Jesus doesn't save us from a monstrous God who damns people to hell for coloring outside the lines. Jesus saves us from being monsters who draw normative lines that make life hell for others. The lines that matter are the boundaries required by human dignity. Those...
04226 – The Deep Work of Character Formation
The curse is, you will be tempted to believe that you can live your life off your gifts and not do the deep work of character formation. Your gifts can take you only so far. But there are no such limits when it comes to a life marked by deep character. --from The...
04219 – Our Beliefs/Opinions Should Evolve over Time
Anyone who gets to the end of their life with the exact same beliefs and opinions as they had at the beginning is doing it wrong.
04207 – Making an Ocean Rise
When you create a difference in someone's life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime. No act is ever too small. One by one, this is how to make an ocean rise.
04194 – Gratitude for Help from Others
In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others. from Letters and Papers from...
04179 – It All Matters
Are SMALL things the BIG things in life? It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the...
04167 – Impossible Dreams
According to Matthew, the whole grand experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph... The child is Joseph's until he says otherwise...the issue at stake is not a biological one but a legal one... Will he believe the impossible and give it a home or will he stick with...
04152 – The Measure of Everything?
When you put your own short, wild and precious life in perspective, it gives you permission to stop acting like the next (budget report, milestone, ELECTION) is the measure of everything.
04144 – Life is Important
You read something that you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would...
04142 – The Sense of the Beautiful
A person should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human...