liveandlovethequestions

[liveandlovethequestions]

“[In Matthew 17,] Jesus sends the disciples out to do what He had been doing. They encounter a demon-possessed boy, and try unsuccessfully to cast out the demon. Jesus’ response is simply to teach them how to do better. Jesus was okay with the disciples not getting it right all the time. He knew mistakes were part of their growth. They needed space to make mistakes and still keep the connection strong between them. Jesus’ goal for His disciples was not success—it was a relationship close enough that they would try anything.”

— Adam Bright, 3 Lessons on Building a Courageous Community: What I Learned as a Leader from a Man with Down Syndrome

[liveandlovethequestions]

“The blessing that we have to offer to each other is hidden in our poverty, in these places in our lives where we are quite weak, quite vulnerable, quite broken.”

— Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen: 1994 COMISS Award

[liveandlovethequestions]

“As I seriously sought God’s counsel about why I had such difficulty in relationships, He taught me that I could not give away what I did not have. I had not received God’s unconditional love, so I could not give it to others. I had not received God’s complete forgiveness, so I could not give it away to the people in my life who needed it.

I saw God as angry about something most of the time, and l was angry most of the time about something, too. I was angry with myself for my flaws and also angry with other people for theirs. I hadn’t yet learned that our view of God affects our relationship with Him and all of our other relationships as well. We don’t need to wait until we are perfect to receive God’s love, and we must not demand perfection from others either. If we do, it will place a burden on them that they cannot bear, and it will destroy our relationships with them.”

— Joyce Meyer, “Be the Person God Meant You to Be,” God is Not Mad at You: You Can Experience Real Love, Acceptance and Guilt-free Living

[liveandlovethequestions]

“In the digital universe, knowledge is reduced to the status of information. Who will any longer remember that knowledge is to information as art is to kitsch — that information is the most inferior kind of knowledge, because it is the most external? A great Jewish thinker of the early Middle Ages wondered why God, if He wanted us to know the truth about everything, did not simply tell us the truth about everything. His wise answer was that if we were merely told what we need to know, we would not, strictly speaking, know it. Knowledge can be acquired only over time and only by method.”

— Leon Wieseltier, “Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture” (a commencement speech addressed to the graduates of Brandeis University, May 19, 2013)

[liveandlovethequestions]

“A love which is truly for the other is a slow love, because it is a patient love. It does not demand that the beloved immediately open himself until he is ready. And it is a love that constantly adjusts itself as more of the other is revealed. It constantly adjusts its giving according to the beloved’s need. And if the beloved is not prepared to receive love, it will not thrust itself upon the beloved.

You can only ‘love at first sight’ if you’re in love with an idea. Loving a person requires something more. Each person requires a particular love. So if you’re going to love a particular person, you’ll have to learn who that person is, what that person needs, and how you can fit into that. And as the person grows, so will the way you fit into that person’s life. Love is a lifetime work.”

— Chris Damian, The Labor of Love

[liveandlovethequestions]

“As I seriously sought God’s counsel about why I had such difficulty in relationships, He taught me that I could not give away what I did not have. I had not received God’s unconditional love, so I could not give it to others. I had not received God’s complete forgiveness, so I could not give it away to the people in my life who needed it.

I saw God as angry about something most of the time, and l was angry most of the time about something, too. I was angry with myself for my flaws and also angry with other people for theirs. I hadn’t yet learned that our view of God affects our relationship with Him and all of our other relationships as well. We don’t need to wait until we are perfect to receive God’s love, and we must not demand perfection from others either. If we do, it will place a burden on them that they cannot bear, and it will destroy our relationships with them.”

— Joyce Meyer, “Be the Person God Meant You to Be,” God is Not Mad at You: You Can Experience Real Love, Acceptance and Guilt-free Living

[liveandlovethequestions]

excerpt:

“[W]ith humans. . . [o]ur excellence accompanies what is distinctive and highest about us—the immaterial world of mind and will. We are rational animals, so an excellent human person will be one who thinks and wills excellently.

On this basis, the most important ‘thing’ that we do each day is to think and will, and yet rarely do we consider the matter in these terms. From fatigue to fatigue, we can pass through entire days without ever having to exercise those spiritual powers that make us truly human and give breadth and depth to human existence.”

[liveandlovethequestions]

“No one knew of [Henri Nouwen’s] same-sex attraction, but some of us felt that he suffered from some wound that, coupled with his holiness and insight, expressed itself in his marvelous tenderness. So his grief, handled with maturity, became a light to us—a model for us all.”

— A reader of Wesley Hill’s book Washed and Waiting, quoted in “His Grief Became a Light to Us” by Wesley Hill

[liveandlovethequestions]

“Real poets, I think, turn the outer world into the inner world and vice versa. Poets always have to be outside, in the world—a poet can’t close himself in his studio. His workshop is in his head and he has to be sensitive to words and how words apply to realities. It’s a state of mind. A poet’s state of mind is seeing the world with a kind of double exposure, seeing undertones and overtones, seeing the world as it is. Every intelligent person, whether he’s an artist or not—a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist—possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.”

— Yehuda Amichai, The Art of Poetry No. 44 (interview by Lawrence Joseph) (via theparisreview)

[liveandlovethequestions]

“The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands.”

— Psalm 138:8 (King James Version)

[liveandlovethequestions]

“At times, synagogue piety can sometimes feel like a group conspiracy, a family that covers everything up. But deep down I know shul is much more than that; change comes very slowly in a man’s heart—whether that man is a fellow congregant or a close relative. Sometimes people can redeem themselves. Even though the people in our families and in shul seem static, they may be following an invisible journey of sorts. They may have to do the same thing almost forever, commit the same sin, so to speak, until one day they have had enough and they stop. Even though it doesn’t always happen, it happens enough to prevent me from giving up. I may have to distance myself for a time, but I don’t walk away.

The divorced man knew he was wrong. Yet he minimized, denied all the years, he blamed his wife always, but one day in shul he told me that he had been reviewing his life and it had begun to sink in just how wrong he’d been. I could only guess at what precisely he was referring to, but it didn’t matter. There had been some kind of change.

I was surprised at this turn-around, but not completely. After all, shul’s dynamics are fluid. Slights, insults, and injuries can be forgiven just as they are in a family; disagreements, rows, even full-blown assaults are often metabolized. Amid the fragrance of idealism and sacredness and through the necessity of physical closeness, the day-in, day-out passage of years, even villains might became saints, and if not saints, then gruff and grating people can become at least tolerable. What is hard can be made to soften. I am reminded of Ezekiel the prophet who said in the name of God centuries ago, ‘I will remove the heart of stone from you and I will give you a heart of flesh.’”

— Simon Yisrael Feuerman, Congregation Can Be Like a Family—for Better, and for Worse

[liveandlovethequestions]

“At times, synagogue piety can sometimes feel like a group conspiracy, a family that covers everything up. But deep down I know shul is much more than that; change comes very slowly in a man’s heart—whether that man is a fellow congregant or a close relative. Sometimes people can redeem themselves. Even though the people in our families and in shul seem static, they may be following an invisible journey of sorts. They may have to do the same thing almost forever, commit the same sin, so to speak, until one day they have had enough and they stop. Even though it doesn’t always happen, it happens enough to prevent me from giving up. I may have to distance myself for a time, but I don’t walk away.”

— Simon Yisrael Feuerman, Congregation Can Be Like a Family—for Better, and for Worse

[liveandlovethequestions]

“Your body language shapes who you are” by Amy Cuddy

this is some AMAZING science: changing our own body language can change the way we feel and think about ourselves!

[liveandlovethequestions]

“My generation has a fear of repeating the mistakes of our ancestors. We want to be the ones marching for justice and equality, not the bigots unleashing the dogs and turning on the fire hoses. Those striving to discern the civil rights cause of our day have proclaimed that gay is the new black, and the result has been the acceptance of gay marriage at a rate more accelerated than anyone could have foreseen.

This simplistic view of history has many problems, as Rod Dreher and others have pointed out. We may look back at historical episodes and make judgments about the moral winners and losers, but hindsight is no guarantee of foresight. Our good intentions are no indication of how we ourselves will be judged by future generations. Fear of future disapprobation is not a sufficiently trustworthy method for making moral judgments in the present.”

— Betsy Childs, Rightly Dividing the Wrong Side of History

[liveandlovethequestions]

“Literature itself is the society thinking.”

— Marilynne Robinson, The Workshop as Phenomenon, June 9, 2011, The Englert Theatre, Iowa City, Iowa, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop 75th Anniversary Reunion

[liveandlovethequestions]

"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us — the dignity of man.”

— Harold Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics, Nobel Lecture on the occasion of the award to him of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2005, December 7, 2005

[liveandlovethequestions]

excerpt:

“The form of liberalism embodied in [the United States] Constitution is pluralistic, not monistic. It tolerates broad differences among citizens about the highest good, and assumes that claims to metaphysical truth will proliferate under conditions of political freedom. The last thing a pluralistic liberal would do is seek to stamp out these religious and moral differences in the name of homogenous adherence to a single vision of the good.

One can see this pluralistic version of liberalism at work in the United States today in the push to pair same-sex marriage laws with statutes to protect the religious freedom of traditionalists who oppose gay marriage. It can also be seen in efforts to give ObamaCare exemptions to churches and church-affiliated organizations that oppose contraception on religious grounds.

In case there’s any doubt: I support gay marriage, and I have no objection to birth control. But I also believe that a free society should permit its members to disagree on these issues. And that when liberals use the government’s coercive powers to force believers to change their views or act against their most deeply held spiritual convictions, liberals (paradoxically) commit an act of illiberalism.

In such cases, the government stamps out differences in the name of respecting differences. After all, a traditionalist Christian, Jew, or Muslim ceases to be a traditionalist the moment he or she is made to endorse behavior or beliefs that traditionalist Christians, Jews, or Muslims hold to be wrong. That is something that no genuine liberal should be comfortable doing.”