“I can’t help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.”

I found myself in a maze where I’d taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.

I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God’s best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.

To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.

We are born seekers, calling strange names into the darkness from our earliest days because we know we are not meant to be alone, and because we know that we await someone whom we cannot always see.

You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.

With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.

I don’t have time for a job that doesn’t leave me time to be quiet or still or to pray.

To be fully human is perhaps why I’m Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.

I don’t miss the ministry, because I’m completely engaged in it. In terms of parish ministry, I miss the intimacy with a group of people.

The value for me being in a mainline tradition is history and memory, which is not just Christian tradition but denominational tradition, and characters, you know, with real distinct flavors of ways to be Christian.

The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.

To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.

The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.

The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.]

The debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future.

External silence helps to achieve inner Silence.

Love and understanding never condemn but always seek to help and encourage.

Every good work has to face opposition, and the reaction of the opposition offered always helps the work.

I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion whenever I came near!

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.

I am but God’s finger, John. If he would condemn Elizabeth, she will be condemned.