Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

what are the odds that this story of Jesus is true? Come on, Nadia. It’s a fucking fairy tale. And in the very next moment I thought this: Except that throughout my life, I’ve experienced it to be true.

This is what faith is about. You can't judge others bc it's incredible

the love and grace and mercy of Jesus was so offensive to us that we killed him.

He wondered about God: Was he beyond the pale of God’s love? Throwing all my coolness and sarcasm aside, I prayed for him over the phone.

God is not far off, but here among the brokenness of our lives.

I was a strong, smart and smart-mouthed girl, and the church I was raised in had no place for that kind of thing even though they loved me.

I can’t imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can’t imagine that God doesn’t reveal God’s self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity.

booze

was the one thing I could rely on to even slightly loosen those muscles in my chest that knot up from the fear and pressure of just being human.

Getting sober

felt instead like

God pul...

hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, “Screw you. I’ll take the destruction please.” God looked at tiny, little red-fa...

in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church.

I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake

every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.”

when I’ve experienced loss and felt so much pain that it feels like nothing else ever existed, the last thing I need is a well-meaning but vapid person saying that when God closes a door he opens a window. It makes me want to ask where exactly that window is so I can push him the fuck out of it.

Nadia's autobiography hits hard where we need it

Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.

God looks upon that which we dismiss as nothing, insignificant, and worthless, and says “Ha! Now that I can do something with.”

Treat us like shit, we’ll totally forgive you; but doesn’t forgiving a sin against us, or an evil done to many, come perilously to just that? Isn’t forgiving over and over just the thing that keeps battered women battered?

What they don’t tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends.

Easter

it’s about the way God never seems to adhere to our expectations of what a proper God would do (as in not get himself killed in a totally avoidable way).”