Status Updates From When "Spiritual but Not Rel...

"In life, we don't get a gold star for getting the big jobs done. Rather, I think God gives us a gold star for hanging in there, still working, in the incompleteness of life. For in the end, people are not complete until God completes us. One day, we will...see God face-to-face, and finally be complete. But until then...there's nothing wrong with taking taking the occasional incomplete [grade]."

"In this 'it's all about you' culture, worship is profoundly countercultural. Worship is directed toward God...Someone was complaining to me about why she had stopped going to her church, saying, 'You know, when I was sitting there in worship I just didn't get much out of it.' To which I replied, 'Well, it wasn't directed toward you.'"

"We are creating a culture of narcissists who have never had a thought they did not press 'send' on. I think it, I felt it, I did it, and now it must be shared. Once shared it becomes real. And now you must respond." (The irony of posting this quote on Goodreads is not lost on me.)

"In my church the American flag stands below the cross, as does the denominational flag -- reminders that one day, when we meet our maker, we will be rewarded, not for how well we patrolled our borders, nationally or theologically, but for how gracefully we crossed the divides that separate one group of human beings from another."

"Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating...So while I can't stop these people from talking to me on the airplane, can I at least inform them that they are boring?" Ouch -- that seems a bit harsh to me.

"I have always loved this Benedictine prayer: Dear God, give bread to those who are hungry and a hunger and thirst for justice to those who have plenty. Amen."

"'Generosity begets generosity,' Jesus assures us. Generosity ought to inspire others to be generous. Mission trips are miraculous faith-filled pilgrimages when they alert us to the injustice in the world and inspire us to be generous and to change things. Mission trips are self-serving vacations when we come back thinking that the poor we met overseas are the lucky ones."

"There was a story a while back about a guy on Facebook who had about nine hundred friends, and he invited them all to a party. And you know the punch line: not one of them showed up...According to the Gospel of Luke, we are not the first generation to call each other 'friends' but not have time for one another."

"[E]veryone is welcome. Church is a school for sinners, not a club of saints."

"'No shirt, no shoes, no service.' Most of the world just isn't that direct. But the unspoken and unwritten rules are often the ones that cause the most pain. Jesus turned the tables on that, by sitting at the wrong table [e.g., with tax collectors]."

"When I feel discouraged, unworthy, or damaged, I like to remember that the Divine Knitter knit me together and made me wonderful. And when I feel cocky, superior, or smug, I remember that She did the same for everyone else, too."

"Psalm 139 reads, 'For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works.' It seems that people have been knitting for one another [e.g., baby blankets, prayer shawls] forever, perhaps ever since God, the original knitter, knit each of us together in our mothers' wombs. So, indeed, we are wonderfully made."

"In Sing Sing [Prison], the recidivism rate goes down for every degree you get while you're inside, from high school GED to college course to the graduate program that I was visiting that day, where the recidivism rate was only 2 percent."

"In college and graduate school, we are taught the tools of critique. We're taught to aim and fire, to diagnose the problem or the weakness, to 'shoot holes' in another person's argument. The more schooling you get, the more this is rewarded. The smartest one in the room is the distant critic, disdainful and separate." Distant in part because they say 'they' instead of 'we.'

The creature knocking over the trash cans: "It was a Pall Mall-smoking, lace-bathrobe-wearing grandmother, sneaking out every few months at three in the morning to knock over her neighbors' trash cans and avenge the memory of [her dog] Amos. Years after his death." Wow, what a character.

"That kind of thinking, that reluctance to ask God for what we really want, is arrogance posing as humility. It seems humble to not ask God for our own desires, and to put other larger matters first. But doing that seems to imply we have power in all this. As if by asking God to cure diabetes before asking for a raise, we might actually affect God's priorities."

"I am guessing that this family gives to charity and has a good supply of PBS tote bags. But when you witness pain and declare yourself lucky, you have fallen way short of ... what God would have you do, no matter what religion you are called to ... I think God wants us to witness pain and suffering and, rather than feeling lucky, God wants us to get angry and want to do something about it."

"His dad was happy to stop with the self-made religion of gratitude, like a person who fills up on the deep-fried appetizers and doesn't order anything else from the menu. He may not feel hungry now for dinner now, but that snack will not sustain him for anything like real exertion. It tastes good, but it's just not enough."