A Burning in My Bones Quotes

“Quit being so busy and learn quiet, to quit talking so much and learn silence.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“This is one reason Eugene was so (frustratingly) reluctant to dispense advice, why he so detested celebrity: he knew these postures of the ego-driven expert were lies and illusions. And this is why Eugene would rather pray with someone than argue theology, why he’d be eager for a call from his neighbor while letting prominent figures go to his answering machine: friendship (with God and one another) is real.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“If I were to define what for me makes up the core Pentecostal identity, it is the lived conviction that everything, absolutely everything, in the scriptures is livable. Not just true, but livable. Not just an idea or a cause, but livable in real life. Everything that is revealed in Jesus and the scriptures, the gospel, is there to be lived by ordinary Christians in ordinary times. This is the supernatural core, a lived resurrection and Holy Spirit core, of the Christian life. What Karl Barth expressed dialectically as the “impossible possibility.” I had always believed that. I believed it still.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“[The schismatics] cancel out any truth that they are contending for by the hate they vomit in the sanctuary”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“If something like “vision” crept in, I got rid of it as fast as I could. The church I wanted or dreamt of or had a vision for got in the way of the church I had, the church God gave me. No, I’m afraid that I don’t have much truck with the “vision statements” that seem to fuel the ambition of pastors these days.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Writing is an expression of living, not knowing: of praying, not knowing.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“I would want to tell pastors to quit being so busy and learn quiet, to quit talking so much and learn silence, to quit treating the congregation as customers and treat them with dignity as souls-in-formation.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“I am not a truly card-carrying evangelical—there is a sense in which I am most comfortable as an “outsider evangelical” within the halls of tradition. Regent is too comfortable for me—and there is no sense of larger context: the reality of church complexity. Evangelicalism is too combative and clear-cut for me.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Eugene saw that God-part of people. He saw that and defined me in that way—the other stuff didn’t define me. That was astounding.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“They visited a small parish close to their apartment (always his recommended way to find a church: whatever was in your neighborhood). 50 or 60 people at most, spare surroundings—simple. That’s all I want in worship: a place and time to attend to God, and no pastor or priest getting in the way.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Dear God, I want to be a writer to your glory—I want to shape sentences and words out of my soul, not just my mind….Fresh, alive, prayerful sentences.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“I feel that to keep my sanity—my spiritual sanity—I must simply walk away from the demands and duties and create. Work at my own stuff. I am willing enough to return after a few hours to the responsible and the routine—but if I cannot pray and run and read and write I cannot live.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“anxiety is a call inwards—a sign that I have left myself. A warning signal, to stop my action and write myself into being….My anchor to my soul and my God is in this pen.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Eugene couldn’t comprehend how his brothers and sisters in faith could support (and with fervor) someone who displayed such lack of self-control, such meanness. He was a man who exhibited the kind of character and morality that in every previous election exemplified exactly what the religious right denounced as absolutely unacceptable, no matter one’s politics. But now, rather than denouncing him, these same groups were championing the man who would become president.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Eugene saw that God-part of people. He saw that and defined me in that way. The other stuff didn't define me. That was astounding. -Cuba Odneal”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“There was a sense of gravity and richness to his teaching because you knew he really believed what he was saying.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“An accomplished pastor once explained to Eugene how he was trying to “reproduce himself in the younger generation.” Eugene’s response: “Isn’t one of you enough? Why don’t you nurture what is uniquely them?”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“a word we make to mean whatever we want it to mean. Spirituality, Eugene averred, was “Christ, the God-revealing Christ, who is behind and in all of this living.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Spiritual theology is what pastors do—give themselves to getting what we know about God/Jesus lived in the round of ordinary life.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

“Thanks to Sven, I was being prepared to understand a congregation as a gathering of people that requires a context as large as the Bible itself if we are to deal with the ambiguities of life in the actual circumstances in which people live them….For me, my congregation would become a work-in-progress—a novel in which everyone and everything is connected in a salvation story in which Jesus has the last word. No reductions to stereotype.”
― Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message