Ben Kohns

“Boy, the young are angry at us. Good. This is what usually changes the world, although it’s a new experience to be the us the young are mad at.”
― Anne Lamott, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

“The opposite of ‘mean’ is ‘doormat,”
― Margaret Atwood, My Evil Mother

“Whether it’s Mount Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, aliveness (or whatever you want to call it) the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgment, separation from life and yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are, truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.”
― Anne Lamott, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

“Ever so gradually over time our understanding of ourselves gets shaped by what we do and what we’ve done. We cling, we grasp, we hold tightly to these identities. And then we find ourselves without them. Sometimes because we chose to leave them behind, other times they’re taken away without our consent. I felt so exposed. So vulnerable. I remember my friend Chris telling me that people were asking him, What happened to Rob? As in Where’d he go? as in Is he doing anything? I remember feeling this low-level dread when he told me that. Like a cold shudder. One harmless comment from a friend, and my imagination ran wild with endless ruminations on how to set the record straight and let those people know that I was still in the game. That’s the thing about liminal space: You’re really tender. Raw. Susceptible to those old forces and fears. I didn’t have regret, I was flirting with something far more powerful: fear. Fear that it appeared like I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. Fear that it looked like I couldn’t hack it, so I left. Fear that people thought I was somebody, and then I’d thrown it away. And here’s the killer one: Fear that I appeared to be done.”
― Rob Bell, Everything Is Spiritual: Finding Your Way in a Turbulent World