Naphtali

“Belonging shouldn't have the admission price of assimilation.”
― Amy Kenny, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

“his book, Curry cites multiple examples of people who chose love as their response to seemingly hopeless situations—from the church elders who cared for him after his mother died when he was twelve to public figures like civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins, who fought for justice all their lives. But before they could respond in love, each had to face and accept their pain, not as an expression of God’s will, but as the arena in which they were called to embody God’s love for someone else. “Love is not always easy,” Curry writes, “but like with muscles we get stronger both with repetition and as the burden gets heavier. And it works.”[45]”
― Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

“Wonder then is a force of liberation, it makes sense of what our souls inherently know we were meant for. Every mundane glimpse is salve on a wound, instructions for how to set the bone right again. If you really want to get free, find God on the subway, find God in the soap bubble. Me, I meet God in the taste of my grandmas chicken, I hear God in the raspy leather of Nina Simones voice, I see the face of God in the boney teenager bagging my groceries and why shouldn't I? My faith is held together by wonder, by ever defined commitment to presence and paying attention.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

“It is there within and among us, for we are ordained of God to be people of hope. It is there by virtue of our being in the image of the promissory God. It is sealed there in the sacrament of baptism. It is dramatized in the Eucharist—“until he come.” It is the structure of every creed that ends by trusting in God’s promises. Hope is the decision to which God invites Israel, a decision against despair, against permanent consignment to chaos (Isa 45:18), oppression, barrenness, and exile.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination