I guess what I am saying is, I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn’t God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching the people around us that life just isn’t worth living.
Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.
All relationships are teleological, are going somewhere.
He said before they had the twins he thought of himself as a provider and protector, as somebody who was responsible to protect the physical world around the people he loved. But after having kids he realized that was 10 percent of the battle. What he really had to protect was the twins’ identity. He said there was a primal thing in him that wanted to stand between his children and the world and fight back all the lies.
Just because a tagline sounds great or a picture on a website grabs the eye, that doesn’t mean it helps us enter into our customers’ story. In every line of copy we write, we’re either serving the customer’s story or descending into confusion; we’re either making music or making noise.
And they should be able to answer these questions within five seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:.
I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon.
How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?
I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy.
Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.
This message God was communicating to mankind, this Gospel of Jesus, was a message to the heart as much as to the head, that the methodology was as important as the message itself, that the message could not be presented accurately outside of the emotions within which these truths were embedded.
I’m a writer because, at an early age, I became convinced it was the one thing I could do to earn people’s respect. It’s true in the process I learned to love words and ideas and these days I actually like to get lost in the writing process. But the early fuel, the early motivation, was all about becoming a person worth loving.
She said I didn’t have to perform for her. She didn’t have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage?
Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me.
I knew then, this relationship would have to be different. I knew I’d have to know myself and be known. These weren’t only terrifying prospects, they were foreign. I didn’t know how to do either. And the stakes were high. I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I’d spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.
I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human.
When a person has no other persons he invents them because he was not designed to be alone, because it isn’t good for a person to be alone.
Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don,” she said. “Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that’s a powerful thing.
Life no longer felt meaningless. It felt stressful and terrifying, but it definitely didn’t feel meaningless.
You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.