W. David O. Taylor

“And on the night before he suffers the worst that wayward human culture can do, this is what he does: he takes bread and wine into his hands, lifts them up, and blesses them. Bread and wine, not wheat and grapes. Bread and wine are culture, not just nature. They are good for food and a delight to the eyes. Jesus takes culture, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to his friends. Taken, broken, blessed, and given, these cultural goods, these “creatures of bread and wine” as the old prayer book had it, become sign and presence of God in the world.”
― W. David O. Taylor, For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts

“What we find in these psalms of lament, it is important to stress, is never mere sadness. We find instead sadness before the face of God. For here there is never mere complaint brought to God, rather than kept from God. Here there is no victim mentality, even if the psalmist is a real victim of violence who requires vindication. Here there is wholly honest reckoning of pain within the community of those who seek to be wholly human, as hard as that may be, wrestling with God, not apart from God.”
― W. David O. Taylor, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life