Quote of the Day

By hiding my story away, I was not only shortchanging my own experience, but I was also keeping others from finding a place out of their own silence.

-- Jennifer Knapp, Facing the Music, p. 280

Quote of the Day

Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you'll attract people who love that kind of stuff.  It's that simple.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 132

Quote of the Day

For those who count the Bible as sacred, interpretation is not a matter of whether to pick and choose, but how to pick and choose.  We are all selective.  We all wrestle with how to interpret and apply the Bible to our lives.  We all go to the text looking for something, and we all have a tendency to find it.  So the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we reading with the prejudice of love or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed?

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 296

Quote of the Day

The follower of Jesus' example -- be she an atheist scientist working on a neuropsychology project, a pastor counseling gang members, a husband bringing his wife her coffee or a mom picking up her child at preschool -- will do anything it takes to live the reality of what it means to walk in another person's shoes.  To help us do that is the only point of going to any church or, for that matter, logging on to an atheist website.

-- Frank Schaeffer, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, p. 91

Quote of the Day

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 37

Quote of the Day

In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss.  Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 78

Quote of the Day

I came to understand the poem as a kind of prayer, an invocation, with an appeal to our higher selves at its emotional center.

-- Richard Blanco, For All of Us, One Today, p. 64

Quote of the Day

I had hidden away for too long, fought too hard to find peace with my own person to give up by going back to a place that was less than honest.

-- Jennifer Knapp, Facing the Music, p. 252-253

Quote of the Day

Connections don't mean shit.  I've never had any connections that weren't a natural outgrowth of doing things I was doing anyway.  Being good at things is the only thing that earns you clout or connections.

-- Steve Albini

Quote of the Day

If love was Jesus' definition of "biblical," then perhaps it should be mine.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 295

Quote of the Day

There is only one defense against the rising, worldwide, fear-filled fundamentalist tide engulfing all religions (including the intolerant religion of the New Atheists) which once engulfed me: the embrace of paradox and uncertainty as the virtuoso expression of love.

-- Frank Schaeffer, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, p. 90-91

Quote of the Day

To let ourselves sink into the joyful moments of our lives even though we know that they are fleeting, even though the world tells us not to be too happy lest we invite disaster -- that's an intense form of vulnerability.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 34

Quote of the Day

Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 77

Quote of the Day

In my mind, the purpose of being the inaugural poet and of my poem was to transcend politics and envision a new relationship between all Americans.  I wanted America to embrace itself, so to speak, and recognize -- no, feel -- how we are all an essential part of one whole, if only for those few minutes when I would stand at the podium.

-- Richard Blanco, For All of Us, One Today, p. 64

Quote of the Day

I only had the energy left for truth.

-- Jennifer Knapp, Facing the Music, p. 193

Quote of the Day

It is actually true that life is all about "who you know."  But who you know is largely dependent on who you are and what you do, and the people you know can't do anything for you if you're not doing good work.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 131

Quote of the Day

The Bible isn't an answer book.  It isn't a self-help manual.  It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives.  The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 294

Quote of the Day

Flee from exclusionary certainty.  As the bumper sticker says, "Mean People Suck!"  And that goes especially for people who are mean in the name of love.

-- Frank Schaeffer, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, p. 90

Quote of the Day

To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation -- that's also vulnerability.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 34

Quote of the Day

Joy and openness come from our own contented heart.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 75

Quote of the Day

I'm always amazed by the way unconscious feelings surface in poems, leading to a new or refined understanding of ourselves.  How they always seem to teach me something about myself and my world that I hadn't really acknowledged before.

-- Richard Blanco, For All of Us, One Today, p. 60

Quote of the Day

Music is such a fascinating thing.  It's amazing how a single song can so strongly teleport us to a place and a time in our lives that we thought we had forgotten.  For those of us drawn in by music, there is a soundtrack that plays through the movie of our lives.  It's as if all we have to do is turn up the volume, close our eyes, and we are there, capable of remembering and reliving what had been only a hazy recollection.

-- Jennifer Knapp, Facing the Music, p. 189

Quote of the Day

Stop worrying about how many people follow you online and start worrying about the quality of people who follow you.  Don't waste your time reading articles about how to get more followers.  Don't waste time following people online just because you think it'll get you somewhere.  Don't talk to people you don't want to talk to, and don't talk about stuff you don't want to talk about.  If you want followers, be someone worth following.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 129

Quote of the Day

It is a tragic and agonizing irony that instructions once delivered for the purpose of avoiding needless offense are now invoked in ways that needlessly offend, that words once meant to help draw people to the gospel now repel them.  Research shows that the overall number of women attending church has dropped by 11 percent in the last twenty years.  When female executives, entrepreneurs, academics, and creatives are told that they have to check their gifts at the church door, many turn away for good.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 263

Quote of the Day

Where we go to church, or whether we go, isn't the point.  The point is who are we becoming?  Does church help you to become the sort of person you'd pick to be stuck on a desert island with?  Good!  Go!  Does it hurt your chances of becoming that person?  Run!

-- Frank Schaeffer, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, p. 90

Quote of the Day

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow -- that's vulnerability.  Love is uncertain.  It's incredibly risky.  And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed.  Yes, it's scary and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved?

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 34

Quote of the Day

Learn to let go.  That is the key to happiness.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 74

Quote of the Day

There is a popular misconception that poetry -- perhaps all art -- happens out of sheer genius or inspiration, and that all artists work alone.  That hasn't been my experience.  Most writers I know rely on someone they can trust with their work, which essentially implies someone we can also trust with our lives.

-- Richard Blanco, For All of Us, One Today, p. 57

Quote of the Day

I wanted them to love me.  I wanted to tell them the truth.  I wanted them to rise to the occasion to deal with the reality of the human condition.  I wanted them to be the kind of Christian that I had searched the world for: comfortable with life's mysteries and unfazed by religious contradictions.  I wanted their kinship and affirmation, that I was loved and made, just as God wanted me to be.  I wanted them to be what they were not.

-- Jennifer Knapp, Facing the Music, p. 182

Quote of the Day

If you want fans, you have to be a fan first.  If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community.  If you're only pointing to your own stuff online, you're doing it wrong.  You have to be a connector.  The writer Blake Butler calls this being an open node.  If you want to get, you have to give.  If you want to be noticed, you have to notice.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 127

Quote of the Day

We are thus led to the conclusion that when Paul asks women to be silent...he is not talking about ordinary Christian women; rather, he has a specific group of women in mind.  His concern is with some untrained, morally loose, young widows, who, because they are theologically unformed, are teaching unorthodox ideas.

-- Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, p. 202