Jordan

“We push back against the inertia of systemic shame through the weight of a body of people who are collectively engaging in trusting confession, reminding each other of the “great cloud of witnesses.” Thus, the need for us to be regularly gathering in places where we are “finding” each other, just as Jesus found the blind man after he had been put out of the synagogue (John 9:35). He found him and gave him the reward for his trust—seeing Jesus face to face.”
― Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

“A compassionate doctor has traveled deep into the jungle to provide medical care to a primitive tribe afflicted with a contagious disease. He has had his medical equipment flown in. He has correctly diagnosed the problem, and the antibiotics are prepared and available. He is independently wealthy and has no need of any kind of financial compensation. But as he seeks to provide care, the afflicted refuse. They want to take care of themselves. They want to heal on their own terms. Finally, a few brave young men step forward to receive the care being freely provided. What does the doctor feel? Joy. His joy increases to the degree that the sick come to him for help and healing. It’s the whole reason he came. How much more if the diseased are not strangers but his own family? So with us, and so with Christ.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“Third, we assume that whenever shame is dealt with properly, all interested parties will be happy about it. Our story from John 9 reminds us that this is not always the case. Naming and despising shame, while liberating, will also necessarily reveal all who are actively responsible for propagating it. It would not be hard to imagine, for instance, that when Jesus heals the man, creating space for God’s works to be revealed in him (v. 3), he necessarily confronts a community that has understood this man’s life in terms of something that was wrong with him. There was no evidence of people rushing up to Jesus, urgently asking him to come and heal their blind friend. Healing did not bring comfort and joy to the neighbors. Rather, it brought distress. And whenever genuine acts of goodness evoke responses of distress, you can count on shame being at work, accusing those very neighbors, albeit unconsciously, of their complicity.”
― Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

“Kids are smarter than we think. They know how to survive the shit that’s dealt them better than some welfare worker who never spent a day in one of those kids’ shoes.”
― Glendy Vanderah, Where the Forest Meets the Stars