Winn Collier > Quotes

“This is one reason Eugene was so (frustratingly) reluctant to dispense advice, why he so detested celebrity: he knew these postures of the ego-driven expert were lies and illusions. And this is why Eugene would rather pray with someone than argue theology, why he’d be eager for a call from his neighbor while letting prominent figures go to his answering machine: friendship (with God and one another) is real.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Quit being so busy and learn quiet, to quit talking so much and learn silence.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“I feel that to keep my sanity—my spiritual sanity—I must simply walk away from the demands and duties and create. Work at my own stuff. I am willing enough to return after a few hours to the responsible and the routine—but if I cannot pray and run and read and write I cannot live.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Don’t get too bent out of shape by what others say about you. Let people wag their tongues while you worry about obeying God. Besides, you would never be able to meet everyone else’s expectations. You couldn’t do it, and it isn’t worth all the grief to try. For every slander spoken against you, replace it with a moment of silence, of peace, of conversation with God. We must love others, but we must not demand friendship in return. Friends abandon us and then come back; friends come and go. Take your hands off the relationship and let them do what they will do. Don’t try to grasp after them - it’s like trying to catch a feather in a windstorm.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Dear God, I want to be a writer to your glory—I want to shape sentences and words out of my soul, not just my mind….Fresh, alive, prayerful sentences.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“I am not a truly card-carrying evangelical—there is a sense in which I am most comfortable as an “outsider evangelical” within the halls of tradition. Regent is too comfortable for me—and there is no sense of larger context: the reality of church complexity. Evangelicalism is too combative and clear-cut for me.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Any pride that we detect needs to be abandoned, every little bit. We need to be particularly on the lookout for the pride that likes to attach itself to spiritual activity. When we think we are growing wise in God’s ways (getting lots of spiritual knowledge) and when we think we are becoming quite virtuous (doing or saying the right things), watch out! This is dangerous stuff. In fact, it is more dangerous than a lot of the more external concerns, the obvious sins the culture wants to press on you. Spiritual pride is harder to detect. It seems milder and often works under the guise of spiritual maturity. So we need to be humble top to bottom. We should never think that we are the cause of our spiritual growth. We aren’t the ones building virtue into our lives.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Eugene couldn’t comprehend how his brothers and sisters in faith could support (and with fervor) someone who displayed such lack of self-control, such meanness. He was a man who exhibited the kind of character and morality that in every previous election exemplified exactly what the religious right denounced as absolutely unacceptable, no matter one’s politics. But now, rather than denouncing him, these same groups were championing the man who would become president.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“They visited a small parish close to their apartment (always his recommended way to find a church: whatever was in your neighborhood). 50 or 60 people at most, spare surroundings—simple. That’s all I want in worship: a place and time to attend to God, and no pastor or priest getting in the way.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Eugene saw that God-part of people. He saw that and defined me in that way—the other stuff didn’t define me. That was astounding.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Talk less than you act”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“An accomplished pastor once explained to Eugene how he was trying to “reproduce himself in the younger generation.” Eugene’s response: “Isn’t one of you enough? Why don’t you nurture what is uniquely them?”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Thanks to Sven, I was being prepared to understand a congregation as a gathering of people that requires a context as large as the Bible itself if we are to deal with the ambiguities of life in the actual circumstances in which people live them….For me, my congregation would become a work-in-progress—a novel in which everyone and everything is connected in a salvation story in which Jesus has the last word. No reductions to stereotype.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“[The schismatics] cancel out any truth that they are contending for by the hate they vomit in the sanctuary”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Do you really think that the way to get rid of self-absorption, the way to learn to love God more, is by filling your head with more facts? Really? You already know more than you could ever possibly put to good use. You don’t need to know more truth. What you do need, however, is to start obeying the truth you already have.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“anxiety is a call inwards—a sign that I have left myself. A warning signal, to stop my action and write myself into being….My anchor to my soul and my God is in this pen.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Also”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Be okay with the simpler way.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Writing is an expression of living, not knowing: of praying, not knowing.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Eugene saw that God-part of people. He saw that and defined me in that way. The other stuff didn't define me. That was astounding. -Cuba Odneal”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Solid confidence comes when you can shrug your shoulders”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“There was a sense of gravity and richness to his teaching because you knew he really believed what he was saying.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“If I were to define what for me makes up the core Pentecostal identity, it is the lived conviction that everything, absolutely everything, in the scriptures is livable. Not just true, but livable. Not just an idea or a cause, but livable in real life. Everything that is revealed in Jesus and the scriptures, the gospel, is there to be lived by ordinary Christians in ordinary times. This is the supernatural core, a lived resurrection and Holy Spirit core, of the Christian life. What Karl Barth expressed dialectically as the “impossible possibility.” I had always believed that. I believed it still.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“True faith won’t let us grab hold to safety or latch on to dry formulas. True faith won’t let us make an unflinching rule based on God’s prior action. What brings us comfort and peace this time won’t be God’s way next time. If we drew relief from predictable patterns”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“God desires to roll up his sleeves and get busy in your heart. God wants to use the painful experience to clean out the rubbish in your soul. This is what I see: I see God closing off everything to you, everything but him. I see God determined to transform you. I see God cutting off every human resource that might distract you from the fresh life God intends to create in you. God is a jealous God. No one else will be able to take credit for your rescue. Only God.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Prayer is just another name for loving God. We think that the more words we pile on (and the bigger the better), the more we are praying. No. God is your Father, and He knows what you need before you ever ask. Good prayer arises from a place deeper than a barrage of pious words. Genuine prayer emerges from the heart.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“Spiritual theology is what pastors do—give themselves to getting what we know about God/Jesus lived in the round of ordinary life.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“If something like “vision” crept in, I got rid of it as fast as I could. The church I wanted or dreamt of or had a vision for got in the way of the church I had, the church God gave me. No, I’m afraid that I don’t have much truck with the “vision statements” that seem to fuel the ambition of pastors these days.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“the inner skirmish where our soul fights against God is often more painful than the cross itself. Really, the cross isn’t the main source of pain – fighting God, now that hurts. If we can learn to recognize God’s hand and if we can learn to stop pushing God’s hand away, we will find comfort in our affliction. We will find joy in the simple peace of trusting God, letting God send pain where he must. Nothing will shorten and soothe our pain more than surrendering to God.”
― Winn Collier, Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon

“I would want to tell pastors to quit being so busy and learn quiet, to quit talking so much and learn silence, to quit treating the congregation as customers and treat them with dignity as souls-in-formation.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message