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Quotations I love: The answer is in a story

Lynne Baab • Wednesday March 17 2021

“The answer is in a story and the story is being told.” —Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet, theologian, mediator, and leader of the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland [1]

There are a handful of people in my life who really bug me. I’ve heard that when people irritate you or make you mad, you should look at your own life to see if something you don’t like in yourself is being revealed. I’ve done that. I’ve talked about my relationships with these individuals in spiritual direction and therapy, and I have gotten some insight, but not very much.

Year after year, these relationships continue to be...

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Quotations I love: Thomas Merton on the present moment

Lynne Baab • Wednesday March 10 2021

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening or exactly where it is going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” —Thomas Merton

I’m doing something different today. Instead of expressing my longing that is revealed by the quotation I’m highlighting, I want to express my admiration. So many of you are doing exactly what Thomas Merton recommends. The pandemic has created one challenge after another, and I hear from family members, old friends, and blog readers just...

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Quotations I love: sojourners and homemakers on a journey

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 4 2021

The authors of a book on homelessness use the term “journeying homemaking” to describe the way they believe Christians are called to live in the world. The authors are Brian Walsh and Steven Bouma-Prediger, and here’s their description of how those words work together for Christians:

“So the sojourner is a homemaker, but a homemaker who is potentially on the move. And the homeland for which the sojourner yearns is not some other world, but this world redeemed and transfigured. The contrast is not ontological but escatalogical. Because the kingdom of God is not yet realized in its fullness, the sojourner yearns...

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Quotations I love: P. D. James on pain and love

Lynne Baab • Tuesday February 23 2021

“The world is a beautiful and terrible place. Deeds of horror are committed every minute and in the end those we love die. If the screams of all earth’s living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. But we have love. It may seem a frail defence against the horrors of the world, but we must hold fast and believe in it, for it is all that we have.” —P. D. James (1920-2014)

These are the last four sentences of P. D. James’s last book, The Private Patient, published in 2008. The setting...

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