Quotes

Oct 29, 2023 ∞

Sunday Quote 🕊️🏴

Call to Worship&10;Left: What burden do we bear? Is it the yoke of empire, heavy as cast iron, shackling our lives to the machinery of power?&10;Right: Let us bind ourselves to the plowshare of Christ.&10;Its crossbeam is light. Its harness rings with bells.&10;Left: We do not wish to harden the earth with our weight or trample&10;the oppressed with our force.&10;Right: We yearn to turn over the ground and sow the seed of peace&10;and compassion!&10;All:&10;Gracious God, we relinquish the burden of empire. We long to shoulder all those who mourn.&10;Prayer of Invocation&10;Welcome

Sep 17, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote:

“Katrina was an extreme version of what goes on in many disasters, wherein how you behave depends on whether you think your neighbors or fellow citizens are a greater threat than the havoc wrought by a disaster or a greater good than the property in houses and stores around you.”

Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell

Aug 6, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"In fact, there’s absolutely no reason a modern state should fund itself primarily by appropriating a proportion of each citizen’s earnings. There are plenty of other ways to go about it. Many—such as land, wealth, commercial, or consumer taxes (any of which can be made more or less progressive)—are considerably more efficient, since creating a bureaucratic apparatus capable of monitoring citizens’ personal affairs to the degree required by an income tax system is itself enormously expensive. But this misses the real point: income tax is supposed to be intrusive and exasperating. It is meant to feel at least a little bit unfair. Like so much of classical liberalism (and contemporary neoliberalism), it is an ingenious political sleight of hand—an expansion of the bureaucratic state that also allows its leaders to pretend to advocate for small government." (David Graeber, Against Economics)

Jun 4, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another.”

Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens

"We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another." (Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens)

Apr 6, 2023 ∞

📑 Quote

"But we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death. The cross, as a locus of divine revelation, is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power. The religious authorities of Jesus’ time were threatened by his teachings about the reign of God’s justice and love, and the state authorities executed him as an insurrectionist—one who “perverts the nation” and “stirs up the people”" (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree)

Mar 26, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

"Hospitality isn’t just about welcoming sinners; it’s also about welcoming people we think are idiots." (Richard Beck, Stranger God)

Mar 19, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote:

"• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is." (KEVIN KELLY, 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice)

Mar 10, 2023 ∞

📚📑 Another goodie from Death to Deconstruction.

"The story of Jesus speaks to me because, in one scene, Jesus is lovingly blessing little kids, and in another, he’s calling religious leaders a bunch of snakes. Jesus’s paradigm for God is of a gracious, loving Father who kisses the faces of his sinful, rebellious children, but the seriousness with which he regards evil is so intense that he says it’s better to gouge your own eye out than to objectify women. One thing makes me gush. The other makes me nervous. I’m suspicious of voices that only tell me what I want to hear.
&10;
&10;Were it me, I might emphasize one thing, but not the other. I’d conceive of a God who is either never angry or never not angry. A soft, enabling God who doesn’t care enough to stop me from destroying myself, or a God so appalled at my relentless failure that he can’t bear to look at me without retching. But in Jesus, our soul-longings to be known and loved, for an end to evil and injustice are realized in the unfathomable beauty of truly self-sacrificial love." (Joshua S. Porter, Death to Deconstruction)

Feb 5, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“Which path do you intend to take, Nell?” said the Constable, sounding very interested. “Conformity or rebellion?” “Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded—they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”

Jan 29, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

I keep thinking about this.

From @benwerd.

Every job will be automated until only five remain: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

Jan 22, 2023 ∞

Sunday Quote 📑

Leaning into a challenge means that we ask ourselves some version of the question: "What can I learn about me in these circumstances?"

Jan 15, 2023 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

“We describe hospitality as “making room,” and we tend to think of this as making room in physical space—making room at our table or making a bed available in our home. The practice of stopping is a different sort of making room. Interruptibility is a practice of making room in time, finding space for others in the midst of our busy day. That’s the inhospitality of hurry; there’s no room for you in my schedule.”

Dec 25, 2022 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

Dec 11, 2022 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

Dec 4, 2022 ∞

📑 I’m very pro-liberalism (in the classical philosophical sense, not modern-parties sense), but this is one reason we need countervailing movements to run along side those baseline underpinnings.