Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

My spirituality is most active, not in meditation, but in the moments

when: I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole,

I hate this about myself, but if I said that there is not residual racism in me, racism that — after forty-four years of being reinforced by messages in the media and culture around me — I simply do not know how to escape, I would be lying. Even if I do own an “eracism” bumper sticker.

Sometimes I’m so thick that God has no choice but to be almost embarrassingly obtuse.

This is why being loved, really loved, can sting a little, reminding us of all the times we have loved poorly or not at all, all the ways in which we have done things that make us feel unworthy of real love.