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Sarah Bessey Books

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“Then there are my Somewheres. We all need somewhere to say the private things, the vulnerable things, the scary and true things, the victories and the defeats. "I need to say it somewhere," we say. So then the temptation is to say everything, everywhere, or we end up saying nothing, nowhere. There's something between oversharing or undersharing our real lives. I have learned--slowly, painfully--to say these private things to my Somewheres.”

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Book:Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
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“Whether it's racism, patriarchy, warmongering, greed, or child trafficking, it's counter to God's Kingdom. But the people caught in those systems are rarely the enemies; often they are just as caught, as longing for a rescue as the rest of us. We don't battle against flesh and blood, not really, but against the powers and principalities that hold us all captive.”

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Book:Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
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“When our hearts, minds, and souls are deep within the reality of living loved, we discover that most of those "rules" from Sunday school are simply our new characteristics and our family traits. They are the fruit born of a meaningful, life-changing relationship—they are the flowers of life in the Vine.”

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Book:Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women
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“The Kingdom of God is being established in this world, absolutely, but it's foolish to think that this is happening through rainbows and unicorns. Instead, Scripture teaches us that we are at war--not against people but against powers and principalities. With our freedom comes risk... We aren't immune from suffering or excused from the experience of being human simply because of our faith... And the truth remains: the crucified God, as personified in Jesus, revealed that God is always on the side of suffering wherever it is found and God's endgame is resurrection.”

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Book:Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
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“Our faith is often embodied in the relationships and neighborhoods where we live. In our world of globalization, technology, and mobility, we've misplaced the sacredness of place. The act of staying and living in our place has an impact on us practically, of course, but also on us theologically. It's not always sexy to stay put, is it? In most of my church tradition, no one ever mentioned the holy work of staying.”

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Book:Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
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“When I tried to meet some impossible standard for motherhood, tried to earn my way to a weird sort of Proverbs 31 Woman Club, I collapsed in exhaustion and simmering anger, sadness, and failure. This was not life in the Vine, this exhausting job description; this was not the Kingdom of God, let alone a redeemed woman living full. This was the shell of someone trying to measure up, trying to earn through her mothering what God had already freely given. This was someone feeling the weight of unmet expectations from the Church and her own self and the world all at once.”

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Book:Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women
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“But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti’s future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.”

Christian Feminism
Author:Sarah Bessey
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“Secrets make us sick, I've heard. I made secrets out of my questions and doubts and sadness and grief because I didn't know how to simply sit with them. Even now, I fight against the urge to explain or pretend or ignore away the darkness. It's uncomfortable to lean into the pain, to seek God there in the darkness.”

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Book:Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
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