Melissa

“Perhaps it requires of you precisely this existential anxiety in order to begin. Precisely these days of transition are perhaps the period when everything in you is working..”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

“The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.

Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading

“There is a large, leisurely center to existence where God must be deeply pondered, lovingly believed.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity