Walter Wangerin Jr. > Quotes

“The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope--and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion

“Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal - and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.”
― Walter Wangerin, Jr

“Have you noticed the words which Old Testament people use when someone important calls them by name? They don't say "What?" or "Yes?" They answer with the curious sentence, "Here I am". So much is in that sentence: readiness to respond, a willing servitude, an offering of oneself to the other.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“So go back to the books. They will comfort you and cheer you. If you earnestly work with them, neither sorrow nor anxiety nor distress nor suffering need trouble your mind any more, no, not evermore.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Paul

“And the strongest trust is built by the smallest actions, the keeping of the little promises. It is the constant truthfulness, the continued dependability, the remembrance of minor things, which most inspire confidence and faith.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“Her ballad did nothing to make the serpants lovely. Her ballad hid nothing of their dread. But the music itself spoke of faith and certainty; the melody announced the presence of God.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“You are married. Healing is not a profession but a way of life. Your spouse is not your patient but your flesh. Healing, then, is a task for your heart as well as your head and your hand. ”
― Walter Wangerin, Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“A grudge may be strong. But a grudge isn't strength!”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Mutuality is accomplished by two whole persons; and if each partner truly intends to be but the fraction of a relationship (thinking my whole makes up half of us) he or she will soon discover that these halves do not fit perfectly together. The mathematics can work only if each subtracts something of himself or herself, shears it off, and lays it aside forever. There will come, then, a moment of shock when one spouse realizes, ‘you won’t want the whole of me? Not the whole of me, but only a part of me, makes up the whole of us?” P 45”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“He went wordless, and wordless he sat beside her. He knew the size of her sorrow.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“She had caused to surround us the very atmosphere of "home," so that however far we traveled, however strange the territory, I was "home" as long as I was with her. ”
― Walter Wangerin, Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“All the world’s an empty place when one voice weeps uncomforted.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

“How many battles make a war?”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“But the talk of dialogue involves the work of knowing, acknowledging the other, of shaping speech toward him, for her. It is neither done or done well until it has been well received by that particular hearer.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“For what was your gesture? An act of pure love for Jesus particularly. It was an act so completely focused upon the Christ that not a dram of worldly benefit was gained thereby. Nothing could justify the spillage of some three hundred days' wages, except love alone. [...] The disciples, in fact, were offended by an act that produced nothing, accomplished nothing, fed no poor, served no need. They reproached you as a wastrel. They were offended by the absurd, an act devoted absolutely to love, to love alone. But Jesus called it 'beautiful.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion

“Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them.

But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“That is what grace does. It comes as a surprise; it lingers in the rare atmosphere of love, since love itself is breathed by it and love by it is made manifest. This expression of love is "ecstasy" in the Greek meaning of that word: to "stand outside" the ordinary, outside predetermined marital contracts, outside the systematic and the expected”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“We never slam the door on flattery, we nudge it shut like a man rejecting his mistress: if she nudges back, we're delighted – and if she breaks it down, we rejoice.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Paul

“Aye. He wills that I work his work in this place. Indeed. I am left behind to labor. Right
'And one day he may show his face beneath his damnable clouds to tell me what that work might be; what's worth so many tears; what's so important in his sight that is needs to be done this way...
'O my sons!'Chauntecleer suddenly wailed at the top of his lungs, a light flaring before it goes out: 'How much I want you with me!”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“I agreed Paul knew his limits. But I never believed he'd choose to live within them.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Paul

“Let heaven intrude upon our earthly affairs to rip our attentions from the world to you again.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas, and the Kingdom

“When a desire is born in us , we have a choice. When it exists still in its infancy, we have a choice. We can carefully refuse its existence altogether, since it needs our complicity to exist. Or else we can attend to it, think about it, fantasize about it - feed it! The desire itself overpowers us, commanding action, demanding satisfaction.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“And "sharing the work of survival," therefore, means resisting every temptation towards independence, towards personal liberty, towards "doing your own thing". This takes s sober vigilance and a persistent labour in a world which elevates the individual above the community, in a society which claims that individual desires are more important than contracts, commitments, and the good of the family”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“In the bedroom the truer, unpremeditated behavior of intimacy appears, the way this spouse relates to others on the most personal level, body to body and soul to soul. Is he truly patient in sexuality? So he seemed on long spring evenings. Or does he push forward at his own speed to his own satisfaction? And does he consider his satisfaction the measure of his prowess? As he acts here, uncovered, so does he act—more subtly and covertly—in the rest of the marriage.” P35”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“Mary considers how the womb stirs and years for its children, even after they have grown and gone off to other lives. The womb remembers. The womb knows how to weep.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Jesus

“In your attempts to heal this beloved one, the Holy Spirit finds opportunity to keep the promise of Jesus - and indeed, to heal.”
― Walter Wangerin, Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last

“How can the meek of the earth save themselves against the damnable evil which feeds on them?”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope—and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend upon it) disappoint us.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion: Meditations on the Suffering, Death, and the Resurrection of Jesus as Recorded in Mark.

“Even if you don't want to count the years, the years count you.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., Jesus