ReadingGlobal Church
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. I want to use the word 'liturgy' to refer to this intent and practice of the church insofar as it pulls everything in and out of the sanctuary into a life of worship, situates everything past and present coherently as participation in the revelation written for us in Scripture. Instead of limiting liturgy to the ordering of the community in discrete acts of worship, I want to use it in this large and comprehensive way, the centuries-deep and continents-wide community, spread out in space and time, as Christians participate in actions initiated and formed by the words in this book - our entire existence understood liturgically, that is connectedly in the context of the three personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and furnished with the text of the Holy Scripture.”

CommunityChurchWorshipLiturgySpiritual ReadingGlobal Church
Book:Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
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“I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the subtleties of sin and the persistence of evil, we would soon be living in moral anarchy and political chaos if there were no provision for justice.”

ActivismMinistrySocial Gospel
Book:Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
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“Too much of the world's happiness depends on taking from one to satisfy another. To increase my standard of living, someone in another part of the world must lower his. The worldwide crisis of hunger that we face today is a result of that method of pursuing happiness. Industrialized nations acquire appetites for more and more luxuries and higher and higher standards of living, and increasing numbers of people are made poor and hungry. It doesn't have to be that way.”

PeopleWorldWayMadeTodayFacesNationsPoorResultsNumbersToo MuchDependsHigherStandardsIncreaseCrisisMethodHungerHungryLuxuryAcquireAppetiteConsumerismOverconsumptionStandards Of LivingHigher StandardsPursuing Happiness
Book:A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society
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“Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsLittlesDifferentFeelingsWould BeChristianFeltActingWorshipAuthenticityLiarsNew WaysGreat Liar
Author:Eugene H. Peterson
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“"Sabbath is not primarily about us or how it benefits us; it is about God, and how God forms us. It is not, in the first place, about what we do or don't do; it is about God - completing and resting and blessing and sanctifying. These are all things that we don't know much about......But it does mean stopping and being quiet long enough to see - open-mouthed - with wonder - resurrection wonder.....we cultivate the "fear of the Lord". Our souls are formed by what we cannot work up or take charge of. We respond and enter into what the resurrection of Jesus continues to do."”

KnowsFirstsMeanLongDoeSoulEnoughFormJesusWonderLordBlessingQuietBenefitsAll ThingsResurrectionStoppingSabbathCompletingJesus ResurrectionBeing Quiet
Book:Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology
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“Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace. Repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts. It is a feet-on-the-ground-kind-of-word. It puts a person in touch with the reality that God creates.”

ThinkingWantKindPersonsRealityJesusChristDecisionPathFeetJesus ChristWhat You WantPracticalsRealizationRepentancePilgrimOld ThingsFeet On The GroundSame Old ThingThinking The Same
Author:Eugene H. Peterson
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“If we don't understand how metaphor works we will misunderstand most of what we read in the Bible. No matter how carefully we parse our Hebrew and Greek sentences, no matter how precisely we use our dictionaries and trace our etymologies, no matter how exactly we define the words on the page, if we do not appreciate the way a metaphor works we will never comprehend the meaning of the text.”

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Author:Eugene H. Peterson
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