Kate Bowler > Quotes

“What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, "You are limitless"? Everything is not possible. The mighty kingdom of God is not yet here. What if 'rich' did not have to mean 'wealthy', and 'whole' did not have to mean 'healed'? What if being the people of "the gospel" meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible--separation. Brokeness. An end without an ending.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“I can't reconcile the way that the world is jolted by events that are wonderful and terrible, the gorgeous and the tragic. Except that I am beginning to believe that these opposites do not cancel each other out. I see a middle aged woman in the waiting room of the cancer clinic, her arms wrapped around the frail frame of her son. She squeezes him tightly, oblivious to the way he looks down at her sheepishly. He laughs after a minute, a hostage to her impervious love. Joy persists somehow and I soak it in. The horror of cancer has made everything seem like it is painted in bright colors. I think the same thoughts again and again. Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“God, I am walking to the edge of a cliff. Build me a bridge. I need to get to the other side.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was—for how I lived—I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Aging is a fucking privilege.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“I did not understand that one future comes at the exclusion of all others.

Everybody pretends that you die only once. But that’s not true. You can die a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear

“Plans are made. Plans come apart. New delights or tragedies pop up in their place. And nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“God is here. We are loved. It is enough.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Life is a privilege, not a reward.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“A lot of Christians like to remind me that heaven is my true home, which makes me want to ask them if they would like to go home first.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“...I had nothing to do but survive the feeling that some pain is for no reason at all. It became clearer than ever that life is not a series of choices. So often the experiences that define us are the ones that we didn't pick. Cancer. Betrayal. Miscarriage. Job loss. Mental illness. A novel coronavirus.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear

“But I don’t want ice cream, I want a world where there is no need for pediatric oncology, UNICEF, military budgets, or suicide rails on the top floors of tall buildings. The world would drip with mercy. Thy kingdom come, I pray, and my heart aches. And my tongue trips over the rest. Thy will be done.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Everything happens for a reason.” The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me the reason for my cancer. Because of my sin. Because of my unfaithfulness. Because God is fair. Because God is unfair. Because of my aversion to Brussels sprouts. I mean, no one is short of reasons. So if people tell you this, make sure you are there when they go through the cruelest moments of their lives, and start offering your own. When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Life is a series of losses," says my father-in-law one afternoon...."What Dad?"..."oh, I was just thinking about how, with age, it is one loss after another, " he replies. "Huh." He is right. With age we slowly lose our senses and even our pleasures, our parents and then our friends, preparing us for our own absence. An interesting thought.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Everybody pretends that you only die once. But that’s not true. You can die to a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human:

“At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“We’re all terminal,” he says simply, and it answers my unspoken question. How do you stop? You just stop. You come to the end of yourself. And then you take a deep breath. And say a prayer. And get back to work.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Don’t skip to the end,” he said, gently. “Don’t skip to the end.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“I read an article about how people in grief swear because they feel the English language has reached its limit in a time of inarticulate sorrow. Or at least that is what I tell people when I am casually dropping f-bombs over lunch as I explain the mysteries of Lent.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“Our lives are not problems to be solved. We can have meaning and beauty and love, but nothing even close to resolution.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear

“And I didn't know how to say the future was like a language I couldn't speak anymore.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear

“That feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to that floating feeling that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, pastors I knew, nuns I liked, *What am I going to do when it's gone?* And they knew exactly what I meant because they had either felt it themselves or read about it in great works of Christian theology. St. Augustine called it "the sweetness." Thomas Aquinas called it something mystical like "the prophetic light." But all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God's presence will go. There will be no lasting proof that God exists. There will be no formula for how to get it back.
But they offered me this small bit of certainty, and I clung to it. When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“When they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn't realize they had made.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before we’ve even started. It’s better this way.”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human:

“If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was—for how I lived—I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. I must learn to live in ordinary time, but I don’t know how.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“So often we are defined by the troubles that we live with rather than the things we conquer. Any persistent suffering requires being afraid. But who can stay awake to fear for so long?”
― Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear

“The hardest lessons come from the solutions people, who are already a little disappointed that I am not saving myself. There is always a nutritional supplement, Bible verse or mental process I have not adequately tried. “Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!” said a stranger named Jane in an email, having heard my news somewhere, and I was immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

“they feel the English language has reached its limit in a time of inarticulate sorrow.”
― Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved