James Wheeler

“What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“The memory of the wrong suffered is also a source of my own non-redemption. As long as it is remembered, the past is not just the past; it remains an aspect of the present. A remembered wound is an experienced wound. Deep wounds from the past can so much pain our present that, as Toni Morrison puts it in Beloved, the future becomes“a matter of keeping the past at bay” (Morrison 1991, 52).22 “All things and all manner of things” cannot be well with me today, if they are not well in my memory of yesterday. Even remaking the whole world and removing all sources of suffering will not bring redemption if it does not stop incursions of the unredeemed past into the redeemed present through the door of memory. Since memories shape present identities, neither I nor the other can be redeemed without the redemption of our remembered past. “To redeem the past… that alone do I call redemption,”
― Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

“a handsome young man, with black hair and eyes, and a suspicion of beard and whiskers.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“We can answer the question “Who is God?” only by attending to who God has revealed himself to be.”
― Richard Bauckham, Who Is God? (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology): Key Moments of Biblical Revelation