MY 2022 READING

Those in bold are my top ten: 

 January 

1. Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush 
2. Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The transformation of men, marriage, and monogamy
3. Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

February 

1. Henry "Chips" Channon, Diaries (Volume 2) 1938-43 (Edited by Simon Heffer)

March 

1. Jane Ridley, George V: Never a Dull Moment 
2. Leon Kass & Hannah Mandelbaum, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption and the Way of Israel
3. Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News 
4. Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves 
5. Carys Davies, The Mission House 
6. Mia Levitin, The Future of Seduction 
7. Patrick Keifert and Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, How Change Comes to your Your Church: A Guidebook for Church Innovations 
8. Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

April 

1. Adrian Bell, Men and the Fields 
2. Ros Clarke, Forty Women: Unseen women of the Bible from Eden to Easter 
3. Derek Jarman, Modern Nature

May

1. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A Baker III
2. Jonathan Walker, The Angels of L19 
3. Adrian Bell, Corduroy
4. Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
5. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men 
6. Paula Byrne, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym 
7. Frederick Buechner, Brendan 
8. Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys 
9. Larry McMurty, Dead Man's Walk 
10. Tara Westover, Educated
11. Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain 
12. Amy Liptrot, The Outrun
13. Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers
14. Richard Ford, Between Them: Remembering My Parents
15. John Berger and Jean Mohr, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor
16. Andy Friend, John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace 
17. Rachel Jones, A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, Really) 

June 

1. John Dickson, Hearing Her Voice: Women Preaching Sermons 
2. HFM Prescott, Son of Dust 
3. Timothy Keller, On Death

July

1. Eugene H Peterson, Eat This Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading 
2. Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads 
3. Eric Jourdan, Wicked Angels 
4. Alan Bennett, House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries 
5. Polly Morland, A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor's Story 
6. John Meade Falkner, The Nebuly Coat 
7. Max Hastings, Operation Pedestal: The fleet that battled to Malta 1942
8. Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; A New Guide to Sex in 21st Century
9. Anne Glenconner, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown 
10. Pablo Martinez, Take Care of Yourself: Survive and thrive in Christian ministry

August

1. Clare Sestanovich, Objects of Desire
2. Dane C Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners 
3. Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle 
4. Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders 
5. Jane Gardam, The Hollow Land 
6. Emma John, Self Contained: Scenes from a Single Life 
7. Ellis Potter, 3 Theories of Everything 
8. Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls
9. Katherine Angel, Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and desire in the age of consent 

September 

1. Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming relationship in a technological world 
2. Mary Renault, The Charioteer 
3. Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven 
4. John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth
5. Wendell Berry, A World Lost

October 

1. Adrian Bell, Silver Ley 
2. Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Building an intimate relationship with the creator
3. Salley Vickers, Miss Garnet's Angel 
4. Preston Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the church & what the bible has to say 
5. John Stott, The Living Church: The convictions of a lifelong pastor 
6. Mary Renault, The Persian Boy 
7. Mary Renault, Funeral Games 

November 

1. Andrew Davison, Blessing 
2. Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence
3. FM Mayor, The Rector's Daughter 

December 

1. Aaron Damiani, Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding life in liturgy, sacraments and other ancient practices of the church
2. Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin: the church and the gay controversy 
3. Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: the first Romantics and their invention of the self

DESIRES NOT A MATTER FOR BLAME

'It is perfectly possible to think of desires as no matter for blame, and yet be persuaded that their literal enactment cannot be their true fulfillment.'

Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin, p.113.

INTERPRETING DESIRE

'Sexual desire in particular is notoriously difficult to interpret; the biblical story of Ammon and Tamar (cf. 1 Sam 13) is just one of many ancient warnings of how obscure its tendency might be. It is characteristically surrounded by fantasy, and fantasies are never literal indicators of what the desire is really all about, but are symbolic revealer-concealers of an otherwise inarticulate sense of need. But the point holds also for many kinds of desire - let us say, the desire for a quiet retirement to a cottage in the countryside, or the desire to own a faster racecar. We cannot take any of them at their face value. "It wasn't what I really wanted!" is the familiar complaint of a disappointed literalism. To all desire its appropriate self-questioning: what what wider, broader good does this desire serve? How does it spring out of our strengths, and how does it spring out of our weaknesses? Where in relation to this desire does true fulfillment lie?'

Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin: the churches and the gay controversy, p.112.

THE DANGERS OF LITURGICAL ACCESSIBILITY

'Accessibility is often prized above all else in the contemporary Church, but we might question whether even those who are unfamiliar with the Church but come to it for blessing, dedication and consolation really want it to proceed with language that aspires to the semantic and lexicographical smoothness of an episode of a soap opera.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.181.

ENVY IS BEST TREATED BY GRACE

'The best way to train our eyes to see without envy is to take the grace of God as our interpretative key in all that we see or consider: others' existence is a gift, as is mine; their life and all that is needed for life is a gift, and so is mine - and their life and their flourishing is a gift also to me.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.76.

GOD'S JUSTICE

'When God punishes sinners, He does not inflict His evil on them, but leaves them to their own evil. 'Behold', saith the Psalmist, 'he hath been in labour with injustice, he hath conceived toil; brought forth iniquity. He hath opened a pit and dug it; and he is fallen into the hole he made. His sorrow shall come down upon his crown.' [Psalm 7:154-16] When therefore God punishes, He punishes as a judge those that transgress the law, not by bringing evil upon them from Himself, but driving them on to that which they have chosen, to fill up the sum of their misery.'

Augustine of Hippo in Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.61.

THE PERFECT HUMANITY OF JESUS

'When Pilate displayed Christ to the people with the words 'Here is the man!' (John 19:4 - 'Behold the man' in the AV), he did not appreciate how profoundly true his words were: there indeed, before them, was the full, perfect, axiomatic, emblematic human being, the one who teaches us what it means to be human.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.50. 

WHAT BLESSING MEANS

'Blessing concerns life and abundance of life, and the affirmation or even intensification of the proper goodness of a thing, situation or person.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.50.

ANTISEMITISM

'What vitiates nearly all that is written about antisemitism is the assumption in the writer's mind that he himself is immune to it. 'Since I know that antisemitism is irrational,' he argues, 'it follows that I do not share it.' He thus fails to start his investigation in the one place where he could get hold of some reliable evidence - that is, in his own mind.'

George Orwell, 'Antisemitism in Britain' in Essays, p.286.

WE BLESS WHAT IS GOOD

'...blessing is intrinsically orientated to the recognition of goodness. We have a sense of what can not be blessed because blessing is about goodness.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.20.

THE BLAME GAME

'...if society becomes corrupt (like a dark night or stinking fish), there is no sense in blaming society for its corruption. That is what happens when human evil is unchecked and unrestrained. The question to ask is: where is the church? Where is the salt and light of Jesus?'

John Stott, The Living Church, p.143.

FAITH & WORKS

'Faith is not opposed to knowledge. It is opposed to sight. And grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.188.

READ SCRIPTURE SUBMISSIVELY

'We will be spiritually safe in our use of the Bible if we follow a simple rule: Read in a submissive manner. Read with readiness to surrender all you are, all your plans, opinions, possessions, positions. Study as intelligently as possible, with all available means, but never merely to find the truth, and still less merely to prove something. Subordinate your desire to find the truth to your desire to do it, act it out!'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.155.

THE CENTRALITY OF UNION WITH CHRIST

'To make real in ourselves the good which Christ offers us in the redeemed life, we must at some point begin to appreciate the literal character of the Scriptures which speak of Christ being "in" us.'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.149.

FAILING TO PREPARE FOR THE EXPECTED

'There is only one kind if shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.'

Mary Renault, The Charioteer, p.84.

HEARING GOD'S VOICE

'Why is it that when when we speak to God we are said to be praying, but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?'

Lily Tomlin in Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Building an intimate relationship with the Creator, p.5.

YOU ARE PART OF A HOUSEHOLD...

'You are part of a household if there is someone who knows where you are today and who has at least some sense of how it feels to be where you are. You are part of a household if there is someone who moves more quietly because they know you are asleep. You are part of a household if someone would check on you if you did not awaken.

You are part of a household if people know things about you that you do not know about yourself, including things that if you did know you would seek to hide. You are part of a household if others are close enough to see you and know you as well as, or better than, you know yourself.

You are part of a household if your experience the conflict that is the inevitable companion of closeness - if someone else makes such demands on you that you fantasize about driving them out of your life. You are part of a household if you sometimes dream of running away, perhaps to a far country, so that you will not be so terribly well known. 

You are part of a household if you return from a long journey prompts a spontaneous celebration. You are part of a household if, when you avoid a party because of your anger, pride, guilt, or shame, someone notices and comes outside to plead with you to come in.'

This is the one thing we need more than any other: a community of recognition.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For, p.153.

THE SORT OF COMMUNITY WE ALL NEED

'A household is a community of persons who may well take shelter under one roof but also and more fundamentally take shelter under one another's care and concern. They provide for one another, and they depend on one another. They mingle their assets and their liabilities, in such a way that it is hard to tell where one member's needs and another member's begins.

The household is the fundamental community of persons. Built on more than an isolated pair but encompassing few enough people that all can be deeply and persistently noticed and seen, the household is perfectly sized for the recognition we are all looking for the moment we were born.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For, p.151. 

THE CASE FOR HOUSEHOLDS

'If you and I are heart-soul-mind-strength complexes designed for love, we need a place where we can exercise our fundamental capacities - a place where we can channel our emotions and longings, be known in our unique depth of self, contribute to understanding and interpreting the world, and apply our bodies' strength and agility to worthwhile work in all three planes of physical reality. Above all, we need a place where we can invest ourselves deeply in others, come to care about their flourishing, and give ourselves away in mutual service and sacrifice in ways that secure our own identities instead of erasing them.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming relationship in a technological world, p.150.

THE LIMITS TO CONSENT

'I don't believe that we can ever leave power behind in sex, that we can enter a zone blissfully free of inequality. I don't believe that consent miraculously displaces the imbalances of power that operate on our every interaction. 'Tomorrow sex will be good again,' says Foucault, wryly, playfully; that's the ideal, and that's the delusion. The negotiation of imbalances in power between men and women, between all of us, occurs minute by minute, second by second. And there is no realm, whether sexual or otherwise, in which that act of negotiation is no longer necessary. Whatever we do, in sex and elsewhere, we calibrate our desires with those of the the other, and try to understand what it is that we want. But we don't simply work out what we want and then act on that knowledge. Working out what we want is a life's work, and it has to be done over and over and over. The joy may lie in it never being done.'

Katherine Angel, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and desire in the age of consent, p.114.

HOW CELIBACY CONFRONTS YOU WITH REALITY

'Celibacy can leave us with a lot of time to sit alone with our thoughts and God, should we be so daring. It can provide a perspective that invites me to contemplate meaning and eternity and what is really true and lasting. It can also be a doorway into a godly hopelessness, because there is no locus of hope in this life. Celibacy has removed all the temporal hopes. No date. No special someone. No engagement or marriage or first child or grandkids. "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14).'

Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care, p.239.

THE RIGHT LONGINGS BEHIND OUR WRONG DESIRES

'What is bent when I experience that internal pull to homoeroticism? Well, actually, quite a lot about me is bent. My sexuality may be the least of my issues. But when considering homoerotic temptation, what else is going on? Certainly, this is not less than the temptation of indwelling sin; it is more than that. That's always how sin works.

What good thing has been bent? What is going on?

For one thing, we're dealing with a legitimate God-given human human longing for community. Yes, this longing has become sexualized in ways that distort God's creational design. But it is a legitimate longing nonetheless. It might be a longing for healthy intimacy - to know and be known. It might be a longing for acceptance, a need to feel wanted. Our longings for intimacy, community, and friendship, our longings to be loved and accepted, our recognition of human beauty - these are not evils. The longing for nurture, inclusion, and affirmation are not evils. The longing to matter to someone, to be unique and special to them, the longing for family - don't you dare call these sin. They are core human needs we all share as image bearers of God. We all long to be delighted in. We all long for companionship. We all long to be seen inside and out. These longings are good longings placed there by God.

God does not call us to put these to death,. These are not sin. They are part of how he created us as human beings designed for relationship. These are good longings that inborn sin bends in spiritually unhealthy directions. Sin over desires the good, to our own damage. That's how sin works - by blending the good. That's true for all of us.'

Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care: What we can learn from the church's failed attempt to cure homosexuality, p.137.

I HURT, THEREFORE I AM

'Descartes said, 'I think, therefore I am.' But I prefer to say 'I hurt, therefore I am. I think that's closer to our experience.'

Ellis Potter, 3 Theories of Everything, p.4. 

WHY MUSIC & STORIES ARE SO POWERFUL

'Music and stories are so powerful because they are microcosms of the basic structure of the universe.'
Ellis Potter, 3 Theories of Everything, p.5.

INDIVIDUALISM VS. INSTITUTIONS

'The great challenge of many Western nations is coherence in the face of increasing individualism and a dizzying diversity of opinion, in which consensus becomes nearly impossible. Strongholds such as states, institutions, and churches are buckling under the challenges of our decentralizing moment.'

Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence, p.109.

WE LIVE FOR COMFORT

'The fruit most valued by the contemporary stronghold of self is comfort. In the contemporary world, feeling good is the expected normative state of being. When one doesn't experience good feelings - if a task is unpleasant, if a relationship goes through a difficult period, if a job is tough - it is taken as a signal that something is wrong, or that something is wrong with you. The absence of good feelings becomes an amber warning light.'

Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence, p.107.

THE EFFECT OF ANXIETY ON CONTEMPORARY NETWORKS

'As a network is swamped by chronic anxiety, it is marked by reactivity. Those within the system no longer act rationally, but rather, high emotion becomes the dominant form of interaction. The system's focus is directed toward the most emotionally immature and reactive members. Those who are more mature and healthy begin to adapt their behavior to appease the most irrational and unhealthy. This creates a scenario where the most emotionally unhealthy and immature members in the system become de facto leaders, shaping the emotional landscape with the focus on their negative behavior and what they see as the negative behavior of others. The anxiety present envelops the vision of the organization within the system.'

Mark Sayers, A Non-anxious presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders, p. 98.

BEING A WRITER

'All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a bout of some painful illness.'

George Orwell, 'Why I Write' in Essays, p.6.

A CHRISTIAN'S WEALTH

'By virtue of the believer's union with Christ, he does in fact possess all things. But it may be asked, how does he possess all things? What is he the better for it? How is a true Christian so much richer than other people?

To answer this, I'll tell you what I mean by "possessing all things." I mean that God three in one, all that he is, and all that he as, and all that he does, all that he has made or done - the whole universe, bodies and spirits, earth and heaven, angels, humans and devils, sun, moon and stars, land and sea, fish and fowls, all silver and gold, kings and potentates - are as much the Christian's as the money in his pocket, the clothes he wears, the house he dwells in, or the victuals he eats; yes, properly his, advantageously his, by virtue of union with Christ; because Christ, who certainly does possess all things, is entirely his; so that the Christian possesses it all, more than a wife the share of the best ad dearest husband, more than the hand possesses what the head does. It is all his.

Every atom of the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian, every particle of air or every ray of the sun; so that he in the other world, when he comes to see it, shall sit and enjoy all this vast inheritance with surprising, amazing joy.'

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners, p.64.

THE DANGER OF DISPERSION

'Christian leaders...are usually multi-gifted people who are able to do many things well. This is why they find it difficult to say "no!" to areas of ministry which they enjoy and, for some time, do very capably. Dispersion, though, is a subtle enemy, acting often as a silent "killer." It penetrates your life insidiously - you are unaware of its danger - and it drains your energy little by little until one day you suddenly realize you are unable to enjoy what you are doing and you feel like giving everything up. It has wearied you physically, emotionally and consequently, spiritually. The inability to renounce tasks or responsibilities leads to dispersion and dispersion leads to defeat.'

Pablo Martinez, Take Care of Yourself: Survive and thrive in Christian ministry, p.49.

THE CASE AGAINST THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

'We need to re-erect the social guard rails that have been torn down. And in order to do that, we have to start by stating the obvious. Sex must be taken seriously. Men and women are different. Consent is not enough. Violence is not love. Loveless sex is not empowering. People are not products. Marriage is good.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.189.

THE NEW SEXUAL TECHNOLOGY WE NEED

'The task for practically minded feminists, then, is to deter men from the cad mode. Our current sexual culture does not do that, but it could. In order to change the incentive structure, we would need a technology that discourages short-termism in male sexual behavior, protects the economic interests of mothers, and creates a stable environment for the raising of children. And we do already have such a technology, even if it is old, clunky and prone to periodic failure. It's called monogamous marriage.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.181.

WE ARE DEPENDENT CREATURES

'The liberal theory of the independent individual as the basic unit of society is full of exceptions....It would be fairer to say that dependence is our default state, and self-sufficiency the aberration. Our lives begin and (frequently) end in states of near total dependence, ad much of the middle is marked by periods of need.'

Leah Libresco Sargeant in Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.173.

OUR SEXUAL MORALITY NEEDS MORE THAN THE PRINCIPLE OF CONSENT

'When we strip bask all sexual morality to the bare bones, leaving only the principle of consent, we leave the way clear for some particularly predatory pikes. As the example of pedophilia advocacy shows, the consent framework is nowhere near robust enough to protect the vulnerable from harm. Given the profound importance and complexity of sexual relationships, a much more sophisticated moral system is required...'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.64.

SOME FORM OF SEXUAL REPRESSION IS NEEDED

'Sexual repression is a blunt instrument, but it is not one that we can do away with altogether. as the errors of the 1970s show. The radical desires of sexual liberals do not work in a world in which human sexuality is not always beautiful but often wicked and repulsive.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.64.

THE CENTRAL FEMINIST QUESTION WHEN IT COMES TO SEXUALITY

'...the central feminist question ought not to be "How can we all be free?" but, rather, "How can we best promote the wellbeing of both men and women, given that these two groups have different sets of interests, which are sometimes in tension?"'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.35.

THE DOWNSIDES OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

'We have smoothly transitioned from one form of feminine subservience to another, but we pretend that this one is liberation.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, p.20.

NONREADING THE BIBLE

'Having and defending and celebrating the Bible instead of receiving, submitting and praying the Bible, masks an enormous amount of nonreading.

Eugene H Peterson, Eat This Book, p.140.

THE PERMANENCE OF GOD'S LOVE

'Everything in this life is going to be taken away from us, except one thing: God's love which can go into death with us and take us through it and into His hands.'

Timothy Keller, On Death, p.26. 

PRAYER IS ENGAGING GOD

'Some of us are taught to think that reading the Bible means sitting in God's classroom and that prayer is politely raising our hand when we have a question about what he is teaching us in his Deuteronomy lecture. The Psalms, our prayer text within the biblical text, show us something quite different: prayer is engaging God, an engaging that is seldom accomplished by a murmured greeting and a conventional handshake. The engagement, at least in its initial stages, is more like a quarrel that a greeting, more like a wrestling match than a warm embrace.'

Eugene H Peterson, Eat this Book, p.104.

THE WHOLE BIBLE CONTEXT TO EVERY BIBLE VERSE

'It takes the whole Bible to read any part of the Bible.'
Eugene H Peterson, Eat this Book, p.48.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS A STORY

'The Christian life is conducted in story conditions. The Bible is basically and overall a narrative - an immense, sprawling, capacious narrative.'

Eugene H Peterson, Eat this Book, p.40.

GOOD LANGUAGE CREATES

'It is the very nature of language to form rather than inform. When language is personal, which it is at its best, it reveals; and revelation is always formative - we don't know more, we become more. Our best users of language, poets and lovers and children and saints, use words to make - make intimacies, make character, make beauty, make goodness, make truth.'

Eugene H Peterson, Eat this Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading, p.24.

DISCOVERING WHO YOU ARE

'...Elwood was changed. Closer. At the demonstration, he had felt somehow closer to himself.'
Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, p.35.

THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

'...maybe you cannot ever really walk away from the things you most want to walk away from.'

Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, p.66.

HOW EACH STAGE MAKES THE WHOLE

'I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child I am always a child. Because I was one a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. Because I was once a rebellious student, there is and always will be in me the student crying out for reform.

This does to mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any these ages, the perpetual student, the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide: my past is part of what makes the present Madeleine and must not be denied or rejected or forgotten.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.200.

GOD FEELS

'One hot afternoon the fire siren rang and Quinn went with the firemen to the top of a steep hill where a car was burning; the flames were completely out of control, and inside the inferno was an entire family, a mother, father, and four children.

At his seminary, Quinn had been taught that God, being perfect, is impassible and cannot suffer. That evening he stormed, "If God didn't care, then I don't want him,"

I cried out, "Of course he cared! He was there in that burning car. If he wasn't, then he isn't God."

General compassion is useless. An aloof, general god is useless. Unless we, too, are in that burning car, we are useless.

It is still taught in some seminaries that it is a heresy to think that God can suffer with us. But what does the incarnation show us but the ultimate act of particularity? This is what compassion is all about.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.193.

SEX NEEDS UNIQUENESS

'What concerns me most in the present prevalent freedom - no, not freedom, license, which is a very different thing - about the act of sex, is blunting the particular. If bedding becomes a series of one night stands, it becomes a general thing-in-itself, instead of a very particular act between two particular, unique, irreproducible, irreplaceable persons. When it becomes a thing-in-itself, it is reduced to the de-personalising realm of the general..'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.169.

THE EVIL OF NOT FORGIVING

'It may be infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of hatred.'

George Macdonald in Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.158.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURE

'...the students talked loudly about wanting to be free to dance, to make love, to be themselves. So do I. So we left literature and talked about the body, and I kept asking questions: what is it in you which gives you freedom? Finally one of the young men, with great reluctance, pulled out the word: skeleton. It is our bones, our structure, which frees us to dance, to make love. Without our structure we would be an imprisoned, amorphous blob of flesh, incapable of response. The amoeba has a minimum of structure, but I doubt it has much fun.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.123.

LOVE IS A POLICY

'Love is not an emotion. It is a policy.'
Hugh Bishop in Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.45.

THE POINT OF WRITING

'...I write to be read.'
Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.20.

THE FUNCTIONN OF AN IMAGE

'An image is something that helps us catch a glimpse of reality.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.17

HUMILITY DEFINED

'Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.11.

GOD LIKES YOU

'Forgetting God’s delight and joy in us stunts our ability to enjoy God’s love. Forgiveness – as beautiful and crucial as it is not enough.'

Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.19.

BEAUTY

'I remembered what a farmer once said to me about a particularly fine horse: 'I could have stood and looked at that horse for ever.' In that pasture with it's trees in the evening sunlight, I felt I could have stood and watched that horse for ever, the zest and heavy grace of his movements.'

Adrian Bell, The Men and the Fields, p.113.

DEEP LOVE

'The deepest love is not a painful lack seeking satisfaction for oneself, but a bountiful overflow seeking the good for one's beloved, in generative acts both large and small.'

Leon Kass & Hannah Mandelbaum, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption and the Way of Israel, p.88.

IT TAKES THE BODY OF CHRIST TO BE LIKE CHRIST

'It Takes an Entire Community to Reflect the One Messiah.'
Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.177.

SANCTIFICATION

'It is the universal renovation of our natures by the Holy Spirit into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.'
John Owen in Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.164.

PRAYING FOR HUMILITY

'Grant that
    whatever good things I have,
        I may share generously
            with those who have not
and that
    whatever good things I do not have,
        I may request humbly
            from those who do.'

Thomas Aquinas in Kelly Kapic, Your're Only Human, p.106.

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE INCARNATION & THE CROSS

'What is more demeaning to God, what is more shameful - getting born or dying? To carry flesh or to carry a cross? To be circumcised or be hanged? To be fed at the breast or to be buried?...But you will not be wise unless, by believing God's "foolish things," you have become foolish in this age.'

Tertullian in Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.46.

ANTHROPOLOGY STARTS WITH CHRISTOLOGY?

'I am convinced that only when we have grasped the implications of the humanity of Jesus will we be able to properly assess our own humanity. The doctrine that the Word became flesh means that God himself affirms our flesh as good, and that affirmation liberates us from apologizing for our creaturely limitations. If we believe that Jesus, who was free from all sin, was fully human, then this means that he considered creaturely restrictions to be part of his good creation and not evil at all. It means that we must not apologize for what the Son of God freely embraces.'

Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News, p.43.

DECISION-MAKING

'Whenever I don't know what to do, I watch what I am doing.'
Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! p.155.

THE LONELINESS OF GRIEF

'Grief is such a - oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.'

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! p.3.

HOW THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" HAS FAILED WOMEN

'Women are learning to have sex like men. But peel back the layers, and it becomes obvious that this transition is not a reflection of their power but of their subjugation to men's interests. If women were more in charge of how their relationships transpired - more in charge of the "pricing" negotiations around sex - we would be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts by men, fewer hookups, fewer pre-marital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on (and perhaps even at a slightly earlier age too). In other words the "price" of sex would be higher: it would cost men more to access it. Instead, none of these things are occurring.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.214.

MARIAGE IS A GATEWAY DRUG

'...at its best, marriage is meant to leave us wanting more: it is a gateway drug to a far more fulfilling relationship.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity, p.161.

THE BIBLE COMMANDS SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS

'People sometimes say the Bible condemns same sex relationships. It does not. The Bible commands same-sex relationships at a level if intimacy that Christians seldom reach. Jesus preached a gospel of radical intimacy: with him first and foremost, but through him also with each other.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, p.155.

HOW GENDER EFFECTS SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

'Men and women tend to conduct their relationships differently and exhibit different preferences in their relationships. When the partnership diverges from sexual complementarity - that is, a man and a woman in relationship - decidedly sex-typed preferences are consolidated, not moderated. It means that same-sex couple are ironically more subject to deep-rooted gendered patterns and habits, their stated egalitarian attitudes aside. There is nothing political about this; it is just the empirical reality, one that sexual economics make ready sense of. If the sexes were a simple social construction, utterly malleable, we should see very little distinction in how men and women pursue relationships, how they act within them, how they act apart from them, what they prioritize about them and how they conclude them. But we see all of that.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.158. 

NEW IDENTITIES LEAVE US VULNERABLE

'...the identities we are chattering about today tend to be more rootless and directionless that those of the past. They do not instruct us in how we ought to live. In turn, this lack of social structure, as well as a dearth of tradition, means a lack of constraints, leaving people vulnerable.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.155.