Shawn Smucker > Quotes

“Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now. SAINT TERESA OF AVILA”
― Shawn Smucker, Dying Out Loud

“Even when things seemed uncertain, we kept moving forward. I guess you’ll never find out if a door is actually closed until you try to open it.”
― Shawn Smucker, Dying Out Loud

“We have to pull out all the stops in welcoming the refugee and the immigrant, in getting to know those who live around us, in showing love to our neighbors. We can't afford to isolate people anymore. We can't afford to push folks to the fringes of our society.”
― Shawn Smucker, Once We Were Strangers

“The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. ISAIAH 58:11–12”
― Shawn Smucker, Dying Out Loud

“Our weaknesses are poised to become our greatest strengths. If we are patient and if we believe. The switch will often happen when we need it most to.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Hope can last a long time, longer than we expect or imagine. Even after you think it's gone, the smallest of things can bring it back.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“It was at that age that I learned there is darkness and there is Darkness, and the difference between the two is day and night.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Death is only a passage. Death is just the exchanging of cloaks. Death is not a destination. Death is a gift.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“You know,” he says, “in Syria, we are always having coffee together. Almost every day I went to a friend’s house and we sat for two hours, for three hours, drinking coffee together, talking about things. Why do you not do that here? Everyone stays here, here, here.” He frowns and jabs at the air. “No one knows their neighbors. No one has coffee.” “You’re right,” I say. “You’re right.” “I tell this to Moradi,” he says, giving a reluctant smile. “I tell her I will start having coffee with people. Soon everyone will come to my house and we will all know each other and talk together. She says, ‘Mohammad, Americans do not want this! They do not want!’ But I tell her I will show her. I will start. We will meet here, there. Maybe at a coffeehouse. It is good this way, for us to drink coffee together.” He laughs. I laugh too, but the truth of what he says reaches me. We as Americans are very good at being independent. I struggle to think of the last time I needed someone, truly needed someone. We are so busy. Too busy. There is very little time for that kind of community, where we meet”
― Shawn Smucker, Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor

“I realize that in most of my friendships, so little is required of either party. In America, we’ve valued independence for so long that we haven’t recognized the gradual slipping into loneliness. Now we fend for ourselves, depending on no one, asking nothing, and, because of that, receiving so little.”
― Shawn Smucker, Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor

“Friendship is such a strange, unexpected thing. It can creep up on you when you least expect it, from the least likely places. I never could have imagined I’d become friends with a Syrian man from 6,000 miles away, a Muslim man whose children call him Abba. In the last year, Mohammad has changed my life in ways difficult to explain or describe. The coffee, the drives to Philadelphia, the chats on my front porch. There’s one thing I know for sure. If you insert me into the story of the good Samaritan, I’m not only the good Samaritan; I’m not only the one who stopped to help. I’m also the man lying along the side of the road, beaten down. I’m the one dying from selfishness and hypervigilance and fear. The role of the good Samaritan, in a role reversal I couldn’t have seen coming, has been taken on by Mohammad. Before I even knew him, he called me friend.”
― Shawn Smucker, Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor

“Life is not only made up of what you can see. This is the beginning of belief.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Some people are so blinded by what's real that they're not ready for what's true.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“There is healing, after all, in sadness, and sometimes only tears will bring it.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Sometimes there are no words that fit into the space provided.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Fear always comes with a door, a door that leads straight through.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“Some people are so blinded by what’s real that they’re not ready for what’s true.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“We can never trust ourselves, never know our true motives. There is always something deeper at work, something unseen pulling us along to hidden ends. We paddle where we think we want to go, but all along it's the hidden current that takes us.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Weight of Memory

“You know,” he says, “in Syria, we are always having coffee together. Almost every day I went to a friend’s house and we sat for two hours, for three hours, drinking coffee together, talking about things. Why do you not do that here? Everyone stays here, here, here.” He frowns and jabs at the air. “No one knows their neighbors. No one has coffee.” “You’re right,” I say. “You’re right.” “I tell this to Moradi,” he says, giving a reluctant smile. “I tell her I will start having coffee with people. Soon everyone will come to my house and we will all know each other and talk together. She says, ‘Mohammad, Americans do not want this! They do not want!’ But I tell her I will show her. I will start. We will meet here, there. Maybe at a coffeehouse. It is good this way, for us to drink coffee together.” He laughs. I laugh too, but the truth of what he says reaches me. We as Americans are very good at being independent. I struggle to think of the last time I needed someone, truly needed someone. We are so busy. Too busy. There is very little time for that kind of community, where we meet together regularly, unrushed, to simply drink coffee.”
― Shawn Smucker, Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor

“What is real?” he asked. “What is true?”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“If you don't know where to go or what to do, go as far as you are able to and do what you can. The rest will happen.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“Annie Dillard refers to a routine as “a net for catching days.” If you can program yourself to take the same small steps every day, soon you’ll discover something about yourself: you have the strength for long journeys.”
― Shawn Smucker, Building a Life Out of Words

“Time... moves constantly, not linear but swirling like a tornado, picking up things from here and there, past and future...”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“Don’t worry about the end of the road – just keep driving. Because if you stop now, you’ve just created the end of the road.”
― Shawn Smucker, Building a Life Out of Words

“Every single thing in the world is there for someone, for their perfect use.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“(T)here is grace to be found in everything, even in what first appears to be pure pain.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“some of that darkness stayed inside me. I barely recognized it at the time, but it would grow into a heavy shadow, something that would cause me to do many things I never would have done otherwise. Darkness can do that if you let it. It can move you.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell

“Sometimes if you want to see drastic change in your life, God has to do drastic things. He has to prune you all the way down to the ground.”
― Shawn Smucker, Dying Out Loud

“Have you ever stepped out of your life for days at a time to listen to one single story? Maybe read a book without stopping? When you come back out of it, when you return to life from the midst of that story, you are a transformed being. You will never be quite the same again, no matter how hard you try to return to your old self. Stories will do that if we let them. They'll work their way inside, to the deepest parts and they'll live there, and they'll change us.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Edge of Over There

“Enemies of good are almost always enemies of each other, as allies of good are almost always allies of each other.”
― Shawn Smucker, The Day the Angels Fell