Daniel Rogers

“Every American is thus ingrained with the duty to look well, to seem fine, to exclude from the fabric of his or her normal life any evidence of decay and death and helplessness. The ethic I have outlined here is often called the ethic of success. I prefer to call it the ethic of avoidance. . . . Persons are considered a success not because they attain some remarkable goal, but because their lives do not betray marks of failure or depression, helplessness or sickness. When they are asked how they are, they really can say and really do say, “Fine . . . fine.”
― Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death

“The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.”
― Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

“It is of course only through imagery, through metaphor and symbol, that we can imagine the new world that God intends to make. That is right and proper. All our language about the future, as I have said, is like a set of signposts pointing into a bright mist. The signpost doesn’t provide a photograph of what we will find when we arrive but offers instead a true indication of the direction we should be traveling in. What”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“we tend to restrict gratitude to material blessings, but this restriction doesn’t allow gratitude to infuse our self-concept and identity. We know what it feels like to be grateful for our house and income, but we don’t tend to feel grateful for our reputation or for being perceived as witty, talented, or cool. We feel gratitude for stuff, but rarely for the self.”
― Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death