Heidi > Heidi's Quotes

“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C. S. Lewis

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
― Meister Eckhart

“You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
― Brene Brown

“Lies written in ink cannot disguise facts written in blood.”
― Lu Xun

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
― C.S. Lewis

“That’s all right,” said Edmund. “Between ourselves, you haven’t been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #5)

“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, "I am the way.”
― St. Catherine of Siena

“you can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

“Death is just another country… And God’s taking care of things there, the same as here. God’s in charge of getting people from one place to another. You don’t need to worry about it, or be afraid of it. … That’s why I’m not afraid of death anymore. I like hanging out with it, sort of like walking a fence line, knowing that the property you’re looking at will be yours before long.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, Dwelling Places

“In so many church situations, nobody thinks they have problems. They simply have convictions and they’re trying to get everyone else to live up to them.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, Dwelling Places

“Of all weapons, love is the most deadly and devastating, and few there be who dare trust their fate in its hands.”
― Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger

“Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.”
― Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger

“According to Gallup, church attendance hovered around 39 percent in the 1930s and 1940s.7 It increased in the 1950s, when Dwight D. Eisenhower encouraged Americans everywhere to go to services. This was the sales pitch: America was now at war with communism, which was perpetuated by atheism. Americans could differentiate themselves from the godless hordes by exercising their freedom of religion. The call was taken up by religious leaders such as Billy Graham, and soon going to church was more than just something for the religious, it was part of being a good American.”
― Lyz Lenz, God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America

“because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying”
― Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“When John O’Malley was a Jesuit novice, an older priest told him three things to remember when living in community: First, you’re not God. Second, this isn’t heaven. Third, don’t be an ass.”
― James Martin, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life

“I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“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

“What is a monk?
A monk is someone who every day asks:
“What is a monk?”
― André Louf

“Through the resurrection, God responds to the violence of the cross – the violence of the world – in a nonviolent but forceful manner. It is important to understand that nonviolence is not the same as passivity or accommodation to violence. Rather it is a forceful response that protects the integrity of life. Violence seeks to do another harm, while nonviolence seeks to rescue others from harm. It seeks to break the very cycle of violence itself. . . . That God could defeat the unmitigated violence of the cross reveals the consummate power of the nonviolent, life-giving force that is God.”
― Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God

“As the years have gone by, I have accepted that for me to strive to live to the fullest by struggling against injustice is to draw nearer and nearer to the divine. Drawing closer to God and struggling for justice have become for me one and the same thing. Struggling for my liberation and the liberation of Hispanic women is a liberative praxis. This means that it is an activity both intentional and reflective; it is a communal praxis that feeds on the realization that Christ is among us when we strive the live the gospel message of justice and peace.

Following the example of grassroots Hispanic women, I do not think in terms of “spirituality.” But I know myself as a person with a deep relationship with the divine, a relationship that finds expression in walking picket lines more than in kneeling, in being in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed more than in fasting and mortifying the flesh, in striving to be passionately involved with others more than in being detached, in attempting to be faithful to who I am and what I believe God wants of me more than in following prescriptions for holiness that require me to negate myself.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century

“Never take the first plant you find, as it might be the last—and you want that first one to speak well of you to the others of her kind.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Stand still. But not like Lot’s wife.” (From a talk on her book *Seeking God, Seeking Life*, (YouTube video), St Paul’s, London, May 19, 2013)”
― Esther de Waal