Michelle Huneven > Quotes

“To find love is the great human undertaking...and it's always complicated by our compulsions and unconscious patterns, to say nothing of issues of trust and control.”
― Michelle Huneven, Blame

“Funny how the days you weep, you can also have the fullest, deepest laughs.”
― Michelle Huneven, Bug Hollow

“We’re so old now,” I said, “that we can actually see the patterns. It’s a little terrifying.” “And isn’t it all so interesting?” With a sharpness that was almost a pain, I recalled how, in phone call after late-night phone call so many years ago, as Helen’s first ministry failed and I struggled to write a second book, we’d reminded each other that life, in fact, was interesting, endlessly so; an adventure to be observed and intricately discussed. In this way, we encouraged each other—gave each other the courage—to keep going.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“Of Julia’s wiggly, vertical balloon Sally made a tree with birds in their nests. “El’s right,” Julia said. “You are a good artist. Is that what you want to be when you grow up?” Something inside Sally clanged. Nobody had ever called her an artist, yet by that clang she knew that’s exactly what she was. She nodded and ducked close to her paper, abashed and wildly pleased. Julia said, “Good. You and me. We’ll be the artists in the family—agreed?” Sally has thought of this moment a thousand times since.”
― Michelle Huneven, Bug Hollow

“You know, Dana, in my experience, the people who join search committees are often seeking a change for themselves—the internal self is conducting its own search alongside the church’s.” This set off an internal clamor of thoughts. Of course I was on a parallel search. But what for? “I suppose,” I said weakly. “I’m definitely learning things about myself.” “What have you learned, may I ask?” “How much I care,” I said. “About the church. And doing the right thing. And also that what I think and how much I care might not matter much to anyone else.” She smiled. “You sound like me,” she said,”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“She had to be careful, even now, as she shifted up to fourth gear on the open highway again, to not reinfect herself with that sticky, toxic terror that life—this life, which gave you the beautiful sparkling world—squashed you like a gnat.”
― Michelle Huneven, Bug Hollow

“Sally, in the far back seat, colored on a newsprint pad, but mostly she stared out the window and imagined living in different houses they passed. Or she looked at the backs of the others in the car and thought, Who are these people, and why aren’t they nicer? For as long as she could remember—from her very first remembered thought—she’d had a sense of coming from somewhere else, a place of kindness and good humor and justice, where people weren’t so grouchy and annoyed and quick to anger.”
― Michelle Huneven, Bug Hollow

“What does it mean to be human? What are we doing here on this planet? What should we do with all the beauty and the horror? I spent a year as a hospice chaplain and what did I learn? That everyone wants to live. Even if just to gaze out a window at the sky.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“did attend church more regularly. Or I tried. One Sunday when the dreadful bell choir was scheduled, I made it only as far as a courtyard in the gardens where I sat in the moist, cool, gray-May air and watched the mist burn off the mountains while mourning doves hoo-hooed and wild parrots squawked in the deodars. The AUUCC’s historic, once elegant three-acre park was overgrown and shaggy, its hardscape crumbling in places and all the lovelier for it. My soul was fed as richly on that bench as in any hour in the sanctuary. Nor was I the first Sunday garden truant.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“I have social anxiety when people from such different parts of my life gather in the same room—I worried, for example, that the anti-religionists would try to bait the clergy—but Jack relishes social experiments. He asked his rabbi to say a blessing for the meal and I asked Tom to lead a moment of remembrance before dessert for those who couldn’t be with us. The a-religious, I decided, would just have to cope—and they did: several of them let me know that they’d found the prayers moving and “surprisingly meaningful.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“I’d loved the arcana of church history and the mental convolutions of theology, although to me Christianity was a melting ice floe that the very best minds had abandoned. I would look around me and think, How can so many seemingly intelligent, intellectual people still believe in the virgin birth, the miracles, or the resurrection? Some didn’t. My New Testament professor, a well-known scholar and author, announced that there were only three things known for certain about the historical Jesus, i.e., things corroborated by texts contemporary to Jesus’s time: he was born, he ate some meals with people, and he died, possibly by crucifixion.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“Like what?” I said. “Like you have one official leader and one shadow leader,” Helen said. “Charlotte will have to develop a strategy because Robert’s Rules and a covenant won’t contain that Jennie. She likes disruption”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“The world calls on us to listen. Listen, says my daughter, who is writing a paper on Emily Dickinson. Listen, says my son, tucking an earbud in my ear so I can hear the angry rap song that he loves. Listen, says a friend, I have to tell somebody what just happened. . . .”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“You know, I always think about going back to college. Just to catch up on all those books that supposedly shape our lives but nobody ever reads.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
. . . “Well, there’s the Bible. You ever read it?”
“Parts,” said Lewis.
“Well, this whole wrecked civilization is based on a book most people have only read parts of.”
― Michelle Huneven, Round Rock

“My parents were members at the AUUCC when I was away at college, but I never went to church with them then. A dozen years later, six months after my mother died, I was driving past the AUUCC with a friend, who said, “I hear the minister at that church is amazing.” I slipped in that Sunday—it seemed a good way to honor my mother’s memory. As soon as I sat in the sanctuary, I began to weep. These were not tears of grief (I knew too well what those were) but tears of profound relief, as if my soul had been waiting all my life to come here. The woman beside me passed me a tissue. Then another tissue. The AUUCC has been my spiritual home ever since. . . .”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“I think God listens when I pray,” Curtis said. “I think He listens in the way you said is the best kind of listening. He takes it in deep.” “And how does that make you feel?” “Like He hears what I’m saying and understands.” “That can be very powerful,” Elsa said. “And I imagine very helpful.” “Very helpful,” said Curtis.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“Tom Fox’s announcement came as a shock, even to congregants who complained about him. The most grief-stricken and rattled were those members who had come to the AUUCC during his reign and stayed because of him. Some of them loved Tom as some of us loved Sparlo, ardently and unconditionally. “It’s good news hiding bad,” muttered Charlotte as we shuffled toward the exit. “He’s leaving, but we still have another whole year of him.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“But don’t you think she’s wild? She could be just what the AUUCC needs: a funny, energetic, lesbian witch. That’d liven us up.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“She always said that she’d joined AA in prison because she needed some proof of remorse to offer Mark Parnham. But history demonstrates that events transpire and narratives are built around them.”
― Michelle Huneven, Blame

“Together, you form a church in miniature and, as such, you’ll choose the next minister for us all. Also, every one of you wrote the same thing in your letters. Before we leave tonight, let’s see if you can figure out what it was.” “Time to burn?” said Belinda. “Out of our minds?” said Adrian.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“You’d quit long before she ever would.” This stopped me. “What makes you say that?” “Jennie has an agenda. You’re still equivocating. I watched you observing, taking notes. Hugging the sidelines. Not sure if this is your milieu—just like you were in seminary: never sure if you should be a minister or a writer, so not committing to either.” “I still wonder if I made the right choice,” I said. “But am I really that obvious?”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“What I’d like to know”—Tom set down his eggroll and drew himself up—“is why every time I make a friend in the congregation, they stop coming to church?” The anguish in his voice surprised me. “That is weird,” I said. Apparently, I was caught in yet another pattern larger than myself.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“Why is it, she said, when you actually do the right thing for once, it doesn't feel good? In fact, it feels so awful you think you are going to die?
....
You feel like you are going to die, Patsy, because some part of you is dying.some entrenched tyrant of the soul, and sweetheart, she is not going easy.”
― Michelle Huneven, Blame

“At one point, Jack was enlisted to move Red from his aunt Maude’s house in Redlands to his grandma Iris’s house in Pomona.”
― Michelle Huneven, Round Rock

“I decided to make the seafood chowder I first ate twenty years ago in the English Market in Cork, Ireland---or at least my own version of that smoky, tomato-based soup with cod, scallops, clams, and shrimp; sometimes (in Ireland), it had periwinkles (sea snails) and enough smoked haddock to give it a wonderful campfire tang. Of course, I had to skip the periwinkles and for the smokiness I made do with frozen finnan haddie. I'd worked on the recipe over the years, cranking the flavors so that when I finally went back to the English Market a couple of years ago, their chowder was so bland and watery that Jack didn't believe it was the same soup I made at home. It was possible that the Irish cook was having a bad day, or someone was trying to stretch the last bit of a used-up batch, or they'd made the recipe from memory for so long, it had ceased being itself---a chef at a good restaurant here in Los Angeles once told me that vigilance is the key to consistency, and that if she or a trusted supervisor didn't keep an eye on the plates as they came out of the kitchen, a dish could become unrecognizable within hours.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“The teenager brought us a small white plate with a square slab of white cheese doused in a clear liquor. He used a lighter and after several tries flames leapt up, surely singeing the hair on his fingers, then died down to a cool, stovetop blue before going out, leaving the cheese prettily browned and crisp. I wrote, Saganaki---scary but fun.
"Oh!" I said. "I forgot about the booze, Charlotte. That was insensitive of me."
"It's all burned off," she said. "Besides, if I'm going to blow thirty-two years of sobriety and get drunk, it won't be on flaming Greek cheese!"
We scooped it onto warm, puffy pita bread. "If I closed my eyes, I could be in Patmos right now," said Belinda.
A bowl of cunning little meatballs appeared with its snow-white yogurt and fish-egg dip. Another plate held three plump, golden triangular spinach pies.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“The AUUCC is almost weirdly healthy,” Amira said. “No crises, no rifts, no simmering discontent—because Tom Fox addresses problems before they fully form!”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“That’s pretty much why I’m a UU, Curtis. Because our ministers can be gay, trans, Buddhist, atheist, any race, or same-sex adoptive parents with mixed-race families. You name it. That’s the future. Everybody’s in.” “Here’s to the future,” said Adrian. We all lifted our water glasses in a toast.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“So what does Madame Felicitator make,” he said, looking up at Helen, “of our little committee?” “It’s not little enough,” Helen said,”
― Michelle Huneven, Search

“How did you bring so many Black people to your church?” “To begin with, I invite and welcome those who believe in a loving, personal God. But first I had to address the rampant God-hating in our denomination. Nearly eighty percent of all atheists are white, and nearly eighty percent of UUs are white. Atheism and even UUism, you might say, are white privileges. Comfort, education, and high self-regard have led some to believe that they make their own destinies, that they have no need of an interceding God. These humanists can be condescending to and intolerant of those who do turn to and love a personal God. It’s time we recognize and call out the racism inherent in that intolerance.”
― Michelle Huneven, Search