Happy Snow’s Reviews > God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America > Status Update

I can feel the heart of the author: it was once deeply hurt, and thus became extremely sensitive to the source of harm. I know it because the same heart is pumping in my chest...

When I read this book, sometimes I feel the author's view is too pessimistic. But I understand where she came from. It was a traumatic reaction.

“Unspoken resentment. Lost. Death. Fear. The walls of the history still fresh and breathing there in the pew of that small church. Everything is political. I won’t and I will worship. Do you want our face to transcend the political, we can only do that when we exist in stainless.”

"the sacrifice of faith is to constantly feel the blisters of the ill-fitting religion"

She put what I feel into words!

“Land is so much more than a physical space, it's our spiritual center. We find significance in our sense of place.”

A lot of echoes here...I once view Toledo as my second hometown, because here I had people that I took as my family. But once that meaning was taken away, I found myself haunted by this deepest nostalgia. I guess this is the same sense of nostalgia that this book was talking about...

"We just have to give the people who question them space to do it in a safe way. "

Echos here.

"Only when he does return, his home is no longer his home, maybe it never was."

"The only option then is to move forward. To change."

"We believe in death, and we also believe in triumph of death. If something has to die, let it be."

"No resurrection perfectly quells a griefing heart. Because resurrection is Change. Something is different. And nothing can truly ever be the same."

"Across the heartland, churches are dying. Some, like mine, are bright bursts that ignite then die- leaving ashes. Others die more slowly- a stubborn refusal to quit despite the loss of their communities, the loss of business, the loss of homes and jobs. All of them are utopias in the dreams of their members. All of them are dangerous speculations."