I dislike your speaking of yourselves as though you were the only [ones] who know and taught the Gospel; ...But what I most dislike is your littleness of love...your want [lack] of union...your want of meekness, gentleness, long suffering; your impatience of...
If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.----------------------------------Gender-neutral version: If I take...
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the...
Jesus beatifies mourning, not moping. He does not counsel the long face. He does, however, bless real sadness, a state that can as easily coexist with an outwardly happy life as do all the other normal contradictions of living. (The deepest joy may reside in persons...
This again is a great contradiction: though he [Jesus] was a Jew, his followers were not Jews.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Little by little, Christians became devoted to their comforts instead: the soft couch, the flannel sheets, the leg of lamb roasted with rosemary. These things made them feel safe and cared for—if not by God, then by themselves. They decided there was no contradiction...
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least...