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A proof of love
ulian Barnes’s latest book, Levels of Life, offers some intriguing observations about the beginnings of ballooning and photography. But that shouldn’t fool anyone: the book is essentially about grief,...
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When we killed God
When we killed – or exiled – God, we also killed ourselves. Did we notice that sufficiently at the time? No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary...
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Walls of fear
Jean Vanier’s article ‘The Fragility of L’Arche and the Friendship of God’ offers some important observations on fear, compassion and transformation. Vanier notes that: Transformation has to do with...
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Gary and Mrs. Camp
ere’s another gem from Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier’s book Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness. In his article, ‘Finding God in Strange Places: Why L’Arche Needs the...
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Best Reads 2013. IX: Julian Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen
Having recently read The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life, I couldn’t resist Julian Barnes’s ruminations on cooking, cookbooks, recipes, entertaining guests etc. And I haven’t regretted it either,...
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The story held you together
Some random thoughts from Mark Haddon’s The Red House. They spoke to me for a variety of reasons, I suppose. The beauty kept slipping through her fingers. The world was so far away and the mind kept...
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Silence
In Living without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence, Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen talk about the importance of silence, the silence of listening, the silence of being present, the...
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When you have an agenda
When you have an agenda, the faster you go and the more judgmental you become, the more determined you are that your perception of reality will prevail. Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen, Living without...
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Those who learn stillness
And another quote from Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen’s Living without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence: Those who learn … stillness find that their lives become a sabbath for those who...
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Lament
Lament means ceasing to try to protect God from our anger, disillusionment and despair. Lament … searches out the deepest places in the heart and exposes them to the presence of God. It is a whole-body...
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Bad luck/tragedy
There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is tragedy in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this tragedy. Albert Camus, as quoted by Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way...
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A love that hangs on
God showed us in Christ a love that abides, that perseveres, that remains present to us, however bad things are, for however long it takes; a love that sticks around, a love that stays put, a love that...
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Breathing in and breathing out – or passing out
Here’s my last quote from Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen, Living without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence: Receiving God’s love is like breathing in. Responding to the suffering of...
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A double bind
Following up a friend’s recommendation, I am currently reading Barbara Glasson’s A Spirituality of Survival: Enabling a Response to Trauma and Abuse, a book that I am finding increasingly insightful,...
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A way to flourish
I believe in a gospel that calls us to ‘life in all its fullness’. This is not just divine wishful thinking but the call to live our lives on top of oppression and abuse and enable others to do the...
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Awful silence
Belief in a God of infinite mercy and transforming love means [to] hold on to the belief that there is no place from which God is absent. […] God’s silence signifies not absence, but total engagement....
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Taking up the cross
‘Taking up the cross’ in costly discipleship means a willingness to struggle against evil, for the sake of fullness of life, for the ‘bringing back of beauty’. It does not mean the passive acceptance...
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Not obliged to submit
Some further thoughts from Barbara Glasson’s A Spirituality of Survival: Enabling a Response to Trauma and Abuse: Relationships should never be traps; they should hold and not bind. […] abuse is about...
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Put together
You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time, but that doesn’t matter. The world has been changed nonetheless. Julian...
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