Aimee Keller

“Words can be powerful, but talkative fools make things worse. They don’t know how to shut up. They’re incapable of silence. They think that if they keep talking, they’ll eventually say something true. But even if they hit the truth, they won’t have the sense to know it. They can’t tell where they’re going or where they’ve been. They can’t even tell where they are! Fools drift aimlessly. A nation is in big trouble if its rulers are demagogues and its lawmakers are drunks. Laziness in high places leads to broken windows, leaky roofs, and weak walls. Given”
― Adam S. Miller, Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes

“In sin, we come unplugged. When we refuse the givenness of life and withdraw from the present moment, we’re left to wander the world undead. Zombie-like, we wander from one moment to the next with no other goal than to get somewhere else, be someone else, see something else—anywhere, anyone, anything other than what is given here and now. We’re busy. We’ve got goals and projects. We’ve got plans. We’ve got fantasies. We’ve got daydreams. We’ve got regrets and memories. We’ve got opinions. We’ve got distractions. We’ve got games and songs and movies and a thousand TV shows. We’ve got anything and everything other than a first-hand awareness of our own lived experience of the present moment.”
― Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology

“According to Isaiah it is necessary, at least for a time, that the messiah go unrecognized. It is crucial that, at least for a while, he remain hidden, that he not shine forth, that he have “no form, nor comeliness” and that he possess “no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2). The Messiah’s coming must be delayed. This is necessary, at least in part, because the very act of recognition has messianic force. The shock of recognition changes us. The advent of the messianic depends on our seeing what was previously unseen. It should be no surprise, then, if the messianic is initially obscure, hidden under a rock, given in a grove, or stowed in a stable.”
― Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology

“The gospel: a promise that joy does not depend on what is given but on its givenness.”
― Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology