J Shaw > J's Quotes

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Any religious person who says he does not really need human friends because God is his Friend is calling God a liar because He's the One Who says we also need human friends.”
― Mark Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, & Life Together

“Our social and political tasks, if we take them seriously, loom larger than life. Yet infinite responsibility destroys a human being because he is only a man and not god." ~ p.23”
― Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of play

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Art is so often better at theology than theology is.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“The sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else’s suffering flaring in your own nerves. Pity is a projection of, a lament for, the self. All those people weeping in the mirror of your misery? Their tears are real, but they are not for you.”
― Christian Wiman

“Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human weaknesses only intensify each other. But human weakness plus Christ's weakness equals a supernatural strength.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“The courageous have fears that cowards never know.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.”
― Marianne Moore