Heart

"Perhaps the City of God is not so much a place in space as a place in the heart."
The Rock That Is Higher

Icons

"Our need for icons begins in early childhood when we hold on to the favorite little piece of blanket, or the beloved stuffed animal. The blanket is not a blanket, nor is the animal a mere animal; they are icons of all-rightness in a world that early shows itself to be not all right. They are icons of tender love in a society that daily becomes more brutal and violent."
Penguins and Golden Calves

Jesus

"It was a dark week, that week that was ultimately to be called Holy Week. For Jesus it must have held a terrible realization that he was not understood, not even by his closest friends. He knew the painful loneliness caused by that woeful lack of understanding. He knew that those who hated him and wanted him dead were going to have their own way and that death would be neither quick nor easy.

"Perhaps the human Jesus, in his loneliness and anguish, lashed out at the fig tree.

"Someone has suggested that perhaps Jesus saw himself as that fig tree, unable to bear fruit out of season. What a terrible thought, but it shouldn't be pushed aside as impossible.

"We will never know why Jesus cursed that fig tree. Not in this life. We are not able, with our finite minds, to comprehend that Jesus was mortal and immortal, human and divine. It is too much. But if I accept Jesus' humanity as well as his divinity, then I must allow the human Jesus to do things I don't like. The Incarnation does not mean that God was willing to become mortal for the sake of us mortal creatures, that Infinite Power and Love willingly and lovingly went through every temptation that comes to any one of us. It is a love so astonishing that is can only be rejoiced in, lived by, but never understood."
Penguins and Golden Calves

Christ's Smile

"Christ can speak to me through the white china Buddha who sits on my desk at Crosswicks and smiles at me tolerantly when I fly into a torrent of outrage or self-pity. That forebearing smile helps restore my sense of proportion, and rids me of that self-will which keeps me caught up in myself so that I am isolating myself from Christ."
Glimpses of Grace

God's Show and Tell

"A teacher of small children told us of a child who said to her, 'Jesus is God's show and tell.'

"How simple and how wonderful! Jesus is God's show and tell. That's the best theology of incarnation I've ever heard. Jesus said, if you do not understand me as a little child, you will not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven."
Glimpses of Grace

Love

"I see myself in Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden because she is selfish and nasty and human and, in the end, love breaks through the selfishness as it can with all of us."
The Rock That Is Higher

Mythology

"Nonetheless, myth is the closest approximation to truth available to the finite human being. And the truth of myth is not limited by time or place. A myth tells us that which was true, is true, and will be true. If we will allow it, myth will integrate intellect and intuition, night and day; our warring opposites reconciled, male and female, spirit and flesh, desire and will, pain and joy, life and death."
Glimpses of Grace

Prayer

"When I say my prayers at the end of the day I am coming to terms with the events of the day, with the story of my day."
The Rock That Is Higher

SOS Prayers

"Though we do spend time together in silent meditation, in gratitude and worship and praise to God, most of these prayers are petitions. Most of them shout, 'Help!' Some are 'SOS' prayers because we feel inadequate to deal with daily issues and problems without support from God."
A Prayerbook for Spiritual Friends: Partners in Prayer

Visualization

"Try this setting; As you pray, either visualize the person who is the focus of your concern, or pray with an actual photograph of that person before you, knowing that God knows and understands him or her even more deeply than you do."
A Prayerbook for Spiritual Friends: Partners in Prayer

Shadow

"Remember that sometimes monsters only need to be kissed to be turned into beautiful princes and princesses."
Anytime Prayers

Stories

"I never want to lose the story-loving child in me. A story that meant one thing to me when I was forty may mean something quite different to me today."
The Rock That Is Higher