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“Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.”
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
“[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)”
― Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
― Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
“Respect only has meaning as respect for those with whom I do not agree.”
― A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
― A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.”
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
“If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. ”
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
― The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
BETH’s 2025 Year in Books
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