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“God comes to you disguised as your life,”
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
“At best, the theory of substitutionary atonement has inoculated us against the true effects of the Gospel, causing us to largely “thank” Jesus instead of honestly imitating him. At worst, it led us to see God as a cold, brutal figure, who demands acts of violence before God can love his own creation”
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
“Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.”
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
― The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
“Your False Self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true. Your False Self is almost entirely a social construct to get you started on your life journey. It is a set of agreements between your childhood and your parents, your family, your neighbors, your school chums, your partner or spouse, and your religion. It is your “container” for your separate self. 4 Jesus would call it your “wineskin,” which he points out usually cannot hold any new wine (Mark 2: 21–22). Your ego container likes to stay “contained” and hates change. Your False Self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, or divine union. After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’t you be? It’s what you know and all you know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. Perhaps you have noticed that master teachers like Jesus and the Buddha, St. Francis, all the “Teresas” (Avila, Lisieux, and Calcutta), Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi talk about dying much more than we are comfortable with. They all know that if you do not learn the art of dying and letting go early, you will hold onto your False Self far too long, until it kills you anyway.”
― Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self
― Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self
“Great people do not need to concoct an identity for themselves; they merely try to discover, uncover, and enjoy the identity they already have. As Francis said to us right before he died in 1226, “I have done what was mine to do. Now you must do what is yours to do.” Yet to just be yourself, who you really are, warts and all, feels like too little, a disappointment, a step backward into ordinariness. Most Christians write it off as a cheap humanistic cliché. It sounds much more exciting to pretend I am St. Francis than accepting that I am Richard and that that is all God expects me to be—and everything that God expects me to be. My destiny and his desire are already written in my genes, my upbringing, and my natural gifts. It is probably the most courageous thing you will ever do to accept that you are just yourself. It will take perfect faith, the blind yes of Mary, because it is the ongoing and same incarnation. Just like the word of God descending into one little whimpering child, in one small stable, in one moment, in one unimportant country, noticed by nobody. We call it the scandal of particularity. This, here, now, me always feels too small and specific to be a dwelling place for God! How could I be taken this seriously?”
― Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
― Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
Ask S.E. Hinton - Monday, June 17th!
— 1023 members
— last activity Mar 09, 2017 04:45PM
Join us on Monday, June 17th for a special discussion with author S.E. Hinton! S.E. Hinton will be discussing her books Tex, Rumble Fish, Som ...more
The Bee's Bookshelf
— 289 members
— last activity Jan 11, 2022 08:42AM
Welcome to the Bee’s Bookshelf, the official book club of the Scripps National Spelling Bee! We are so excited you want to talk about books with us. W ...more
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