Paula

“Once you turn against yourself, it’s hard not to believe that everyone else is against you, too”
― Paul Auster, Leviathan

“Why do you call the people who don’t live in the Close the Lower Orders?” asked Hugh Anthony. “Grandfather calls them God’s Poor.” “Eh?” said the Dean, a little startled, and then he adjusted his eyeglass and rubbed his nose in a puzzled sort of way, as though he did not quite know how to answer. “I suppose,” said Hugh Anthony, “that Saint Hugh of Torminster belonged to the Lower Orders?” “Certainly not,” said the Dean indignantly. “The Blessed Saint Hugh was Abbot of Torminster. I hold – I say it in all humility – a position very like his own.” “Before he was Abbot of Torminster, he kept pigs,” said Hugh Anthony. “Like Mr. Burton, our butcher.” “Merely legendary pigs,” said the Dean. “And the Apostles were fishmongers,” continued the awful child, “like Mr. Robson in the Market Place… It’s a pity, isn’t it, that all the saints seem to belong to the Lower Orders?”
― Christine Rawlins, Beyond the Snow: The Life and Faith of Elizabeth Goudge

“the pervasive element in our two-thousand-year pastoral tradition is not someone who “gets things done” but rather the person placed in the community to pay attention and call attention to “what is going on right now” between men and women, with one another and with God—this kingdom of God that is primarily local, relentlessly personal, and prayerful “without ceasing.” I want to give witness to this way of understanding pastor, a way that can’t be measured or counted, and often isn’t even noticed. I didn’t notice for a long time. I would like to provide dignity to this essentially modest and often obscure way of life in the kingdom of God. Along the way, I want to insist that there is no blueprint on file for becoming a pastor. In becoming one, I have found that it is a most context-specific way of life: the pastor’s emotional life, family life, experience in the faith, and aptitudes worked out in an actual congregation in the neighborhood in which she or he lives—these people just as they are, in this place. No copying. No trying to be successful. The ways in which the vocation of pastor is conceived, develops, and comes to birth is unique to each pastor. The only modifier I can think of that might be useful in honoring the ambiguity and mystery involved in the working life of the pastor is “maybe.” Anne Tyler a few years ago wrote a novel with the title Saint Maybe. How about Pastor Maybe? That would serve both as a disclaimer to expertise (that if we could just copy the right model, we would have it down) and a ready reminder of the unavoidable ambiguity involved in this vocation. Pastor Maybe: given the loss of cultural and ecclesiastical consensus on how to live this life, none of us is sure of what we are doing much of the time, only maybe.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir

“Given the fantastic forms of the mythology of the time, it all seems exotically remote. In fact, when we look more closely, we can see that we are dealing with a confrontation which has never ended and is constantly assuming new forms. The confusion mentioned above between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God characterizes all of mankind’s more ambitious religious and philosophical speculations and mysticisms. It constantly devalues the sensible world, visible organization, the flesh, matter: these are mere ‘appearances’, either a deception or something to be seen through and overcome. Concealed behind them lies the only truth, the spirit, which must be set free and brought out into the open. This is the central axiom of all the religions of the East—from their ancient beginnings to their present-day posterity in this allegedly ‘post-Christian age’. We shall see how hard it was for the Fathers after Irenaeus to ward off Gnostic infiltration. In the Middle Ages, from the remote Calabrian monastery of Fiore, the doctrine of Abbot Joachim was to exert an incalculable influence on later generations which has lasted to the present day. He thought that the age of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity (together with the organized structure of His Church) would eventually ‘dissolve’ into an age of Pure (Holy!) Spirit.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies