Plough Publishing > Plough's Quotes

“Twelve years after Opa died, I sat in the hall of the Harvard Freshman Union listening as President Neil Rudenstine prepared us for the rest of our lives. “You’re the best there is, the crème de la crème,” he told the 1,600 new freshmen, and I believed him with all my heart. For the next three years I kept on believing. A tumor of the soul was gradually taking over everything I thought and did. This was not Rudenstine’s fault: he was only doing his job. But my arrival at college coincided with the start of a new, aggressive phase of the disease.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“Just then, when everything seemed at its cheapest and falsest, I realized I had a choice to make. Either I could turn my back on any integrity I had left, or I could stop, turn around, and retrace my path until I got back to something I was sure of.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“Standing by Opa’s grave one evening, we start talking about him. Long past midnight we are still there, remembering stories. How he faced down the Nazis. How he was separated from his family and sent to work in a leper colony. How we wish we could talk to him.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“He wasn’t famous. Yet just because he wasn’t famous, in the same way most of us will never be, we want to ask him a few questions. Embarrassingly basic questions, such as, “What am I here for?” “How can I relate to others?” “What matters in life?” “What about God?”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“That night I realized that Opa had always stayed inside me. His once-bright image had receded, as if across a widening chasm, and grown distant and blurred. But now I knew I must retrieve it for good.
As I pieced together his story, amassing what became an unexpectedly vast collection of source material, I began to get answers. Three times I tried writing his life, and three times I had to stop. At one point I felt so confronted by his presence that I could not bear reading what he had written any longer. It was a year before I could begin the project again. This story is still alive. It can get to you.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“I have heard that in the United States, people remember exactly what they were doing when planes hit the Twin Towers. In my country, too, we remember a plane crash that way. There is this difference: On September 11, nearly three thousand people died. In Rwanda, smaller in size and population than Ohio, the number was three times that many, every day, for a hundred days.”
― Denise Uwimana, From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness

“When I first found out about Cerian’s deformity and made the choice to carry her to term, it felt like the destruction of my plans and hopes. It went against what I wanted. It limited me. But it was in this place of limitation that God showed me more of his love. Up until this point, the clamor of my desires and wishes had made me like a closed system centered in on myself, on my needs, flaws, and attributes. My life, even at times my religion, had revolved around achievement, reputation, and winning respect and approval from others.”
― Sarah C. Williams

“During the nine months I carried Cerian, God came close to me again unexpectedly, wild and beautiful, good and gracious. I touched his presence as I carried Cerian and as a result I realized that underneath all my other longings lay an aching desire for God himself and for his love. Cerian shamed my strength, and in her weakness and vulnerability, she showed me a way of intimacy. The beauty and completeness of her personhood nullified the value system to which I had subscribed for so long.”
― Sarah C. Williams, Perfectly Human: Nine Months with Cerian

“They are truly peacemakers who amidst all
they suffer in this world maintain peace in soul
and body for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS”
― Elizabeth Goudge, My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi

“My God and My All I beseech thee, O Lord,
that the fiery and sweet strength of
thy love may absorb my soul
from all things that are under heaven,
that I may die for love
of thy love as thou didst deign to die
for love of my love. WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS”
― Elizabeth Goudge, My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi

“We do not decide to be nonviolent or truthful in advance as if we had an outline, a moral blueprint to follow automatically. Events appear almost always as a series of little, unexpected problems we must solve one at a time. We choose between two alternatives, one of which, in the final analysis, appears closer than the other to the laws of Jesus Christ. In that moment, one is sure of nothing.”
― André Trocmé, The Memoirs of André Trocmé: The Pastor Who Rescued Jews