Tom Lin > Quotes

“The prophet said that it had been a creature of an antediluvian age, that long ago it swam here in a sunlit sea forty fathoms deep. And he said this land was once somewhere else, that indeed all land had once been somewhere else, that the earth turned and turns in an endless sweep of placelessness. The prophet spoke again of his favored subject, time beyond time, of mountains ground to dust in the blink of an ancient eye, of chasms chiseled through sandstone. Our world, he said, was but a fiendish patchwork of rock and water, seamed under the oceans with fire and rock.”
― Tom Lin

“These are small hours of the day, and in these hours men and beasts alike lose their way. Dusk and dawn, the liminal twins, each one interchangeable with the other. The passing of time perceptible only in the faint redness to the west, or the rising glow to the east. Under cloudcover there is no telling whatsoever; the minutes spool out irregular and unremarkable. All wait for the hour to reveal itself, for the sky to roll over black, or else bleach to colorless day. And in these small hours of the day time forgets itself.”
― Tom Lin

“I often wonder what Christians in the United States will need to leave behind in order to embrace the adventure God has before us. I wonder what God might be stripping away so we can cling, desperately and helplessly, only to him. How does the longing for power, privelege, and position freeze us in place? How do our financial resources, technologival tools, and cultural arrogance insulate us from an honest encounter with God and with the world?
What might it look like for us to travel lightly today?”
― Tom Lin, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference