Mr. Raven's Sense of Home

"The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home."
"How am I to begin that where everything is so strange?"
"By doing something."
"What?"
"Anything; and the sooner you begin the better!"

-from George MacDonald's "Lilith" p13 Ch3

Norman Maclean on Story Telling

"If I am a story teller, I got my early training in a bunkhouse, and, if you are familiar with the bunkhouse variety of the narrative art, you can see readily that my present stories still have these humble origins. When I first went in the woods I was so young I just listened to the masters--but even then things fundamental to the art began to appear. I saw early that oral stories have to be short... Early, too, I learned that your friends won't listen to a story unless a lot happens in it... [A]nother characteristic of the western story is that practically always it has something to do with the truth, but it was only later that I realized how complicated the relations are."

--Norman Maclean, foreword to "A River Runs Through It and other stories"

Flies Also Exist

"I only wanted to tell you that I am doing things I consider very important now. If I could not do these things, my life would have no value. Merely to live, merely to exist--what sense is there to it? A fly also lives." - Chaim Potok (p205 of "The Chosen")

Non Violence Demands Attention

Tomato Color Spectrum

Mitya on Self Reflection (from The Brother's Karamazov)

"I just keep wondering now how people can live and think nothing about these things"

(Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, p 593, line 9)

Mitya on Separation (from "The Brother's Karamazov")

"Oh, yes, we'll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it's not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it's his prerogative, a great one... Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without god? Rakitin's lying: if God is driven from the earth, we'll meet him underground! It's impossible for a convict to be without god, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him!"

Millard Fuller's Approach

"A millionaire at twenty-nine years of age, he was chasing a rabbit that most of us love to chase. He caught it, realized it wasn't real, and chose to give himself to what is real. He actually believed that if he sought God's kingdom and his righteousness first, then other things would take care of themselves!"

-Beyond the American Dream p247

Goldingay on Atonement and Violence

"...The first temptation for them, as for anyone else, is to retaliate. The second temptation is by superhuman effort to absorb and neutralize the violence and thereby end the cycle of violence. It is a temptation, because the mere effort to imitate Jesus, at this point as at others, is ultimately bound to fail. There needs to be an intimate interrelation between this imitation and Jesus' own atoning death which enables us to pass on the violence and anger to Jesus on the basis of his actually having already absorbed it, rather than keeping it within ourselves where it can continue its negative work." - Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ

Urban Meyer's Decision to Retire

Boff on Jesus

"Jesus never appeals to a higher authority, one coming from outside, to reinforce his own authority and doctrine. The things he says possess an internal evidence."

- Leonardo Boff in "Jesus Christ Liberator" page 83

Wesley on Religion

"One of the principal rules of religion is, to lose no occasion of serving God. And, since he is invisible to our eyes, we are to serve him in our neighbour; which he receives as if done to himself in person, standing visibly before us."

Plain Account of Christian Perfection, 440

All We Need is Love...

"...the beloved John in his old age (according to Jerome in hi commentary on Galatians 3.6) was in the habit of saying little else to his disciples other than 'Little children, love one another". Eventually they became so fed up with always hearing the same thing that they asked him why he constantly repeated it. He replied, "Because it is the Lord's command and if it comes to pass, that suffices." Certainly, for one who believes and through faith is blessed, his whole life and fulfilment of God's commands consists in love" (Holy Desires 3.3)"

From Tony Lane's "A Concise History of Christian Thought" p168