Quotidian Quotations - April 16, 2012

www.barbarabrowntaylor.com

While re-reading Leaving Church, the alternately delightful and painful faith memoir of one of my favourite preachers, Episcopalian priest Barbara Brown Taylor, I came across this profound quote:

 "My vocation was to love God and my neighbor, and that was something I could do anywhere, with anyone, with or without a collar. My priesthood was not what I did but who I was. In this new light, nothing was wasted. All that had gone before was blessing, and all yet to come was more."

May each of us live in this priestly calling that God offers to all Christians, where we are invited to bring ourselves, others and everything else in life - religious and not obviously so - to God, then take his blessing and challenge back to the same, everyday world we've just offered up to him. And may we experience the freeing confidence, that all the particularities of our past, present and future are held for us in God's gracious hands. - Julie

P.S. This will be our last Quotidian Quotation for awhile, as we are on holiday for the next weeks. See you when we return!

Quotidian Quotations - April 15, 2012

Posting this Hauerwas quote early, as we'll be away in Arborfield for our postponed-due-to-snowstorm Easter celebration tomorrow:

"to pray is to make our lives vulnerable to God"

Quotidian Quotations - April 14, 2012

Stanley Hauerwas, on the role of singing in the Christian community:

"Singing, next to eating, is the most physical and communal form of behavior. Our voice comes from our body. When we sing our bodies are joined, making possible a good in common that cannot be destroyed even when a people are under occupation or persecution or otherwise do not seem to be in control of their own destiny...It is, therefore, not surprising that a community bound in unity through the body and blood of Jesus is also a community that not only sings but must sing."

Quotidian Quotations - April 11, 2012

Another quote from Stanley Hauerwas today:

"Jesus's disciples are not called to do great things, although great things may happen. Rather, Jesus's disciples are called to do the work that Jesus has given us to do - work as simple and hard as learning to tell the truth and to love our enemies. Such work is the joy that our master invites us to share."

Quotidian Quotations - April 10, 2012

Image from www.brazospress.com

Today's quotation comes from the excellent Brazos Theological Commentary series, which is so good that I'm reading through the books like novels in my study time. Not your average commentary line!

This quote is from Stanley Hauerwas, commenting on the book of Matthew.

"There is no place one might go to know with certainty that Jesus is who he says he is. To know that Jesus is the Son of God requires that we take up his cross and follow him. Having taken up the cross, Christians discover they have no fear of the truth, no matter from where it might come."

Quotidian Quotations - April 9, 2012

Steve and I - and now Anastasia, too! - are big baseball fans.

So in honour of the Toronto Blue Jays' home opener, today's Quotidian Quotation is a hybrid between spirituality and the wonderful world of baseball:

"Baseball is like church. Many attend, but few understand."

- Wes Westrum, former major league catcher

New Blog Series Begins Today!

Today I'm starting a new blog series, called Quotidian Quotations, in honour of my return to work from maternity leave. This series has been percolating in my mind as I've posted quotes regularly on Facebook over the past months. It's been a good discipline for me to find helpful quotes, and it's been really interesting to have friends around the globe interact with them.

Here's how the new series will work: I (or Steve) will post, more or less daily ("quotidian"), an interesting excerpt or thought ("quotation") we've found. It will likely be spiritual in nature - but it won't always. Whatever has caught our fancy and we think others would find appealing, challenging, encouraging or funny.

I hope you'll enjoy the quotes, and occasionally also be transformed by or even laugh out loud at them. And I'd be delighted to have you start a conversation about them, through commenting on the blog.

Stay tuned...the first quote is coming soon!

-JGP