I cannot believe that God would bless us with a critical intelligence, with an ability to extend the frontiers of knowledge and understanding when it comes to biology and psychology, and then say to us, “Stop, go no further” when it comes to theology. For me, the...
Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised. Blessed are they who are spiritually impoverished and therefore not so certain about everything that they no longer take in new information. Blessed are those who...
We are all hypocrites to some degree — passionately promoting ideas we have not ourselves fully lived, taking others to task for frailties and failures not that dissimilar from our own. Knowing this, we should all be more gentle, more hopeful, more merciful with one...
Jesus said that peacemakers would be known as the children of God. Not the fear mongers. Not the authoritarians. Not the gatekeepers. Not those who see their religion as a war against the world. He said, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children...
Not everything that was done in the Bible has a universal, timeless, or useful application. What is a timeless principle is that both men and women should be taking their lead from Jesus. We should be emulating his character, and displaying and using the fruit and...
Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate.----------------------------------------Gender-inclusive paraphrase: Blessed are those who have learned to admire but not envy,...
My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all...
May God be forever blessed for putting up with me for so long.
Everything hurts,Our hearts shadowed and strange,Minds made muddied and mute.We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.And yet none of it is new;We knew it as home,As horror,As heritage.Even our childrenCannot be children,Cannot be. Everything hurts.It’s a hard time to be...
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.