“I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.”

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.

Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.

Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.

Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it’s losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.

In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life

I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address

When I forget the power of the word, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget the deep relief of telling the truth, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget to look for the holiness all around me, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget why the gospel matters, I read Frederick Buechner.

Are you looking for the Holy One? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours.

No sooner does the man come back from the holy waters that the old sins jump on his shoulders from the trees.

If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent.

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?

If you keep your heart immersed always in the depth of that holy love, your heart is sure to remain ever full to overflowing with the Divine fervour of sacred love.

He that sees the beauty of holiness or true moral good, sees the greatest and most important thing in the world.

Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul.

A true love for God must begin with a delight in His holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.