Six John Jordan Mysteries Quotes

“ventually Kathryn joined me by the lake with a blanket and picnic basket and entreated me to come away with her into the woods. Through her words and desire I could feel the pull of the divine and hear in her words the echo of the Song of Songs: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away with me. The winter is past; the spring has come. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. Arise, come, my love, my beautiful one, come with me.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“What else?”“I don’t know,” she said, frustration eating at the edge of her words. “Do you want me to say that I woke up a few mornings with my panties twisted and a funny feeling in my vagina? Maybe I did. I’m just not sure, but if I did, my panties get twisted up all the time when I sleep— I’m a tosser and turner. And as far as funny feelings in my private parts, well, that happens from time to time, too, and it’s never resulted in pregnancy before.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of ourselves and the world are all-powerful.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“All the talent in the world can’t make up for attitude,” he said. “But attitude go a long way in making up for talent.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“You’ve been talking about me in therapy?”“In therapy, in my sleep, in AA, in chat rooms, to strangers,” I said. “Women like you are the reason therapy was invented.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“He had been exposed to the new wine of unfamiliar concepts and the old wineskin of tradition and rigid religion was unable to hold it. I had been there many times myself. Soon he would have to make a choice— pour out the new wine or find new wineskins.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“Ironically, those with the least to say usually say the most and the most outwardly religious were often the most theologically unsophisticated.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“Actually, the Bible doesn’t say anything about masturbation,” I said, adding, “unless you count, ‘Whatever you find to do with your hand, verily I say, do it with all your might.’” He looked perplexed. I smiled. “It’s a joke. The Bible doesn’t say anything about it.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“What is truth?” I said. “Is it the shallow assurance that something literally took place, or is it about something far deeper, something that is profoundly true— on all levels? Not just the literal one. It’s like poetry.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“The truth of a story isn’t contingent on its being a factual account of actual events,” I said. “Think about Jesus’ parables. Is there anything more true than them?”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“The great irony for a man in my position is how little use I have for organized religion. I am essentially a member of the unchurched. Yet, since high school I’ve felt a strong sense of vocation, a paradoxical longing and belonging which somehow resulted in my becoming a nonreligious religious leader. I was on the very fringe of religion,”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“When I moved back home to northwest Florida after being a cop and a cleric in Atlanta, I never would’ve imagined I’d become a prison chaplain. But God works in mysterious ways, and when I fell from grace in Atlanta, this is the grace I fell into.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“It was the wound that caused this scar, and the blood it shed, that had saved my life, and had given me the opportunity to save hers.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“As I walked down the extremely narrow hall of my not-so-mobile home, passing over the pale yellow linoleum curling up so that it no longer reached the thin blond paneling of either wall, I remembered the plush two-story brick home Susan and I had shared in North Atlanta. It was nice. Very nice. But this impoverished place and the fringe existence I was now living here felt more like home.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“inside. Daniels shook his head in confusion.”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries

“there music’s so good, even if you take as directed it”
― Michael Lister, Six John Jordan Mysteries