“In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.”
Quote by Jesse Ball
“That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!”
“Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.”
Source: Samedi the Deafness: A Novel
“One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.”
“It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.”
Source: Silence Once Begun: A Novel
“I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.”
Source: Silence Once Begun: A Novel
“The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can't yet be perfectly orthodox, it can, with the Holy Spirit's help and by the grace of God, be perpetually reformable.”
Source: A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/conservative, Mystical/poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished Christian
“Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.”
Source: A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/conservative, Mystical/poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished Christian
“I had to face the possibility that the art of living in the way of Jesus was no longer carried on in a holistic way by any single tradition.”
“So we must realize this: the suicidal framing story that dominates our world today has no power except the power we give it by believing it. Similarly, believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do.”
Source: Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide
“What if the Christian faith is supposed to exist in a variety of forms rather than just one imperial one? What if it is both more stable and more agile—more responsive to the Holy Spirit—when it exists in these many forms? And what if, instead of arguing about which form is correct and legitimate, we were to honor, appreciate, and validate one another and see ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest?”
