Joe

“Sometimes when I observe contemporary U.S. culture, with its hard fronts and nasty culture wars, I have a strange sense that I’ve seen something like it before—in the Communist and semitotalitarian state in which I grew up. The issues and positions are very different, but the spirit is strangely familiar. In all public discussion, there was a party line that people had to toe; if you diverged, you were deemed disloyal and suspected of betraying the cause. I sense a similar spirit today among both progressives and conservatives in the United States when it comes to many hot-button issues, including Islam.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling; or we ourselves are the potential recruits and consumers. Neither we nor our friends have any dignity just as we are, only in terms of how we or they can be used.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

“In this high place it is as simple as this, Leave everything you know behind. Step toward the cold surface, say the old prayer of rough love and open both arms. Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished, there, in the cold light reflecting pure snow, the true shape of your own face. David Whyte, “Tilicho Lake”   Conservatives”
― Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

“Transformation and healing always begin in a place of desire. There needs to be some deep inner willingness to take a risk on Jesus and begin again and again.”
― Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Invitations from God: Accepting God's Offer to Rest, Weep, Forgive, Wait, Remember and More