He also said we should carve in the year and place where I was born, but I said no. As a man dies many times before he’s dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last.
The magic of words is that they have power to do more than convey meaning; not only do they have the power to make things clear, they make things happen.
A Christian isn’t necessarily any nicer than anybody else, just better informed.
Laugh till you weep. Weep till there’s nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it’s all one.
ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, ‘What is the answer?’ Then, after a long silence, ‘What is the question?’ Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.
Five friends I had and two of them snakes.
Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
That’s five friends, one each for Jesu’s wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what’s left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What’s friendship, when all’s done, but the giving and taking of wounds?
Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God’s will.
Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.
You can never be sure whether you are discovering the truth or inventing it.
People are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
In other words to live Eternal Life in the full and final sense is to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us.
Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey. The music of your life...
A God in the hand is worth two in the bush.
When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.
Much as we wish, not one of us can bring back yesterday or shape tomorrow. Only today is ours, and it will not be ours for long, and once it is gone it will never in all time be ours again. Thou only knowest what it holds in store for us, yet even we know something of what it will hold. The chance to speak the truth, to show mercy, to ease another’s burden. The chance to resist evil, to remember all the good times and good people of our past, to be brave, to be strong, to be glad.