Quote of the Day

I don't know for sure, but I think maybe God was trying to tell me that gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security.  A great tree is both moved and unmoved, for it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground.  Mastering a gentle and quiet spirit didn't mean changing my personality, just regaining control of it, growing strong enough to hold back and secure enough to soften.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 16

Quote of the Day

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger.  You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.
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-- Nelson Mandela

Quote of the Day

I mean "God" as shorthand for the Good, for the animating energy of love; for Life, for the light that radiates from within people and from above; in the energies of nature, even in our rough, messy selves.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 8

Quote of the Day

People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 75

Quote of the Day

Jesus commanded his followers to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and care for the sick.  Making health care available to all seems like a no-brainer, Jesus-wise, among the most Christian projects a president, or a nation, could possibly undertake.  Speaking as someone who was raised in a Christian home and who has actually read the Gospels (and recently, at that), I have to say that such fierce opposition to Obamacare by conservative Christian activists and politicians doesn't make sense.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 203-204

Quote of the Day

I spent 20 years and wrote thousands of pages learning the trivial craft of putting sentences together.  My parents blew tens of thousands of 1980s dollars on tuition at a prestigious institution to train me for this job.  They also put my sister the pulmonologist through medical school, and as far as I know nobody ever asks her to perform a quick lobectomy -- doesn't have to be anything fancy, maybe just in her spare time, whatever she can do would be great -- because it'll help get her name out there.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

In a culture that is increasingly fuzzy in its spirituality, beliefs and ethics, it can be nice to be a part of something that is clear about what it believes and how to live. It is not only satisfying, but vastly spellbinding to listen to black and white messages like it’s spellbinding to watch an accident scene. Here it is: your search for clarity is over!

-- David Hayward, "10 reasons why abusive churches succeed"

Quote of the Day

Girl-on-girl sabotage is the third worst kind of female behavior, right behind saying "like" all the time and leaving your baby in the dumpster.

-- Tina Fey

Quote of the Day

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

-- Nelson Mandela

Quote of the Day

And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums.  What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, "This is a nightmare.  I hate everything.  I'm going to go hide in the garage."

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 9

Quote of the Day

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.

-- Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

Votes for women, ending segregation, allowing gays to marry -- conservatives invoke doomsday scenarios whenever people organize to demand justice or freedom.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 183

Quote of the Day

I've been trying to understand the mentality that leads people who wouldn't ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing.  I have to admit my empathetic imagination is failing me here.  I suppose people who aren't artists assume that being one must be fun since, after all, we do choose to do it despite the fact that no one pays us.  They figure we must be flattered to have someone ask us to do our little thing we already do.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

In a world of people craving any kind of attention, to get any at all is a deeply felt need satisfied in churches that hand it out abundantly but negatively. Like Leslie Morgan Steiner relates, one of the prominent characteristics of abuse survivors is that they didn’t realize they were being abused.

-- David Hayward, "10 reasons why abusive churches succeed"

Quote of the Day

Consider the lilies -- is the only commandment I ever obeyed.

-- Emily Dickinson

Quote of the Day

It always seems impossible until its done.

It always seems impossible until its done.
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It always seems impossible until its done.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/nelson_mandela.html#iDmM5SDb2GB4H09x.99

-- Nelson Mandela

Amy to release latest chapbook

Amy's brand new poetry chapbook, Bathroom Poems, will be released today at Nashville's East Side Story bookstore from 2 to 3 p.m.  Bathroom Poems, a poetic plunge(r) into the world of anal-retentive behavior, promises fun while you flush.

Quote of the Day

I didn't want to keep taking these days for granted.  The words of the writer Colette had haunted me for years: "What a wonderful life I've had!  I only wish I'd realized it sooner."  I didn't want to look back, at the end of my life or after some great catastrophe, and think, "How happy I used to be then, if only I'd realized it."

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 2

Quote of the Day

In the battle between reality and fundamentalism of all varieties, reality always wins -- if it is given the freedom to breathe and we show the courage necessary to accept it.  Even then it takes time.  But when a truth has been suppressed by a massive lie for centuries, its eventual emergence is almost a miracle.

-- Andrew Sullivan

Quote of the Day

I now contribute to some of the most prestigious online publications in the English-speaking world, for which I am paid the same amount as, if not less than, I was paid by my local alternative weekly when I sold my first piece of writing for print in 1989.  More recently, I had the essay equivalent of a hit single -- endlessly linked to, forwarded and reposted.  A friend of mine joked, wistfully, "If you had a dime for every time someone posted that..."  Calculating the theoretical sum of those dimes, it didn't seem all that funny.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

There are too many examples of churches that are clearly abusive but guise it all under the discipline of the Lord. Having been a pastor for many years as well as a member of many churches and ministries, I know from experience and observation that people will suffer unbelievable abuse because they think it is from the Lord… justly deserved and fruitful.

-- David Hayward, "10 reasons why abusive churches succeed"

Quote of the Day

If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

-- Charlie Parker

Quote of the Day

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela
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Nelson Mandela
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/nelson_mandela.html#jA9BE7rfJMReRCKY.99

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela
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-- Nelson Mandela

Quote of the Day

After all, technically speaking, it is biblical for a woman to be sold by her father (Exodus 21:7), biblical for her to be forced to marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), biblical for her to remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), biblical for her to cover her head (1 Corinthians 11:6), and biblical for her to be one of multiple wives (Exodus 21:10).  This is why the notion of "biblical womanhood" so intrigued me.  Could an ancient collection of sacred texts, spanning multiple genres and assembled over thousands of years in cultures very different from our own, really offer a single cohesive formula for how to be a woman?  And do all the women of Scripture fit into this same mold?  Must I?

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. xx

Quote of the Day

One April day, on a morning just like every other morning, I had a sudden realization: I was in danger of wasting my life.  As I stared out the rain-spattered window of a city bus, I saw that the years were slipping by.  "What do I want from life, anyway?" I asked myself.  "Well...I want to be happy."  But I had never thought about what made me happy or how I might be happier.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 1

Quotes of the Day

I suppose marriage equality is socially liberal inasmuch as it tries to defend and integrate a previously despised minority.  But it is socially conservative in its attempt to envelop that minority in the traditions and responsibilities of family life.

-- Andrew Sullivan

Quote of the Day

Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism's ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again.  It's especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

Most people aren’t even aware that they are limiting the dreams of girls. Most aren’t conscious of the fact that they are shaping the dreams of their daughters and female students into a sexist ideal or a misogynist fantasy. Not only do men do this, but women too. This can be corrected.  I was raised in a sexist culture. I need constant instruction to overcome my innate assumptions that are drilled into me by our misogynist society. I’m glad to be married to a strong woman. I’m glad to have a strong daughter. I’m glad to have strong women for friends.

-- David Hayward, "how to shape the dreams of our girls"

Quote of the Day

This is why I get so frustrated with the “it’s just a show” dismissal of good cultural criticism. All we are are sacks of flesh stuffed with guts and puss and boogers and blood. And yet, we tell stories. That’s what we do to stave off the horror of being a self-propelling bag of warm offal that will someday die. Talking about those stories and what they mean and what they tell us about who we are and how we live in the world isn’t a waste. It’s a way to know ourselves better.

-- Betsy Phillips, "Why Television's Most Popular Show Rehabilitated a Nazi"

Quote of the Day

Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.

-- William James

Quote of the Day

I was raised evangelical, which means I spent a good part of my life feeling sorry for the rest of humanity on account of its certain destiny in hell.  This was not something my parents taught me directly, just something I picked up from preachers, Sunday school teachers, and Christian playmates along the way.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. xvi

Quote of the Day

As writers, we each strive for perfection.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 207

Quote of the Day

Somewheres in Des Moines or San Antonio there is a young gay person who all of a sudden realizes that she or he is gay.  And that child has several options: staying in the closet; suicide.  And then one day that child might open a paper that says "Homosexual elected in San Francisco" and there are two new options: the option is to go to California, or stay in San Antonio and fight.

-- Harvey Milk

Quote of the Day

The first time I ever heard the word "content" used in its current context, I understood that all my artist friends and I -- henceforth, "content providers" -- were essentially extinct.  This contemptuous coinage is predicated on the assumption that it's the delivery system that matters, relegating what used to be called "art" -- writing, music, film, photography, illustration -- to the status of filler, stuff to stick between banner ads.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

The process of publishing a book is like telling a joke, then having to wait for 2 years to find out whether it was funny or not.

-- Alain de Botton

Quote of the Day

I expect to pass through this life but once.  Therefore, if there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do for another human being, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.

-- William Penn

Quote of the Day

Only now in 2013, as the full insanity of the far right stand for "God and country" and against government "intrusion" (health care reform proposed by a black man) hits home, the fat cats are being hoisted on their own petard. The religious right's religiously motivated foot soldiers have succeeded in installing forty extremists in Congress who aren't listening to their Wall Street masters any longer and are ready to take us all over the cliff into their imaginary world.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

It simplifies things when we can write-off the thoughts and opinions of other people by assuming they've taken the easy way out, that they're just trying to be popular and liked.  It's oddly affirming to tell ourselves that we're the ones living counter-culturally, we're the ones taking all the risks for the truth, we're the ones getting persecuted for our right and true beliefs.  And it's a bit disconcerting to confront the reality that it's possible to wrestle with the same God and walk with the same limp and yet reach different conclusions.  Perhaps it is in the wrestling itself that we can find some common ground.

-- Rachel Held Evans, "The thing I'd love to forget about the people I disagree with"

Quote of the Day

The writer cocreates the text with the reader.  If a writer gives the reader too much information, the reader feels forced to accept whatever the writer says and eventually stops reading.  If a writer gives the reader too little information, the reader feels compelled to search for whatever the writer says and eventually stops reading.  So, you want to meet the reader halfway.

-- Frank Conroy

Quote of the Day

But you can't know how far you've come if you don't know where you started.  Adult gay men and lesbians don't raise the next generation of gays and lesbians; our history isn't passed from parent to child.  That's why it's critically important for gay men and lesbians, for bisexual and transgender people, to learn their history.  Straight people with LGBT family members, friends, and coworkers should know the history of the LGBT rights movement too.  All straight people should know the story of the gay liberation movement, because it is also the story of straight liberation.  The LGBT rights movement liberated straight people from their prejudices and their fears; it helped straight people see through the goddamn, demeaning bullshit; the movement for LGBT equality helped straight people rebuild relationships with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender family members and friends that their prejudice had estranged them from.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 170-171

Quote of the Day

People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn't be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

I feel like I'm more wired for disruption.  But I tend to think -- as opposed to being a troublemaker -- I only get into trouble I think is worth getting into.  Jesus was a troublemaker.  He sets a pretty good example for us on how to do it in ways that are constructive ...  There are right things to rebel against.  Being a rebel is not a bad thing.  Rebelling against the wrong things is a bad thing.  Rebelling against the right things is a great thing.

-- Derek Webb

Quote of the Day

No one should get an MFA if they have to pay for it...  To me, a writer is someone who writes.  The best thing to me is to read eclectically, to go to readings, to have experiences, to live in the world, to mix with all different types of people, to take some chances, and to find some people and start a writing group.

-- Sarah Schulman

Quote of the Day

In denial of the West's civic-minded, government-supporting heritage, evangelicals (and the rest of the libertarian right) wound up defending private oil companies but not God's creation, private cars instead of public transport, private insurance conglomerates rather than government care of individuals. The price for the religious right's wholesale idolatry of private everything was that Christ's reputation was tied to a cynical political party owned by billionaires. Today it's come to the point where people calling themselves followers of Jesus are fighting AGAINST health care for all!

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

If you've abandoned yourself in the effort to keep anyone or anything else, unlearn that pattern. Live your truth, losses be damned. Just like that, your heart and soul will return home.

-- Martha Beck, "10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

Quote of the Day

(Hitting bottom) puts an end to innocence.  One is violently changed by such trouble.  For most people, a nervous breakdown, whatever the causes, constitutes the most profound event in their lives, creating such deep changes in their understanding of themselves and of the world that they are forced in many ways to begin all over again.

-- Frank Conroy

Quote of the Day

That exchange -- that anger -- led [Merle] Miller to write "What It Means to Be a Homosexual" and to come out in the most public possible way.  The social change we've witnessed over the last forty years was never a given.  Change began when people like Merle Miller decided that they had finally had enough.  Change began when LGBT people began to stand up for themselves and their friends. 

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 167

Quote of the Day

But I discovered something else in writing this book, something even more graceful and vital than the elusive "perspective."  In all that darkness, there had been love.  What I'd felt all along was not a fantasy, not yet another misinterpretation.  I loved my parents.  I wasn't wrong about that.  And somehow, against all odds, my parents (especially my mother) were able to bring their versions of affection into our world, into our family, as well.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 353

Quote of the Day

Somehow, we found the courage to quit trying to scream along with everybody else and just to lean in and whisper something.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

Government was seen as part of God's Plan for creating social justice and defending the common good. Christians were once culture-forming and culture-embracing people. Even the humanism preached by the supposedly "anti-Christian" Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century was, in fact, a Deist/Christian "heresy," with a value system espousing human dignity borrowed wholesale from the Sermon on the Mount.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

There's a real hardship to being quotable, and that's that people tend to remember exactly what you had to say on a subject.

-- Robert Leleux, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, p. 214

Quote of the Day

To attract something you want, become as joyful as you think that thing would make you. The joy, not the thing, is the point.

-- Martha Beck, "10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

Quote of the Day

My psychiatrist claims that whenever I'm not writing I don't know who I am.  But I know exactly who I am.  I'm a writer, and despite my failures, rejections, and minor successes I've never questioned my longing to be a great writer.  Now, I've nearly run out of time and I may never become one.  Yet all along I've known so deeply who I am that, until now, I've been ashamed to admit it, even to myself.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 206

Quote of the Day

Being gay isn't a choice.  Remaining closeted all your adult life is.  And it's not a tragedy; it's a moral failing.  It's cowardice.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 140

Quote of the Day

My own perspective I do feel moved, even obligated, to share.  The discovery that deeply flawed love and deeply flawed vision can coexist has been life-changing for me, and I feel uniquely able to illuminate it.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 354

Quote of the Day

I think when Karin turned 40, she got her first tattoo. She tattooed a beautiful watercolor of a female hummingbird on her left shoulder with the phrase, "Comparison is the thief of joy." It’s something we like to keep handy because nothing will suck the life out of a creative journey faster than comparing yourself too much to what other people are doing. It’s best just to stay fiercely committed to your own standards of perfection. Stay committed to your own voice.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

What's so curious is that in this religion-inflicted country of ours, the same evangelicals, conservative Roman Catholics, and others who had been running around post-Roe insisting that America had a "Christian foundation" and demanding a "return to our heritage" and/or more recently trashing health care reform as "communist" and demanding the shutdown of the government in order to overturn this "communist" invention by a "non-American" president, ignored the fact that one great contribution of Christianity was a commitment to strong central government. For instance, this included church support for state-funded, or state-church-funded, charities, including hospitals, as early as the fourth century.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

Writing beats baling hay or going door-to-door for a living, but it's still shockingly unenjoyable work.

-- Tim Kreider, "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!"

Quote of the Day

Your rational capacities are far newer and more error-prone than your deeper, "animal" brain. Often complex problems are best solved by thinking like an animal. Consider a choice you have to make -- anything from which movie to see to which house to buy. Instead of weighing pros and cons intellectually, notice your physical response to each option. Pay attention to when your body tenses or relaxes.

-- Martha Beck, "10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

Quote of the Day

But for me writing is a necessity.  I exist in sentences.  I forget my sense of failure.  I forget time.  I forget that I'm aging.  I forget that one day I'll die.  Revising sentences is an act of hope, and connecting with a reader is the only leap of faith I'll ever take.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 132

Quote of the Day

When gay people come out, we shrug off the pressure to conform about something so enormous -- sexual orientation -- that the shrugging off of other, lesser pressures to conform comes easy.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 126

Quote of the Day

I think everyone has one day like this, and some people have more than one.  It's the day of the accident, the midlife crisis, the breakdown, the meltdown, the walkout, the sellout, the giving up, giving away, or giving in.  The day you stop drinking, or the day you start.  The day you know things will never be the same again.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 82

Quote of the Day

(My junior year of college) I discovered short poems too, like [William Carlos Williams'] "The Red Wheelbarrow."  I became fascinated with trying to say a lot with a little.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

In the minds of evangelicals, they were recreating the Puritan's self-exile from England by looking for a purer and better place, this time not a geographical "place" but a sanctuary within their minds (and in inward-looking schools and churches) undisturbed by facts. Like the Puritans, the post-Roe (when abortion was made legal) evangelicals (and many other conservative Christians) withdrew from the mainstream not because they were forced to but because the society around them was, in their view, fatally sinful and, worse, addicted to facts rather than to faith. And yet having dropped out (to use a 1960s phrase), the Evangelicals nevertheless kept on demanding that regarding "moral" and "family" matters the society they'd renounced nonetheless had to conform to their beliefs.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

Perspective: everyone alive 150 years ago is dead now.  Just do something small every day and it will add up to something substantial.

-- Austin Kleon

Quote of the Day

Right now, imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back.

-- Martha Beck, "10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

Quote of the Day

... by choosing to define myself exclusively as a literary writer I've chosen a profession and a life that promise to humble me.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 132

Quote of the Day

Religious belief is clearly a choice.  It may be a choice your parents made for you, or a choice your grandparents made for you, but it is a choice.  (What are all those Mormon missionaries doing out there?  They're trying to get you to choose their religion.)  Discriminating against people based on their choice of religious belief is illegal and should be illegal.  Arguing that gay people shouldn't complain about discrimination because we can "choose to be straight" is like arguing that Jewish people shouldn't complain about anti-Semitism because they can "choose to be baptized."

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 69

Quote of the Day

More than anything else, laying out the story of how I came to see has brought me clarity.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 353

Quote of the Day

My favorite poet is probably Mary Oliver.  She can look at the earth and remind me that being alive here is an unspeakable gift, every blade of grass, every cloud adrift, every bird song, every polished piece of glass washed up on a beach is nothing short of a miracle.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

Science marched forth, demolishing fundamentalist "facts" with dispassionate argument. So science also became our enemy. Rather than rethink our beliefs, conservative religionists like me (and "Billy") decided to renounce secular higher education and denounce it as "elitist." Thus, to be uninformed, even willfully and proudly so, came to be considered a Godly virtue. And since misery loves company, the evangelicals' quest, for instance when evangelicals dominated the Texas textbook committees, was to strive to "balance" the teaching of evolution with creationism and damn the facts.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

When people ask you the same question over and over, you write a book...

-- Austin Kleon

Quote of the Day

Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well.  Success is built on failure.
 
-- Martha Beck, "10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

Quote of the Day

Deepening our relationship, though, meant I had a greater chance of being rejected by him if I let him down in any way.  I couldn't admit this outright, but I couldn't conceal my anxiety, either.  I'm not good at that.  This is why I write.  It's my way of controlling my world and my emotions.  I focus on sentences.  For several hours a day, nothing else matters.  I live inside language.  And while I'm often frustrated by writing's difficulty, I'm also at peace.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 33

Quote of the Day

The failure to provide young people with comprehensive sex education drives up the abortion rates in blue states and the rates of single parenthood in red states.  A conservative who claims to oppose abortion and single parenthood shouldn't support abstinence-only sex ed, as it only seems to drive up the rates of both.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 45

Quote of the Day

I loved when books did this: when the book itself seemed to recognize who was reading it, and what would be best to reveal.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 338

Quote of the Day

[Annie Dillard's] book of found poetry, Mornings Like This, is one of my favorite books of all time.  She pulls lines from an old newspaper, or one of Van Gogh's letters, or from an old biology textbook, and rearranges them into little assembled works of art, with moving and hilarious results.  The book is a good reminder that there is great stuff coming at us from everywhere if we can only learn how to receive.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

What they never admitted was…we evangelicals were self-banished from mainstream institutions, not only because we evangelicals' political views on social issues conflicted with most people's views, but also because we evangelicals found ourselves holding the short end of the intellectual stick.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.

-- Mary Oliver

Quote of the Day

Even though the law is almost identical to that of their last presidential nominee's in Massachusetts, the GOP is prepared to destroy both the American government and the global economy to stop it... This is the point of no return - a black president doing something for black citizens (even though the vast majority of beneficiaries of Obamacare will be non-black). I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime... If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They're vandals.

-- Andrew Sullivan, "The Nullification Party"

Quote of the Day

True, elation sometimes makes its way from a writer's fingertips to his or her heart and, for a moment, the writer believes that he or she has fashioned a chain of perfectly conjoined words.  But the feeling recedes.  Then the sublime seems trite, the harmonious dissonant, and perfection imperfect.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 213

Quote of the Day

While the teen pregnancy rate in the United States has been dropping for years (hitting a six-decade low in 2010, according to the research done by the Centers for Disease Control), the United States still has far and away the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world, and states with abstinence-only sex education have the highest rates of teen pregnancy.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 44

Quote of the Day

Writing and face blindness required the same patience, the same commitment to slowness.  They forced a similar kind of willingness to hang out in frustration and ambivalence.  Failure rates were high in both camps.  In both, writing and recognizing, one had to hang back, leave spaces for the truth to emerge in its own time.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 326

Quote of the Day

Writing on the road is all about butterfly collecting for me.  I'm just grabbing little bits of this and that and adding to my collection.  An overheard snippet of a conversation, a line from an essay or newspaper, something my wife says -- if it resonates I catch it and keep it for later.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

Don't like the shutdown? Send the bill to the evangelicals. People schooled to live in a make-believe magical facts-be-damned world took over the Republican Party. The Tea Party is the pro-life evangelical subculture reborn with a few libertarian nuts thrown in. I'm talking about the bedrock mostly southern and mountain state evangelical conservatives that are anything but conservative. The pro-life, home-school, anti-government far right is the evangelical movement. And it's radically anti American. Without this movement the 40 extremists in congress who are the radical right of the far right would not have been elected.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "Send the Bill for the Shutdown to the Religious Right"

Quote of the Day

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.  There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.

-- Mary Oliver

Quote of the Day

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work... This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

-- Andrew Sullivan, "The Nullification Party"

Quote of the Day

Writing's daily difficulties humble a writer; few writers earn a living from their work; fewer still receive accolades; and, at best, two dozen a century are remembered.  So what compels us to do it: a naive but persistent hope for transcendence through art?

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 213

Quote of the Day

And studies consistently show that young people who've had abstinence-only sex educations are far likelier to accidentally reproduce than young people who've had comprehensive sex educations.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 44

Quote of the Day

Until you can explain a thing clearly to someone else, you don't really know it...

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 320

Quote of the Day

A song can't be completely dissected and reduced to a formula in a laboratory.  There is something bigger happening that defies categorization or analysis.  Maybe that's called soul.  It's hard to define, but you know it when you hear it.

 -- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

Mom treated everyone she ever met well, spent more time talking to "nobodies" than to the rich and famous who flocked to her after her books were published and became bestsellers. Put it this way: through my experience of being a father (of 3) and grandfather (of 4) I've finally been able to test Mom's life wisdom and spiritual outlook and found out that she was right: Love, Continuity, Beauty, Forgiveness, Art, Life and loving a loving all-forgiving God really are the only things that matter.

-- Frank Schaeffer, "A Tribute to My Evangelical Leader Mom -- Edith Schaeffer RIP"

Quote of the Day

I consider myself kind of a reporter -- one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography.  I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.
 
-- Mary Oliver

Quote of the Day

The resistance to change is enormous and manifold.  It comes from all kinds of directions: family, friends, peers, life, even our own hearts.  It requires an incredible amount of decision and courage, especially when we know change is urgent.  Perhaps it is coming out in whatever way… sexually or theologically.  Whatever the case, our inner change must eventually manifest itself outwardly.  Then a particular fearlessness is necessary.

-- David Hayward, "Changing in Spite of Resistance"

Quote of the Day

Every writer has obsessions.

-- Tom Grimes, Mentor, p. 70

Quote of the Day

Sex education in America is a lot like a driver's-ed course that covers the internal combustion but not steering or brakes or those red octagons on the tops of those sticks at all those intersections.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 42

Quote of the Day

I knew now I'd tell everyone.  I'd tell them over and over for the rest of my life.  And the telling would get better and better.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 317

Quote of the Day

If we are willing to tell the truth, or establish some intimacy with a listener, maybe it gives them permission to begin speaking their truth too.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

Of course, evangelical/fundamentalists can't stand the Bible's obvious flaws because they worship the Bible, not God.  So they try to fix their "inerrant" Bible's reputation by torturous justifications.  They even make rules for God as if they understood God as some sort of creature trapped in the pages of the Bible, something like a fly caught on flypaper.  This also seems to be a problem that plagues Muslims, who say their holy book was actually dictated, so it records the actual words of God.  This may explain the apparent paralysis of much Islamic civilization.  If the literal last word has been pronounced, what's left to do, say, discover, or invent?  How do you change?  

-- Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God, p. 212

Quote of the Day

Imagine that -- religious people quoting the Bible to defend actions that were the exact opposite of the intent and purpose of those very same scriptures!  It's possible, then, to be quoting the Bible out of the conviction that you're defending God's way when in fact you're in that exact moment working against how God wants to continue drawing and pulling and calling humanity forward.  And then, to put a finer point on it, it's possible to take something that was a step forward at one point and still be clinging to it later on in the story, to the point where it becomes a step backward.

-- Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 161

Quote of the Day

Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy.

-- Garry Wills

Quote of the Day

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

-- Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

Quote of the Day

But while I can't see myself going back to the Church -- I can't see myself going through the motions of the sacraments, despite their comforting familiarity -- some part of me wants the Church to want me back.  I want the option of going back.  Not because I believe -- I don't -- but because I ache.  I ache for my loss.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 16

Quote of the Day

Telling turned out to be exactly like going off the high dive.  The first time was hell.  And then, soon, I was running for the ladder, scrambling up, eager to fling myself off, wondering what kind of special spin I could include, how I could make the telling, the falling, more beautiful, more fun, more creative, more interesting and effective.
 
-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 314

Quote of the Day

Billy Collins used the metaphor of an eye chart.  When you get your eyes checked there's that big "e" on top of the chart that everyone can see.  Then the print gets smaller and finer and eventually you have to work harder.  He wants his poems to have a point of entry that is fairly effortless, and we want our songs to feel that way too.  To have a line or a moment where the whole room can enter in effortlessly.  But then those that want to go deeper and work harder and find other layers can explore the fine print.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

There is no good, let alone final answer about suffering and loss.  This is a question of embracing the paradox.  What I care about is that my life not be stripped of meaning and beauty in the here and now by overeager busybodies bent on converting me to their atheist cult or by religious zealots who soft-peddle lies about a God who solves everything.  He doesn't.

-- Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God, p. 194

Quote of the Day

Like a tree, planted near water, with deep roots.  A storm comes and the tree doesn't break because it's grounded enough to...bend.

-- Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 95

Quote of the Day

And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?

-- A. E. Housman

Quote of the Day

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good.  Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

-- William Wordsworth

Quote of the Day

(According to the Catholic Church), birth control, masturbation, homosexuality -- any sex act that isn't open to the "gift of life" is wrong.  Some well-meaning "liberal" Catholics claim that the Church isn't singling out gay people since all non-procreative sexual activity is wrong regardless of whether it's gay or straight.  But only gay people are expected to live lives devoid of intimacy and romantic love.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 14

Quote of the Day

I was never going to know -- really know -- what my mother's life had been, what her illness had been, if she'd been diagnosed and kept it a secret -- any of it.  She would remain a mystery, and I had to let her go.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 283

Quote of the Day

In spite of all the comforts and camaraderie of home, families can be dangerous.

-- Linford Detweiler

Quote of the Day

How can one be a Christian when those such as [Rousas John] Rushdoony, [Jerry] Jenkins, and [Tim] LaHaye describe themselves as such?  How can one be an atheist when a T-shirt vendor such as [Richard] Dawkins has foisted himself on thoughtful and humane non-believers?  [Marc] Chagall shows the way for all of us, whatever we believe.  His life and art demonstrate that it is possible to buck the trend of cynicism and to believe in each other more than in the rightness of our particular ideas.

-- Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God, p. 122

Quote of the Day

I tell you this because in the times I found myself in the deepest, darkest places of doubt and despair, it seemed too huge a leap of faith to trust that there is a God who loves and helps and hears and heals ... But the truth is, I had already taken a leap, because we've all taken a leap ... Whether you believe that this is all there is or we come from outer space or you're a Christian or a Buddhist or you're Jewish or Jedi or you don't believe that we can know anything for sure, it's all a form of faith.  Nobody hasn't leaped.

-- Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 124-125

Quote of the Day

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

--  Franz Kafka

Quote of the Day

When you look at Americans' day-to-day activity, the top two things we hate the most on a day-to-day basis are, number one: housework and number two: the daily commute in our cars.  In fact, if you can cut an hour-long commute each way out of your life, it's the [happiest] equivalent of making up an extra forty thousand dollars a year.

-- Dan Buettner

Quote of the Day

This intuitive sense that the Church was wrong about homosexuality -- this unshakable conviction that the Church was wrong about me -- led me to wonder what else the Church might be wrong about.

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 7

Quote of the Day

I was proud of how I handled her now.  I pretended my mother was a near-extinct, exotic bird.  You had to be very subtle and cagey in your approach.  You had to hold out your hand and pretend you wanted anything other than for her to land there.  I loved the feel of her feathers, the glance of them on my palm, the whisper, and I worked for it.

-- Heather Sellers, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 262

Rachel Held Evans:

Hate grows in the soil of ignorance, and when it comes to sexuality, there’s a lot of ignorance to go around. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a well-intentioned Christian say something about how children in gay families suffer (this is not true) or how all gay people are pedophiles (also not true).  We can debate the merits of same-sex marriage, certainly, but let’s do it based on facts, not myths. And we can discuss how the Bible and Christian tradition factor into things as well, but let’s be informed about our convictions.   Check out 10 anti-gay myths debunked at The Southern Poverty Law Center to get started, and then follow the links to the various studies and scientific research that is cited there. For books, The Marin Foundation has a handy list here that includes perspectives from both conservative and progressive Christians.
 
"Responding to homophobia in the Christian community"

Frank Schaeffer:

The New Atheists have played into the evangelical/fundamentalist's hands.  Each side fans the flames of victimhood.  "An atheist can never be president!" says one side.  "A Christian never gets a fair shake in the New York Times!" claims the other.  Each side is led by opportunists claiming to speak for a beleaguered minority.

Patience With God, p. 118

Karin Bergquist:

Well, you don't choose your audience -- they choose you.  And the more diverse our audience is, the better.

Rob Bell:

I believe that this is one of the most urgent questions people are asking at this time about the very nature of faith: Can conviction and humility coexist as the dance partners we need them to be?  I say yes, they can.  I have seen it up close, and it's possible.  It requires that we pay as much attention to how we are talking as to what we are talking about, and it requires us to leave the paradox as it is, the tension unresolved, holding our convictions with humility.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 95

Honoré de Balzac:

For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed.

Lost Illusions

Misty Irons:

This brings us back to the problem with "love" because here is where I think Christians get tripped up. Sometimes when you determine that you are going to "love" another person, you subtly start viewing that person as someone who needs you, not as someone whom you need just as much. And since this person who is the object of your great loving affection needs you, your approval and your advice so much, that gives you the right to be stern, instructive and somewhat overbearing, particularly when you believe you know what is best for them.  On the other hand, if someone is truly your friend, then you ought to have the humility to recognize that you can't just say whatever the heck you want, because if you drive them away you are hurting yourself too. You will be more gentle, more respectful, and make a genuine effort to be winsome and helpful. If you hurt that person and they walk away, you won't smugly tell yourself that "that's just the collateral damage of speaking the truth in love." You would feel quite devastated, and you wouldn't rest until you made things right.
 
"On having gay friends"

Heather Sellers:

I couldn't bear to think of my mother loving me but unable to face me, to stare into my eyes, to care for me emotionally, to offer me her face.  Like any daughter, as much as I wanted to separate from her, I wanted to be deeply connected to her, I wanted to redeem her, I wanted to protect her.  I wanted to love and to understand, in that order.

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 224

Rachel Held Evans:

Ignorance and hateful attitudes thrive when they are normalized and accepted without pushback. Your friends may just assume you agree with them when you don’t speak up about their homophobia.  On more than one occasion, I’ve heard Dan calmly respond to a crude homophobic joke with something simple like, “Hey, man. That’s not funny. You’re talking about real people here. Please don’t say that kind of stuff around me.” It’s awkward for about 10 seconds. But it’s better than replaying that conversation over and over and wishing you had said something. And it sends the signal that not everyone is okay with crude jokes or ugly language at the expense of gay and lesbian people.  More often than not, there will be someone else in the group who is relieved you said something and may even offer support. And sometimes, there will be someone in the group who is relieved to know he or she is not also hated or despised by you. Try thinking ahead of time about a line or two you can use in situations like these so you’re ready.

"Responding to homophobia in the Christian community"

Frank Schaeffer:

Indeed, (Richard) Dawkins needs the evangelicals and they need him.  As the authors of An Evangelical Manifesto wrote, "striking intolerance shown by the new atheists is a warning sign."  Conversely, how would Dawkins' followers use their Scarlet A pins to open their conversations if America weren't full of evangelical/fundamentalists?  The fundamentalists in both camps need to claim they are hated.  The leaders push their followers to fear each other to maintain their identity -- and lecture fees.

Patience With God, p. 118

Goethe:

A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.

Rob Bell:

Years ago I was struggling -- really, really struggling to make sense of a number of things in my life, in a lot of pain.  I started going to a counselor who gradually helped me understand why I was feeling how I was feeling and how I got there and what a better future might look like ... He was kind and humble and open, and yet firm and rock solid and unshakable.  All at the same time.  He was a man of faith, deeply grounded in his convictions, and yet those firm convictions didn't close him down or harden him or make him brittle and closed-minded; they had the exact opposite effect.  They seemed to make him more flexible and limber and engaging.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 94-95

Eric Hoffer:

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time.  It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life.  When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else.

Misty Irons:

You might object that loving people is more important than liking them, so shouldn't I be emphasizing that instead? I know that love is supposed to be biblical and all, yet I've become somewhat suspicious of that approach. I've noticed that we tend to justify committing all sorts of abuses and cruelties against people in the name of love (at least our idea of love), particularly against our gay friends and family members. Don't ask me why. All I know is that if you work on how you're going to "be loving" toward someone who is gay, you're liable to say or do something very un-Christian. But if you work on liking someone, you'll have a much better chance of being like Christ to them.

"On having gay friends"

Heather Sellers:

For the first time in my life, I felt I could see all the versions of my mother at once.  For the first time, I recognized my mother and saw chaos for what it was: chaos.  It was something I knew, but not something I was in.  I felt clear and strong and calm.  I didn't need her to see me or know me; she wasn't going to be able to do that.  And I could see what needed to happen next.  I could hear Helder whispering in my ear: Sure, help her, do the good-daughter thing -- but do it for yourself and with no attachment to any outcome.  Nothing you do will hold.  Nothing will change.  You can live with a lack of clarity.

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 217

Epicurus:

We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.

Frank Schaeffer:

Most of that sense of lost battles is related to the so-called culture wars issues in which evangelical/fundamentalists did not fare so well, from the legalization of abortion to gay rights.  But rather than admitting that they were often losing the arguments, or had come across as so mean (or plain dumb) that few outsiders wanted to be like them, they blamed everyone else, from the courts to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the New York Times, and the "left-wing media."  Just about any scapegoat would do to deny or disguise the simple fact that fewer Americans wanted to follow the evangelical/fundamentalist Church Ladies into their gloomy cave (and/or the never-never land of the Rapture) and park their brains there.

Patience With God, p. 115

Annie Dillard:

If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself.

Rob Bell:

Do you believe the exact same things you did in the exact same way you did five years ago?  Probably not.  You've grown, evolved, changed, had new experiences, studied, listened, observed, suffered, reflected, and reexamined.  That's how faith is.  We learn as we go.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 93-94

Eric Hoffer:

There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished...Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.

Misty Irons:

Fortunately, it's not difficult for me to find things I like about people who are thoughtful, honest, introspective, compassionate and courageous, which fits the profile of many gay and lesbian people I know simply because of [the] kind of hardships they've been through. I also like people who think outside the box, have a sense of humor, and understand that life can be disappointing so that they appreciate how things like a good meal, good conversation or a decent movie can get you through the day.

"On having gay friends"

Heather Sellers:

Helder shook his head.  "The adult speaks.  The child who wants to please her mother, who never wants to do anything to make Mom unhappy, she has to be kept in the backseat.  She can't have the car keys."

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 191

Anne Lamott:

Sometimes circumstances conspire to remind us or even let us glimpse how thin the membrane is between here and there, between birth and the grave, between the human and the divine.  In wonder at the occasional direct experience of this, we say, Thank you.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 45

Frank Schaeffer:

When you are no longer defined by what you are not, you can begin to be for something -- say, trying to write a real book and let the chips fall where they may.  This may not seem like a very big deal to someone raised in a secular home, but believe me, for me it was.

Patience With God, p. 104

Samuel Butler:

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Rob Bell:

Two people can believe the same thing but hold that belief in very different ways.  You can believe something with so much conviction that you'd die for that belief, and yet in the exact same moment you can also say, "I could be wrong..."  This is because conviction and humility, like faith and doubt, are not opposites; they're dance partners.  It's possible to hold your faith with open hands, living with great conviction and yet at the same time humbly admitting that your knowledge and perspective will always be limited.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 93

Tom Rothman:

The trick is, from the business side, to try to be fiscally responsible so you can be creatively reckless.

Rachel Held Evans:

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against. We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers. We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation. We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities. We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

"Why millennials are leaving the church"

Heather Sellers:

He looked at me, kind of checking me over, to see, I suspected, if I could handle the truth.  He cocked his head.  "You might not ever know -- you might not get a clear diagnosis regarding your mother.  You can still take a clear position."

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 191

Anne Lamott:

To watch one dance number by Fred Astaire or Pina Bausch is to see the sacred in communal energy ... We see in art a moment in time, an instant, and this is holy.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 83

Frank Schaeffer:

How individuals are treated affects everyone.

Patience With God, p. 53

Rita Mae Brown:

If there's good in life, I'm going to find it.

Rita Will, p. 420

Rob Bell:

Fundamentalism shouldn't surprise us.  When a leader comes along who eliminates the tension and dodges the paradox and neatly and precisely explains who the enemies are and gives black-and-white answers to questions, leaving little room for the very real mystery of the divine, it should not surprise us when that person gains a large audience.  Especially if that person is really, really confident.  Certainty is easier, faster, awesome for fundraising, and it often generates large amounts of energy because who doesn't want to be right?

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 92-93

Amanda Duberman:

There is an intimacy ensconced within the prison that we scarcely see outside of it -- a reminder that Piper, and all the characters, will never really be free until they emancipate themselves from whom they've tricked themselves into being.

"Surrendering to Orange Is the New Black"

Rachel Held Evans:

According to Jesus, the purpose of the Bible is to help us love God and our neighbors better.  If love is Jesus' definition of "biblical," then perhaps it should be ours as well.

"Slant"

Heather Sellers:

I could be kind to her, but I was done colluding.  I was starting a new life.

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, p. 120

Anne Lamott:

We're individuals in time and space who are often gravely lost, and then miraculously, in art, found.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 81-82

Frank Schaeffer:

Beauty and love expressed in art, poetry, and religion are among the things that last.

Patience With God, p. 65

Rita Mae Brown:

The differing forms of oppression -- sexism, racism, religious persecution or hating homosexuals -- are the same meat but different gravy.  Sadly, many people in these disparate groups don't understand how much they have in common with one another.  It's like a reverse snob game: Who is the most oppressed?  Hey, who cares?  Pain is pain.

Rita Will, p. 464

Rob Bell:

For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt.  The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt.  But faith and doubt aren't opposites.  Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching.  Faith and doubt aren't opposites; they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, p. 92

Eugene Ionesco:

A writer never has a vacation.  For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

Rachel Held Evans:

So, does this mean understanding God through His Word is an impossible task?  Is there nothing left to do but shrug and give up, knowing we'll never really "get" what the Bible is saying, let alone agree on it?  Not at all.  The best thing to do with our bias is to acknowledge it head-on -- and then proceed with humility as we search for the Bible's meaning in community.

"Slant"

William Blake:

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

Anne Lamott:

Wow comes in all shapes and sizes, like people ... A lowercase wow might be seeing a kid execute a dive at a town pool, or coming upon a blanket of poppies in the field that was destroyed by grass fire last summer.  And then there are the uppercase Wows.  Yosemite.  Fireworks.  Watching puppies being born at the neighbors' when you were six.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 74

Frank Schaeffer:

How curious that the Calvinist wing of the Protestant religion finds it soul mate in the atheist's determinism.  Both get rid of free will theoretically while demanding that their followers choose to go out and save the world with correct thinking.

Patience With God, p. 48

Rita Mae Brown:

It was odd, living in a place that held nothing of your own, but I learned that wherever my books and cats are, that's home.

Rita Will, p. 314

Anna Quindlen:

Can we ever value the wealth of our spirit more than the size of our salaries?

Grinnell College Commencement Address

Anne Lamott:

When we are stunned to the place beyond words, we're finally starting to get somewhere ... When we are stunned to the place beyond words, when an aspect of life takes us away from being able to chip away at something until it's down to a manageable size and then to file it nicely away, when all we can say in response is "Wow," that's a prayer.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 73

Rachel Held Evans:

We can learn a lot from our Jewish friends in this regard.  My friend Ahava, an Orthodox Jew, likes to say that if three Jews are in a room, you can expect to find four opinions.

When discussing the Hebrew Scriptures (what we know as the Old Testament), Jews not only tolerate but celebrate a diversity of perspectives.  In fact, they are quite comfortable allowing differing interpretations to coexist, as long as the interpretations are sensible and in keeping with the fundamentals of the faith.  Rather than fighting to get everyone on the exact same page, they treat differences as learning opportunities to see the biblical text in a new light.

"Slant"

Rita Mae Brown:

The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality.  You're just a faggot.  Or whatever -- fill in the blank.  Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

Rita Will, p. 392

Leo Tolstoy:

Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

Frank Schaeffer:

I believe that the ideological opposites I'll be talking about -- atheism and fundamentalist religion -- often share the same fallacy: truth claims that reek of false certainties.

Patience With God, p. xv

Mark Noll:

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Samuel Johnson:

The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

Anne Lamott:

Wow, because you are almost speechless, but not quite.  You can manage, barely, one syllable. 

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 73

Rachel Held Evans:

And we're not supposed to engage the Bible all on our own, either.  We're meant to prayerfully engage it alongside our brothers and sisters in the faith.  When we remain open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the input of others who have their own experiences and insights, we can understand Scripture far better than we would on our own.

Of course, we won't always agree on how to interpret some of the most complex and confusing passages.  But these tensions, in the end, are what keep us humble.  They remind us that our interpretations are only as inerrant as we are.

"Slant"

Rita Mae Brown:

You can't participate in any group of people, much less a family, if you aren't truthful.

Rita Will, p. 218

Adam Gurri:

The perfect balance is committing to only those crafts that you can perform with satisfaction even if you have to do so in utter obscurity.  Then, put your work out in public as part of the process itself -- if you're making homebrew beer or an Arduino hack, make a video or write about the process as a means to think harder about the details of it.  If you're a writer, think of putting it online as simply having the work backed up in one more place.  In this way, you open yourself up to the spectrum of possibilities, ranging from utter obscurity at one end to global fame at the other.  Far more likely is something closer to the obscurity end but much more satisfying -- that you will draw the attention of a relative few who share your interests.

Frank Schaeffer:

When talking about the unknowable, pretending to have the facts is about as useful as winning a medal from the Wizard of Oz.

Patience With God, p. xv

Emma L. E. Rees:

For until we have a language and a platform for talking honestly about women's bodies and sexual drives, we're doomed into a cycle of objectification and silence.

"Not Seeing the C-Word (Or Even the V-Word)"

John Shore:

We read because it's awesome to climb into someone else's heart and mind, to know what they know -- to, for just a moment or two, become them.  And if the book we have read is a great one, then on some weird cellular level we are permanently altered by it; for the rest of our lives, we are a little more like the author of that great book.

"The Heart of a Moralist: Dan Savage’s 'American Savage'”

Anne Lamott:

Sin is not the adult bookstore on the corner.  It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, and all the isms, racism and sexism and so forth.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 62

Rachel Held Evans:

This is what I love about the Bible.  It's meant to be a conversation-starter, not a conversation-ender.  Think about it: If the Bible were a straightforward list of rules upon which we could all agree, there would be no Sunday school, no Bible studies, no seminaries, no 2:30 a.m. dorm room debates about predestination and free will -- because there would be nothing to talk about.

"Slant"

Rita Mae Brown:

A human being must learn at a very young age how to connect to other human beings.  Our technologies are driving us apart, only connecting us in terms of information, not in terms of emotions.

Rita Will, p. 138

Frank Schaeffer:

Fill a church with a thousand people moaning, "Lord have mercy," or pack a million pilgrims on their hajj around that rock, or fill a classroom with students applauding someone's declaration of atheism, and each member of the group can say to himself or herself, "So many of us can't be wrong!  There must be something to this!"

Patience With God, p. xii

Chuck Close:

Inspiration is for amateurs.  The rest of us just show up and get to work.

John Krokidas:

Finally, about five years ago, I got a manager and he asked if I had anything else I had been working on. I showed him the script and he said, “Are you freaking joking me? Why have you kept this in hiding? It’s fantastic!” Sometimes it takes some acknowledgement outside your creative circle to know your work is in a good place and you can let it go.

"Five Questions with Kill Your Darlings Director John Krokidas"

Dan Sinker:

"Everyone" isn't an audience.  "Everyone" is a byproduct of an incredibly successful thing that was made for a far more specific bunch of people.  Don't ever make something for "Everyone" make it for someone.  And make that person love it.

"Oh my god, don't make things for 'Everyone.'"

Anne Lamott:

Without revelation and reframing, life can seem like an endless desert of danger with scratchy sand in your shoes, and yet if we remember or are reminded to pay attention, we find so many sources of hidden water, so many bits and chips and washes of color, in a weed or the gravel or a sunrise.  There are so many ways to sweep the sand off our feet.  So we say, "Oh my God.  Thanks."

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 53

Rachel Held Evans:

Despite what some people say, the Bible is not a blueprint.  It's not a bullet-point list of rules that leaves no room for discussion.  Instead, the Bible is an ancient collection of poetry, letters, history, laws, prophecies, proverbs and stories assembled over thousands of years and written in languages and cultures far different than our own.  It's just the sort of literature to generate conversation.

"Slant"

Rita Mae Brown:

A community is weakened by any member's lying, for whatever reason.  You usually uncover the lie in a crisis, which makes it twice as bad.

Rita Will, p. 206

Frank Schaeffer:

Why do I write about faith and/or include religion and religious people in so many of my books?  What's it to me if I disagree with the New Atheists and with religious fundamentalists?  First, one writes about the life one has experienced.  I've lived religion.  Second, I don't like to be forced to choose between lousy alternatives.  Third, I think that I keep writing about faith because my faith needs affirmation.

Patience With God, p. xii

Adrienne Rich:

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.

Marianne Moore:

I seem almost a plagiarist.  [I quote a lot because I'm] just trying to be honorable and not to steal things.  I've always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better?  If I wanted to say something and somebody had said it ideally, then I'd take it but give the person credit for it.  That's all there is to it.  If you are charmed by an author, I think it's a very strange and invalid imagination that doesn't long to share it.  Somebody else should read it, don't you think?

Eleanor Roosevelt:

To be mature you have to realize what you value most.  It is extraordinary to discover that comparatively few people reach this level of maturity.  They seem never to have paused to consider what has value for them.  They spend great effort and sometimes make great sacrifices for values that, fundamentally, meet no real needs of their own.  Perhaps they have imbibed the values of their particular profession or job, of their community or their neighbors, of their parents or family.  Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste.  You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

Anne Lamott:

We are too often distracted by the need to burnish our surfaces, to look good so that other people won't know what screwed-up messes we, or our mate or kids or finances, are.  But if you gently help yourself back to the present moment, you see how life keeps stumbling along and how you may actually find your way through another ordinary or impossible day.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 52-53

Rachel Held Evans:

The reality of our slanted interpretation is also why prescriptive appeals to "biblical manhood," "biblical womanhood" or "biblical" anything can be so problematic.  When we talk about the Bible in this way, we tend to flatten it out -- emphasizing some passages while neglecting others and often reading our own cultures and experiences into the text.  More often than not, we end up prooftexting -- making our argument with select verses that back it up.  Yet in doing so, we show our real commitment to what we want the Bible to say rather than what it actually says.

"Slant"

Rita Mae Brown:

I've done the best I could given my temperament, my talent, the pressures of daily life.  I don't think any of us can do more than that and there's always someone who will do it better.  Still, you soldier on.

Rita Will, p. xi

Frank Schaeffer:

I find myself praying, "Lord, may none but loving arms ever hold (my granddaughter Lucy)."  That prayer has nothing to do with theology.  I'd pray it whether I believed there is a God or not, for the same reason that on a lovely spring morning when I'm looking at the view of the river that flows past our home I sometimes exclaim, " That's beautiful!" out loud, even when I'm alone.

Patience With God, p. xi

Geneen Roth:

Most of us spend our lives protecting ourselves from losses that have already happened.

Janis Ian:

I'd always looked on myself as the guardian of my talent.  I'd done nothing to earn it; it was given to me at birth.  My job was to protect it and nurture it.  That was the prime commitment in my life, to take care of the artist in me...

Society's Child, p. 222

Lynda Barry:

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.

Anne Lamott:

Some of us with tiny paranoia issues think that so much information and understanding is being withheld from us -- by colleagues, by family, by life, by God -- knowledge that would save us, and help us break the code and enable us to experience life with peace and amusement.  But in our quieter moments we remember that (a) there are no codes, and (b) if you are paying attention, plenty is being revealed.  

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 52

Rachel Held Evans:

From gender roles to just about any other issue you can think of, committed and good-hearted Christians often disagree on what the Bible means and how it should be applied to our lives.

Why?  Because the bottom line is that we all bring a set of assumptions and biases to Scripture, and these biases color our perception of what is "biblical."

"Slant"

Austin Kleon:

Anybody who tells people to "do what you love no matter what" should also have to teach a money management course. 

Low overhead + no debt + "do what you love" = a good life.

"I deserve nice things" + debt + "do what you love" = a time bomb.

"On doing what you love"

Emily Dickinson:

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.

Janis Ian:

Writing, at its best, is a naked profession.

Society's Child, p. 253

Anne Lamott:

When someone shares with you a horrible truth -- about the marriage that seemed fine, or work that seemed valuable, or a mind that turned out to be weaker than you thought -- you say, "Thank you for the openness between us -- that's the greatest gift."

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 51

Rachel Held Evans:

Frustrated by the mixed messages I'd received throughout the years about what it means to practice "biblical womanhood," I committed a year of my life to examining (and often practicing) all of the Bible's teachings about womanhood -- no picking and choosing ... I studied all of these passages in their contexts, often to discover they might not mean what I'd always been told they mean.  For example, Proverbs 31 is regarded by Hebrew scholars to be a poem that celebrates what a woman has already accomplished, not one that dictates a domestic to-do list likely to intimidate the domestically challenged among us.  I learned that nearly all of the Bible's instructions regarding female modesty have to do with excessive wealth, not sexuality.  I learned, too, that marriage and motherhood are far from the only female vocations celebrated by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. 
 
"Slant"

Janis Ian:

I don't really care about arriving.  I care about what happens on the path I take to get there.

Society's Child, p. 222

Austin Kleon:

None of (my publishing success) would have happened if I'd only stuck to posting work that I thought was serious, or "good."

"Show Your Work! My Creative Mornings Talk"

Frank Schaeffer:

The cure for hubris (Protestant or otherwise) is, I think, to experience God through failure, beauty, tragedy, community, and love.

Patience With God, p. 129

Rita Mae Brown:

Evil is born in loneliness and despair.  One of the cruelest punishments for a human being is to be separated from other human beings -- or to be told s/he is a lesser human being.

Rita Will, p. 471

Pierre Reverdy:

There is no love; there are only proofs of love.

Anne Lamott:

Through the most ordinary things, books, for instance, or a postcard, or eyes or hands, life is transformed.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 47

Rachel Held Evans:

I've decided to quit apologizing for my questions.  It's not enough for me to maintain my intellectual integrity as a Christian; I also want to maintain my emotional integrity as a Christian.  And I don't need answers to all of my questions to do that.  I need only the courage to be honest about my questions and doubts, and the patience to keep exploring and trusting in spite of them.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart"

Janis Ian:

I'd had very few female role models; there was no woman to pattern myself after as a professional.  When I was coming up, women didn't lead the band, let alone play lead or write all their own material ... Stella (Adler) changed all that.  She gave me a language for what I'd only felt in my heart.  She set me free, telling me it was not only good to be an artist, it was noble.  It was necessary.  It brought order out of chaos, it served the teeming masses.  It made the world tolerable. 

Society's Child, p. 219

Austin Kleon:

Part of the reason I love the internet so much is that I can put stuff up and if it sucks, nobody will say anything, but if it's good, I'll know, because somebody will tell me.

"Show Your Work! My Creative Mornings Talk"

Amy to perform at Women's Work

Amy will be presenting some of her poetry today at Nashville's seventh annual Women's Work festival. Come and enjoy an afternoon of original poetry and spoken word presented by wonderful women wordsmiths!

Sunday, May 12th, at 2:30 p.m.
Z. Alexander Looby Theater
Looby Branch Library
2301 Rosa L. Parks Blvd.
Nashville, TN
$5

For more information, or to purchase tickets in advance, please visit the Tennessee Women's Theater Project.

Daniel Dennett:

I, for one, fear that if we don't subject religion to ... scrutiny now, and work together for whatever revisions and reforms are called for, we will pass on the legacy of ever more toxic forms of religion to our descendants.

Samuel Johnson:

It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.

Anne Lamott:

The words "wow" and "awe" are the same height and width, all w's and short vowels.  They could dance together.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 84

Rachel Held Evans:

Perhaps in reaction to the "scandal of the evangelical mind," evangelicalism of late has developed a general distrust of emotion when it comes to theology.  So long as an idea seems logical, so long as it fits consistently with the favored theological paradigm, it seems to matter not whether it is morally reprehensible at an intuitive level.  I suspect this is why the new breed of rigid Calvinism that follows the "five points" to their most logical conclusion, without regard to the moral implications of them, has flourished in the past twenty years.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart"

Gretchen Rubin:

Aristotle declared happiness to be the summum bonum, the chief good; people desire other things, such as power or wealth or losing ten pounds, because they believe they will lead to happiness, but their real goal is happiness.

The Happiness Project, p.6

Janis Ian:

Like me, my favorite singers had one thing in common -- none of them were born with beautiful voices.  They'd had to make themselves great singers.  In fact, I've often wondered whether that's why most people who are born with beautiful voices are not, by and large, extraordinary singers.  They may become great vocalists, for sure.  They may sound pretty,  But the grit, the steel, the nuances that make for great interpretation...well, they're usually not found in pretty voices.  They're found in people like Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald.

Society's Child, p. 170

Frank Schaeffer:

I do still avow some form of Christianity in spite of my doubts, the attack on faith by the New Atheists, and the "certainties" of the religious fundamentalists who claim their way is the only truth, which is another way to attack faith because it drives people away from experiencing God.

Patience With God, p. xv

Rita Mae Brown:

What does it say about a community if it rewards lying and punishes the truth?  This is the moral conundrum each gay person must face.  The time has come for all of us to face it.

Rita Will, p. 206

Colette:

What a wonderful life I've had!  I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

Anne Lamott:

Awe is why we are here.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 83

Rachel Held Evans:

For what makes the Church any different from a cult if it demands we sacrifice our conscience in exchange for unquestioned allegiance to authority?  What sort of God would call himself love and then ask that I betray everything I know in my bones to be love in order to worship him?  Did following Jesus mean becoming some shadow of myself, drained of empathy and compassion and revulsion to injustice?

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart"

Robert Louis Stevenson:

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Janis Ian:

Someone else gave words to my feelings, made me aware that out of such torment could come great art.

Society's Child, p. 105-106

Frank Schaeffer:

What does it say about the nature of faith in God that when a believer -- say, a former evangelical/fundamentalist like me -- questions his or her faith or changes it, there are otherwise seemingly sane people so threatened that they take the time to call down God's judgment on the questioner?

Patience With God, p. 16

Rita Mae Brown:

Language is music, and few languages are capable of such wide cadence as our own.

Rita Will, p. 284

Gertrude Stein:

Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.

Anne Lamott:

Artists channel it, corral it, make it visible to the rest of us.  The best works of art are like semaphores of our experience, signaling what we didn't know was true but do now.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 82

Rachel Held Evans:

Why would God fashion a person in her mother's womb, number the hairs on her head, and then leave her without any hope of salvation?  Can salvation be boiled down to luck of the draw?  How is that just?  Shouldn't God be more loving and compassionate than I?

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart"

Ellen DeGeneres:

Find out who you are and figure out what you believe in.  Even if it's different from what your neighbors believe in and different from what your parents believe in.  Stay true to yourself.  Have your own opinion.  Don't worry about what people say about you or think about you.  Let the naysayers nay.  They will eventually grow tired of naying.

Seriously...I'm Kidding, p. 240

Thomas Merton:

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.  That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

Frank Schaeffer:

You can take the evangelical/fundamentalist out of the evangelical/fundamentalist world, but the harder habit to break -- speaking for myself -- is the evangelical/fundamentalist addiction to silver-bullet, instant, born-again sorts of "solutions."

Patience With God, p. 106

Rita Mae Brown:

Anyone can write one book.  Almost anyone.  Fewer people can write a novel, as fiction is difficult.  The true test is writing the second and then the third work of fiction.  By the time you fire off that third one, you're either a writer or you're not.  If you don't know it, everyone around you does.  A fiction writer lives or dies on the page.

Rita Will, p. 288

Virginia Woolf:

My mind works in idleness.  To do nothing is often my most profitable way.

Anne Lamott:

Art makes it hard to ignore truth, that Life explodes and blooms, consumes, rots and radiates and slithers; that eternity really is in a blade of grass.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 82-83

Albert Schweitzer:

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Ellen DeGeneres:

If there is any message I want you to take from this book, it is that befriending a parrot can be both frustrating and infinitely rewarding.  And if there is another message I want you to take from this book, it's that you can be happy.  There is so much bad news in the world right now and sometimes it's hard to see the positive side of things, but it is possible and there are things you can do to be happy.

Seriously...I'm Kidding, p. 169

Patti Smith:

A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I’ve done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it’s your calling.

Frank Schaeffer:

Concentrating on  belief rather than on character leads some people -- be they atheist or religious -- to get stuck on the training rules and miss the whole point of "boot camp."  They never get their "eagle, globe, and anchor" emblem and graduate.  It's as if there were platoons of recruits stuck on Paris Island who had never graduated and who, now as crazy old men, are still marching around yelling cadence, having mistaken the training phase for being Marines.  Rifle drill and doing a perfect port arms are seen by this lost platoon of fundamentalist recruits as the end point, not a step along the road.

Patience With God, p. 181