The church can reach those whose lives are breaking down simply by forming Christians who know how to practice compassion, how to listen, how to withhold judgment, how to bake casseroles, how to look after other people’s children when those people are too confused or grief-stricken to do it themselves, how to give away their money and their time without expecting any direct return, how to be quiet with people in a noisy world, how to see God in the lost and the least, how to work for justice instead of just talking about it, how to make decisions that will benefit the widest number of people, how to swallow bitterness and choose peace, how to love God so much that they see God in every person they meet. Church is not a building. It is a community of people who know how to do these things and do them.
—- Barbara Brown TaylorOf the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
—- Frederick BeuchnerThe problem for most of us is that we don’t realizehow united we are with God. Except in rare moments of mystical experience, most of us don’t generally feel such intimacy with the divine. Even if we believe devoutly that God is present with us, our usual response is that were are “here” and God is “there,” loving and gracious, perhaps, but errovocably separate. “We just don’t understand ourselves,” says Teresa {of Avila}, “or know who we are.”
At worst, we give lip service to God’s presence, but then feel and act is if we were completely on our own. I think of church committee meetings, pastoral counseling sessions, or even spiritual direction meetings I have attended. They often begin with a sincere prayer, “God, be with us (as if God might be at another meeting) and guide our decisions and actions.” then at the end comes, “Amen,” and the door crashes shut on God-attentiveness. Now we have said our prayers and it’s time to get down to business. The modern educator Parker Palmer calls this “functional atheism . . . the belief that ultimate responsibility for everythiing rests with me.”
—- Gerald May, from the book about St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, The Dark Night of the SoulAdvertisement
