“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.”

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.

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.

I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.

Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Colombia is not how people think it is. We used to eat fish every Sunday at the beach. In the town where I grew up, people did not tell lies.

People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.

It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace.

Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.

My chief objection is that 99% of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull.

I’m always playing on Sunday, and that’s tough because I really never get to take the sacrament – maybe once every three or four months when I’m home and have a week off.

I wear green on Sunday because it’s my mom’s favorite color, but green goes pretty well on Sunday at the Masters, too.