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Quotations I love: Make it beautiful

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 28 2021

“If it can’t be happy, make it beautiful. . . . I hope that, in the midst of your sorrow and the bleakness of what you’re facing, you can yet find a way to make it beautiful. . . . The pandemic has been an experience of powerlessness and sadness for most of us. It hasn’t been happy. But we can still make it beautiful.” —Samuel Wells, vicar of St. Martin-in-the Fields, next to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery in London

I love Samuel Wells’s distinction between happiness and beauty. I find it easy to conflate the two. I have seen so...

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Quotations I love: God’s image in us when we speak

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 21 2021

“Before God spoke the cosmos, God enjoyed constant colloquy – the Father engaging the Son, the Diving Logos (John 1 doesn’t call Christ ‘the Word’ for nothing) in conversation with the Father, all in the communicative power of the Spirit. . . . The meaning of ‘Let us making humanity in our image’ (Gen 1:26) is human speaking, even with its limitations, which is divinely permitted and authorized, imitating a defining characteristic of our Creator.” —William Willimon, Preachers Dare: Speaking for God [1]

This quotation made me smile. After all, when I felt called by God in 2004 to leave a pastoral position...

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Quotations I love: Memory

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 15 2021

“Memory is many things. . . . It is a call to resolve in us what simply will not go away.” —Joan Chittister (born 1936), American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, and speaker

For most of my adult life, I would have read Joan Chittister’s words a certain way. For me, what wouldn't go away in my memories was pain, and I would have said we must face into pain from our past in in the company of others. I would have said that the unresolved memories in us that keep coming up should be dealt with in inner healing prayer, therapy/counseling/coaching, and in...

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Quotations I love: Listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 7 2021

“Let all creation help you to praise God. Give yourself the rest you need. When you are walking alone, listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers, the trees, the shrubs, the sky, the sun and the whole world. Notice how they preach to you a sermon full of love, of praise of God, and how they invite you to proclaim the greatness of the one who has given them being.” —Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), founder of the Passionist Order and preacher

At 20, one year after I became a committed Christian, I spent a lot of...

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