my contributions.

Hello friends!

Since I haven't been able to discuss much (I don't have a copy), I'll share with you my favorite quotes. I initially read Traveling Mercies while I was on the World Race in 2007. I remember flying through it on a mattress on the floor of our church in Belen, Costa Rica. ha.

It's safe to say that I also love Anne. And I already feel like we're friends. And I want to be THAT authentic about my faith. Not just how I live it .... but how I TALK about it too. Give me the gritty, raw stuff.

So .... here goes. My faves. Sorry it's so long - I liked a LOT of them. :)

• "My coming to faith did not start with a leap ... but rather a series of staggers."
• "Only grieving can heal grief ... I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed - which is to say, that we come to experience life."
• "I understand just enough about life to understand that I do not understand much of anything."
• "Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure." -Rumi
• "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." - hahahaha. so true.
• "We in our faith work - stumble along toward where we think we're supposed to go, bumbling along, and here is what's so amazing - we end up getting exactly where we're supposed to be."
• "Nietzsche said that he could only believe in a God who would dance, and I feel the same way." -me too. :)
• "The world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less okay for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, you bring them juice and crackers."
• "Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff." :)
• "The road to enlightenment is long and difficult ... and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines."
• "Grace is having a commitment to - or at least an acceptance of - being ineffective and foolish."
• "I think I already understand about life = pretty good, some problems." -Sam Lamott @ age 7
• "I believe that when all is said and done, all you can do is show up for someone in crisis, which seems so inadequate. But then when you do, it can radically change everything. Your there-ness ... can be live-giving. So you come to keep them company when it feels like the whole world is falling apart and your being there says that just for this moment, this one tiny piece of the world is okay, or at least better."
• " ... a person being herself is beautiful - that contentment and acceptance and freedom are beautiful."
• "Ugliness is creeping around in fear."
• "It's what we DO in families: we help, because we were helped."
• "Let the beauty we love be what we do." -Rumi ..... I also think me and Rumi would have been good friends.
• "Because Christianity is ABOUT water: 'Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' It's about baptism, for God's sake. It's about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and founts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy and absurd. It's about SURRENDER, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched."
• "This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rathole with us, in the guise of our friends and there is swells and comforts. It gives us our 2nd winds, 3rd winds, hundredth winds."

Love. and glad to be reading with you!