J Nelson

“Our task is to announce in deed and word that the exile is over, to enact the symbols that speak of healing and forgiveness, to act body in God's world in the power of the Spirit. Luther's definition of sin was homo incurvatus in se, "humans turned in on themselves." Does the industry in which you find yourself foster or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way your discipline currently works, but that isn't necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways - fresh ways - of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation.”
― N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Easter

“But we have no [Marian] apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centered Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany — two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import....

Not a single saint criticized the practice of torturing and burning “witches” and heretics. Why not? Were they unaware of what was going on? Could they not grasp its evil? And why is [the Virgin] Mary always admonishing the poor peasant to inform the authorities? Why doesn’t she admonish the authorities herself? Or the King? Or the Pope?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Parece que en toda la historia de la humanidad no ha habido ningún caso de abuela que cocinara mal. Además, esto debe de ser algún efecto genético que los científicos todavía no han descifrado. Hay madres que pueden preparar mejunjes infumables que nos obligan a comer como lentejas o espinacas, pero en el momento en que esa madre es abuela es como si del cielo bajara una lengua de fuego pentecostal y le regalara un título de máster chef por ciencia infusa.”
― J.M. Mulet, Comer sin miedo: Mitos, falacias y mentiras sobre la alimentación en el siglo XXI (Imago Mundi)

“Caretaking is the utmost spiritual and physical responsibility of our time, and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life, our work, the solution to the mystery that we are. There are already so many holes in the universe that will never again be filled, and each of them forces us to question why we permitted such loss, such tearing away at the fabric of life, and how we will live with our planet in the future.”
― Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World