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Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams Books

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“[Knowing God]... call it love, yes, only that can sound too emotional, or call it faith, and that can sound too cerebral. And what is it? Both, and neither... [its] the decision to be faithful, the patient refusal of easy gratifications... of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane and on the cross, that bloody crown of love and faith. That is how I learn finally of a God who will not be fitted into my catergories and expectations... the living truth too great for me to see, trusting that He will see and judge and yet not turn me away... That is the mercy which will never give us, or even let us be content with less than itself and less than the truth... we have seen the truth enacted in our own world as mercy, grace and hope, as Jesus, the only-begotten, full of grace and truth..”

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Book:Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief
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“The faith we Christians proclaim needs to be not a clever system but the possibility of dependable relationship. We need to point to the God who does not let go, to the Christ who does not run away. And (here's the rub) we ourselves need to be dependable people... by our faithfulness to the lost, the suffering, and marginal, we begin to show what it is to have faith in the one who doesn't let go.”

FaithRelationshipDiscipleshipDependable
Book:Meeting God in Mark: Reflections for the Season of Lent
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“A holy person makes you see things in yourself and around you that you had not seen before; that is to say, enlarges the world rather than shrinking it. ...Holiness [is] not an extra special kind of goodness... [or] competing levels of how good you are. It's ...about being involved in the world. A holy person is somebody who is not afraid to be at the tough points in the centre of what it's like to be a human being... this boils down to something extremely simple and extremely difficult, which is that holy people, however much they may enjoy being themselves, are not obsessively interested in themselves. They allow you to see not them, but the world around them. They allow you to see not them, but God. You come away from them feeling not, "Oh, what a wonderful person," but "What a wonderful world," "What a wonderful God," or even, with surprise, "What a wonderful person I am too.”

DiscipleshipSelf ForgetfulnessHoly People
Book:Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life
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“We can at least see that the question is asked, and asked on the basis of a clear recognition that there is no way of manipulating our environment that is without cost or consequence - and thus also of a recognition that we are inextricably bound up with the destiny of our world. There is no guarantee that the world we live in will "tolerate" us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints.”

IfsWorldWayDestinyClearEnvironmentCostProveConsequenceBasesEnvironmentalBoundsRecognitionGuaranteesOur WorldSustainabilityTolerateOur EnvironmentConstraintsGuarantees That
Author:Rowan Williams
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“We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.”

EndsEyeFormAnimalExampleParticularBalanceEssentialsLateExpectationsBuiltBlindStructureSpeciesEnvironmentalLocalsUpsetSoilFuelToo LateRoutineVegetablesImmenseFossilsExtinctionStewardshipSuppliesFossil FuelEcosystemsBlind EyesImportation
Book:Faith in the Public Square
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“The whole story of creation, incarnation, and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ's body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God's giving that God's self makes in the life of the Trinity. We are created so that we may be caught up in this, so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God.”

IfsGivingMaySelfWholeStoriesBodyDesireGrowsChristCreationResponseCaughtGod LoveCaught UpUnconditionalFellowshipIncarnationTrinityGod Loves UsIncorporation
Author:Rowan Williams
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“Loneliness has little to do with what we do or where we do it, whether we're married or unmarried, optimists or pessimists, heterosexual or homosexual. Loneliness has to do with the sudden clefts we experience in every human relation, the gaps that open up with such stomach-turning unexpectedness. In a brief moment, I and my brother or sister have moved away into different worlds, and there is no language we can share.... It is in the middle of intimacy that the reality of loneliness most dramatically appears.”

WorldHumansLittlesDifferentMomentsRealityLanguageShareMiddleLonelinessBrotherMarriedRelationMovedIntimacyMy BrotherGapsStomachHomosexualOptimistPessimistHuman RelationsDifferent WorldsUnmarriedBrief MomentsUnexpectedness
Book:A Ray of Darkness
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“Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old.”

CultureGrowingLimitsShotsAngerContemporaryPassagesResentmentDisgustingGrowing OldPassage Of TimeAnger And ResentmentAnger Resentment
Book:Choose Life: Christmas and Easter Sermons in Canterbury Cathedral
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“Nobody...likes talking about enforceable international protocols and yet unless there is a real change in attitude, we have to contemplate those very unwelcome possibilities if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions, of people to die.”

PeopleIfsWantRealDiesEnergyAttitudeTalkingMillionsEconomyEnvironmentPossibilityClimate ChangeInternationalBillionsLikesCollapseContemplatingGlobal EconomyProtocolReal ChangeUnwelcome
Author:Rowan Williams
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