Tara Troxel

“Rather than bringing us great wisdom about the nature of men and love, reformist feminist focus on male power reinforced the notion that somehow males were powerful and had it all. Feminist writing did not tell us about the deep inner misery of men. It did not tell us the terrible terror that gnaws at the soul when one cannot love.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“One might sometimes experience seasons of intense emotional connection, a kind of exuberance of the Spirit, shared in community, in which joy is the dominant note. But then one might enter a season, perhaps surprising, where God is experienced in, and as, stillness, a contemplative season in which God’s covenant faithfulness is a steady state of enduring. If the person from the exuberant season could see the “you” in that contemplative season, it might look like a kind of distance or coolness from the outside. But that exuberant “you” doesn’t yet have the capacity to comprehend the unspeakable comfort found in that contemplation to come. God’s nearness looks and feels different depending on the season you’re in.”
― James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

“See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?”
― Julian of Norwich

“To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”
― Bell Hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love