Doug Cutting

“A true disciple of Jesus will always go to where people are feeling weak, broken, sick, in pain, poor, lonely, forgotten, anxious, and lost.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit – A Guide to Encountering God Through the Five Classical Stages

“In our present attitude the natural world remains a commodity to be bought and sold, not a sacred reality to be venerated.”
― Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature

“The Book of Revelation is the only possible conclusion to the story the Bible tells, if the story is to be beautiful. John’s vision as the apocalyptic finale of Scripture gives the Bible the beauty of symmetry and resolution. The garden lost in Genesis becomes the garden recovered in Revelation. Babylon as the ultimate city of Cain is finally overcome by the New Jerusalem as the promised city of the Lamb. The monstrous beasts that come up from the earth, from the sea, and from the pit are comically defeated by a little lamb—a slaughtered lamb that lives again! The wicked are outside the city and are not permitted to enter so as to disrupt the peace of the longed for New Jerusalem. But those outside the city are invited to repent, wash their robes, and enter the city by the gates—for its gates will never be shut and the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” (See Revelation 21; 22.) This is the mission of the church: to call humanity to forsake the burned-out and violent cities of Cain, come by faith and repentance, and at last enter the peaceable city of the Lamb. Yes, the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“Perhaps the book of life, in the end, is the book of what one has lived and if one has lived nothing, he is not in the book of life.”
― Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature