More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 3 - September 29, 2019
HELEN KELLER
John Dryden,
“Good people starve for want of impudence.”
nourishing bold faith
it is God’s way, it seems, always to send the weakest among us to do what must be done:
impelled to take a stand.
Something has to be done and someone must do
how does it happen that the likes of us,
move from silence to publ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Tomorrow is the gift we are given to create for ourselves.
Consciousness commits.
It demands a steel-willed determination to do something, however little, to bring that awareness to life.
To speak a prophetic word is to stare down the opposition, squarely and honestly, in order to present for consideration another way to be a more human human being.
The problem now is determining how to lead a group that does not want to be led.
The prophet simply refuses to quit. The prophet does not ever go away. Ever. The voice of the prophet—silent or sure—has the eternal life given by an eternal God.
it is a steadfast, serious call to the righteous, not the reckless.
commitment to the “liberty and justice for all” we talk about.
It awakens people to hope again, to believe again, to begin to re-create the world again.
the prophet’s only weapon is vision and voice, time and timelessness.
What greater, more noble work can the human being do? What more clearly Christian can a Christian be?
“Who am I,”
Moses
“that I should go to ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Consciousness of God’s disappointment at Moses’s reluctance is a warning meant to be taken seriously.
Moses believes both the voice and the vision.
Lack of faith in God is one thing, we discover as we grow, but lack of self-confidence can be just as bad.
To deny the abilities I’ve been given—thought, insight, wisdom, analysis, understanding, explanation, persuasion—is a virtual sin against creation.
saves the soul from the grace of failure by never bothering to enter the fray.
It can bring six other demons with it—perfectionism, false humility, sensitivity, fear, anxiety, and anger—into
Perfectionism,
vitiates our every attempt to make a bad situation better.
A sense of worthlessness
Why do it? Who cares? What’s the use?
Sensitivity to criticism
There is always a sense that something is missing, something is lacking—and with that kind of doubt, the enthusiasm for the message wanes.
Fear and anxiety
this great adventure in the process of the new creation becomes a trial, a burden, a bane, a sure failure.
anger takes over.
Anger and strain and resentment and fear, fear, fear. Fear of who won’t like us for doing this. Fear at being labeled as part of it. Fear of losing,
Even our failures, we will come to understand, will be turned to success in the end.
da Vinci
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
“Impatience,”
Voltaire
“is the mark of independence, n...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Only the prophet who comes along crying out loud that they be put to new use can possibly save the mission by changing the ministry.
We begin to see the Tradition through the Gospel that roots it and the world that needs it badly, but in new and meaningful ways.
Nothing could be more painful, more likely to break the prophet’s heart, more likely to distort the prophecy itself than to be separated from the very clay that shaped her.
Rejection is the ultimate punishment: it cuts the prophet’s birthright off at the root. Identity becomes a basic issue. Who am I if what called me, named me, marked me, is no longer the aim and the measure of my existence? Who am I then?
To have to look for community outside what I have always known to be community is also a damning condition itself.
