“…and I closed the notebook, and this Methodist pastor named Sarah comes out and sits with me and just holds me.” (>>)

“If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.” (>>)

“God of life,
there are days when the burdens we carry
are heavy on our shoulders and weigh us down,
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies grey and threatening,
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.
Flood the path with light, we beg you,
turn our eyes to where the skies are full of promise.” (>>)

“Here’s the thing though. And this is THE THING. I never got over you. The thing that gets me is the idea of you. The idea that you exist and you love us and we matter in this universe. The idea that human beings matter beyond our small existence here on the third planet from Sol is such a beautiful idea. That idea just kills me. Devastating. I want it to be true so bad. It really is my favorite idea of all time.” (>>)

“If I could hear just one word from you. Just one clear word and everything would change. To hear the church people talk, your words are a dime a dozen and fall like rain upon the just and the unjust. Broken souls who stumble in the church’s back door leave singing their own magnificat and I’m not hearing a thing.” (>>)

“I don’t know therefore I don’t belong.” (>>)

“Welcome to today’s moralistic therapeutic deism. Welcome to evangelical Christianity, American style, the home of spiritual technology that provides quick fixes and sure results, guaranteed.” (>>)

“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must exist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets before each individual.” (>>)

“…but didn’t know of a thing I could do about it. So I didn’t do anything. I didn’t suppress it. I didn’t deny it. I didn’t revel in it. I just let it be there.” (>>)

“…ask yourself why not.” (>>)

“Sometimes, it’s the people we choose to have in our lives that often bring the greatest reward or life support. …that moment of nuclear clarity when someone comes to you and they have your back and they’re willing to lay all the truth they can offer to you to save you from the past that might haunt, or daunt you, or turn you into a failing light. Friendship laced with real love and truth can turn all of us into superheroes.” (>>)

“I haven’t memorized all of the cute things to say,
but I’m working on it.” (>>) [MP3]

“Sort of like Nixon in a Christmas parade.” (>>)

“…at once liberated and broken-hearted.” (>>)

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.” (>>)

“Could someone please tell me the story
Of sinners ransomed from the fall
I still have never seen you, and somedays
I don’t love you at all” (>>) [MP3]

“Your longing for God is so deep and yet He keeps Himself away from you… He must be forcing Himself to do so — because he loves you so much — the personal love Christ has for you is infinite — The Small difficulty you have re His Church is finite — Overcome the finite with the infinite.” (>>)

“Christianity’s promises of the present presence and apprehension of God are not simple. In many ways, it seems to me that neither scripture nor recorded experience gives a coherent, teachable view of the subject… What we do know is that from Job to David to Jesus to Teresa to Jack Lewis […], those who belong to God and have His Spirit go through times, even entire chapters of life, where God’s presence does not come in simple, ‘felt’ ways. God seems to be hiding; to be purposely staying out of reach and out of touch. To what end? For what purpose?” (>>)

“I see your world. I’m with your people. I’m surrounded by books about you. I read about you and talk about you… But I miss you.” (>>)

“Later generations of Christian mystics dwelt upon the more desolate kinds of darkness to which the spiritual life can lead: the darkness in which all modes of prayer and spiritual practice become arid, and all consolation in the love of God seems lost. Even in the desolate dark night of the soul, indeed especially there, St. John of the Cross taught, God is present, purifying the soul of all passions and hindrances, and preparing her for the inconceivable blessedness of divine union. Along with dark knowing, there is dark loving, no less ardent for being deprived of all sensible and spiritual vision of the beloved. Therefore St. John can say, ‘Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!’ ” (>>)