"I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!" -Abraham Lincoln
“You can use logic to justify almost anything. That’s its power and its flaw.” Captain Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager 1.9
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead
"In order to answer a question, one must have something in common with the person who asks it." -Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology volume 1 (p. 6, University of Chicago Press 1973 version reprint)
"River, you don’t fix the Bible…. It’s not about making sense. It’s about believing in something and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you." -The Shepherd, Firefly 1.7
"God can transform everything into something valuable" -Monica Coleman, Making a Way Out of No Way
"We must insist that violence also refers to that which is psychologically destructive, that which demeans, damages, or depersonalizes others." -Terence Fretheim, "God and Violence In the Old Testament"
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I’m in a lot of conversations about why the denominational church isn’t working. In some ways, I think of our churches like a crop of corn that was planted at the same time. That field produced corn for 50 years—so much wonderful corn that many of us were fat and happy. In our abundance, we forgot to diversify and plant new fields. Now the corn is coming to the end of its season, all at the same time."
Carol Howard Merritt, "Ten Church Models for a New Generation"
"A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?" -Stephen Colbert