Michael Haskew

“Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.”
― Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike

“especially his relationship with creation. The thought of an infinite God stooping low to relate to and redeem a broken people rightfully leaves our minds reeling—or at least it should.”
― J. Ryan Lister, The Presence of God: Its Place in the Storyline of Scripture and the Story of Our Lives

“It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings.”
― Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

“Living in a climate of deep insecurity, Jesus, faced with so narrow a margin of civil guarantees, had to find some other basis upon which to establish a sense of well-being. He knew that the goals of religion as he understood them could never be worked out within the then-established order. Deep from within that order he projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all the needful security. There would be room for all, and no man would be a threat to his brother. “The kingdom of God is within.” “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” The”
― Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited