“The question of calling is not primarily a question of what we might become, but a question of what is already true—not least of which is what is true about the self. Ask me what I want to be, but not before you ask me who I want to be. Ask me who I want to be, but not before you ask me the more searing question of who I am.”
Quote by Cole Arthur Riley
“We were never meant to dismember our selfhoods. My face is my soul is my blood is my glory. When we neglect the physical, it inevitably suffocates the image of a God who ate, slept, cried, bled, grew, and healed.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Nothing is ever truly ordinary […] Protect the truest things about you and it will become easier to hear the truth everyplace else.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Find those who tell you, Do not be afraid, yet stay close enough to tremble with you. This is a love.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“As we heal, the need for more healing becomes apparent to us. It is painful, but healing makes us better perceivers of what is still hurting.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Fears tend to hide behind one another […] I am not afraid of snakes; I'm afraid of pain, of immobilization or death. Telling the deepest truth of the fear requires thorough acquaintance with our own stories and interior lives, and it can so easily bleed into this next form of fear, a fear that endures past particular situations and can very nearly transcend time: anxiety. Fear becomes anxiety when it makes its home in you. Its chief attachment is not memory or villain or situation or future; its chief attachment and subject is you […] As an antagonist, fear can disrupt the most sacred patterns of rest and restoration. Fear reminds us that we are not in control, that there is far more in life that is inevitable than preventable.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“The psalmist says, ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.’
I find it beautiful that in the face of terror; God doesn't bid us toward courage as we might perceive it. Instead, he draws us toward fear’s essential sister, rest—a sister who is not meant to replace fear but to exist together in tension and harmony with it […] And, of course, there is a fear that leans more toward awe than terror. A kind of delight. Your gut plummets within you as you drop from a bungee cord. The drum of a heart turning corners in a corn maze. I believe fear has the holy potential to draw out awe in us. To lead us into deeper patterns of protection and trust. To mould us into people engaged in the unknown, capable of making mystery of it instead of terror.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Uncertainty is fear's playground. I don't know how to wade in it and not drown […] The ancient answer to fear is the recognition that to be human is to be vulnerable—to pain, to suffering, to death itself.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Rest is an act of defiance, and it cannot be predicated on apology.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“In community, we can push back on the expectation that we exhaust ourselves.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Anxiety is not a passive predator.”
Source: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us