Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous...
Most biblical stories are descriptive, not prescriptive. They show what it looks like to wrestle with trying to live a moral life—recording success and failure. But here's the thing: That makes the Bible more holy, not less. Treating spiritual texts like a recipe book...
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
We particularly need to listen to older people and children. They all have stories to tell that enrich the mind and the heart. Children simplify things, often with brutal honesty. Older people bring the perspective of their long years on issues. Suffering people also...
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them.They move on. They move away.The moments that used to define them are covered bymoments of their own accomplishments.It is not until much later, thatchildren understand;their stories and all their...
Matthew writes: “[Herod] sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.” Jesus is born, but in Flannery O’Connor’s words, “at a devastating price.” No one knows how many children died; the New Testament alone documents the...
Facts go straight to the head, and stories go straight to the heart.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's...
Bad chapters can still create great stories. Wrong paths can still lead to right places. Failed dreams can still create successful people. Sometimes it takes losing yourself to find yourself.
Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstraction and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself.