Charles Ringma > Quotes

“Because we cannot repair the loss of years away, homecomings are almost always conflicted. We are not longer at "home" in our former familiar place. And we do not live between two or more cultures, but rather in both. We are neither fully away, nor fully home.

In the pain of this tension, there is a strange blessing, a nudge that helps us to realise the fundamental sojourner status of our human existence. Life moves towards death. And for the Christian, there is the sense that this world as it is now is not our final home. Having made the return, our pilgrim status in the journey of faith becomes even more evident. This reminds us that in some strange way we are too early for heaven and too late for this world.”
― Charles Ringma, Sabbath Time: a hermitage journey of retreat, return & communion

“Hope allows us to face the present, no matter how difficult our present may be. Hope helps us to see the present with new eyes, with eyes that see how things can be different. And hope can then propel us forward, for we see what we can be, rather than seeing only what is here and now.”
― Charles Ringma, Dare to Journey with Henri Nouwen

“What is stripped away is not our humanity but our idolatries, not faith but our false hopes, not meaning but out illusions. Dying in order to live.”
― Charles Ringma

“Whatever form and shape prayer takes, our first concern is not to press God for the things we think we need or the matters we are concerned about, but rather a quest for God's presence and relationship.”
― Charles Ringma, Sabbath Time: a hermitage journey of retreat, return & communion