WHY INCARNATIONAL LEADERSHIP IS SO IMPORTANT

'It is precisely the men and women who are dedicated to spiritual leadership who are easily subject to very raw carnality. The reason for this is that they do not know how to live the truth of the Incarnation. They seperate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal witn their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant or anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their most private inner world and the good news they announce. When spirirtuality becomes spiritualization, life in the body becomes carnality. When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy. Christian leaders are called to live the Incarnation, that is, to live in the body - not only in their own bodies but also in the corporate body of the community, and to discover there the presence of the Holy Spirit.'

Henri JM Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, p.48.

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IS INCARNATIONAL

'Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Mediucine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which "service" takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is being served, and be sure not to to mix up the roles! But how can anyone lay down his life for those with whom he is not even allowed to enter into deep pesonal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.'

Henri JM Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, p.43.

WHAT LOSS DOES

'Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same.'

Jerry Sitser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, p.62.

OUR CULTURAL MOMENT

'The consciousness of being wounded permeates our times like a swirling mist.'
Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.104.

THE NEED FOR REST

'...sometimes remember to restore yourself to yourself.'
Bernard of Clairvaux in Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.94.

GOD'S GRACE, HUMAN WEAKNESS

'There is a story frequently told in monastic circles that is attributed in a generic way to "the Fathers". I have not been able to trace it back to an original source. No matter. The story expresses something so universal that it is everyone's. Every one of us can rightly claim to be its author while equally claiming to have it on ancient authority. The story goes like this, with minor variations. 'A pilgrim asked an old monk: "Father, what do you do all day in the monastery?" The old monk replied: "I fall, and I am raised up again. I fall, and I am raised up again."'

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.51.

PASTORAL CARE

'The soul needs to hear that it has been heard, that its signal has been picked up and understood.'

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.26.

OUR TOTAL DEPENDENCE

'God's help is an attribute of his Being that keeps us in being.'

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.22.

SINGLE HYPOCRISY

'I nursed my resentment at having "no one" for whom I considered it to be their official role to support me, at the same time positioning myself as someone who would always consider it my role to help a friend and likely force them to accept it. I realised I was indulging a sense of my own exceptionalism, creating a sharp boundary around what I would allow others to do for me, even as I told myself I could and should cross that boundary in the other direction when needed.'

Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue, p.108.

IS INTIMACY POSSIBLE ALONE?

'A fear I often return to is whether intimacy of the self counts. Does self-knowledge have to rebound from another, be in collaboration with someone, to give you the best look at yourself? Otherwise, might I only be hearing myself as echoes? I'm afraid that if I am not seen, heard and observed in the smallest, pettiest, most inconsequential moments of my life, my most basic nature might always be slightly concealed from me. As though my one true self is being witheld by the lack of romantic love.'

Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue, p.104.

SEA SWIMMING

'Even now, to be by the sea is to be in my senses in a way that doesn't seem possible elsewhere. When you're in your senses, you clear a space for truth. The wily part of you is no match for the sea; the sea cannot be deceived, and in the water, I cannot deceive myself either. I am vulnerable and in a state of receiving, ready to listen and ready to speak. It is a kind of intimacy.'

Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue, p.96.

THE DOMINANCE OF ROMANTIC LOVE

'I wonder if we all lose by centring romantic love in our lives. And it does still feel like romantic love is centred. Even as the internet has helped us find our own warm pocket of community within the endless variations of romantic and sexual idenitity; even though state and church control of who cannot be romantcially and sexually involved, and who can have their relationships recognised, has loosened. Nothing has displaced romantic love from its holy status. If we were to pay attention, what do we fail to notice, share and celebrate because of this? Is it possible that life without romantic love isn't that bad? Is it possible we can take as much pleasure in other loves, find new ways of incorporating romantic feeling into our lives, assign importance to crossing over thresholds that romantic love has abandoned?'

Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life, p.10.

THE PRICE OF DOING GOOD

'Anyone setting out to do good will face temptation's wiles. We can count on it. There is no need to get too upset.'

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory: The 2026 Papal Retreat, p.8.

THE INCARNATION

'God coded himself into humanity.'

John C Lennox, Seven Daus that Divide the World: The beginning according to Genesis and science, p.104.

THE EXHAUSTION OF ANGER

'I had always thought that sorrow was the most exhausting of the emotions. Now I knew that it was anger.'
Helen Garner, The Spare Room, p.135.

PRAISE DEFINED

'Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.'
CS Lewis, A Grief Observed, p.53.

JESUS'S ANGER

'Jesus isn't angry when he's mistreated; he's angry when others are mistreated. There was nothing selfish or self-serving in his anger.'

Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.140.

HOW MUCH JESUS LOVES US

'Even when we sin, Jesus desires us. Perhaps in our sin he desires us the most, for he longs for us to turn away from the ruin of sin and come back to his grace. When Jesus sees your sin and suffering, his instinct is not to turn away but to turn towards you in love.'

Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.102.

CHRIST'S POWER TO RESURRECT

'No one can as easily awaken another in bed, as Christ can in the tomb.'
Augustine of Hippo in Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.72.

JESUS GETS US

'He is affected with our infirmities, he feels them, he is touched with the feeling of them. He has a sense of them which touches his soul, and makes an impression on it; as one who not only has suffered what others feel, but suffers with them in what they feel.'

David Clarkson in Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus: Experience the presence and kindess of the Son of God in everyday life, p.38.

HOW IDENTITY POLITICS FRAGMENTS

'...attaching the individual self to a fixed definition of a group self - and the group definition subsequently becoming entrenched - can lead to polarisation and even extremism. If you depend on a solid group identity to find individual stability, any questioning of that group also causes individual agony; identity is deeply emotional. And so, if a group's identity is challenged - as British national identity has been, for example, in the past few decades of increased immigration and globalisation - it fragments into the new version and a more stubbornly held iteration of the old, which enables individuals within the group to maintain their own sense of self. It follows that each old version becomes increasingly extreme or more concentrated. This is not just because it is smaller, but because the individuals within it pour in the same emotional significance they once did to the larger group: a narrower definition of the collective self is given the same weight.'

Emily Bootle, This Is Not Who I Am: Our Authenticity Obsession, p.84.

FEARING GOD

'To fear God is to no longer assert self. To fear God is to give up not only the need to master all threats but the drive to know all answers. To fear God is to trust that it is better to have him without answers than to have answers without him.'

Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough, p.194.

WHERE ENJOYMENT POINTS US

'...in God's world, enjoyment is a clue to reality's deepest, brightest secret: that the universe is the gleeful invention of unassailably happy God.'

Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough, p.132.

OUR DERANGED AGE

'You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth - and who are luckily exempt from depression - would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientfic and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he or what he is doing.'

Walker Percy in Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Not Enough, p.116.

A COSMIC IRONY

'The modern objective consciousness will go to any length to prove that it is not unique in the Cosmos, and by this effort establishes its own uniqueness.'

Walker Percy in Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Not Enough, p.113.

WE ARE COSMIC MISFITS

'God has made us cosmic misfits.'
Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes' Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness, p.71.

MIDDLE-AGE

'One of the disconcerting aspects of middle age was the realization that most of the crises which happened to other people also ultimately happened to you.'

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, p.44.

THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY WRONG EXPECTATIONS

'Trauma in reponse to disaster often stems from the unbiblical fiction that the world is, and ought to be experienced as, all right. To declare it instead sick, "a vale of tears", is not pessimistic. It is to own that the world needs saving still; that Easter is not a past event, but present; that is our life, our joy and our hope depend on it. Only in paradise, when we are home at last, with Jesus, will God make all crying case. For now, we eat our fill from his table as wanderers, his bread, seasoned with our tears.'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.169.

THE VERY FACE OF GOD

 'When the Blessed Virgin, having given birth, looked into this face, she enjoyed a privilege no woman or man had known since Adam and Eve before the fall, still robed in glory.'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.143.

GOD'S ACTIVE HANDS

'Theology teaches that God's hands were never more active than when fastened to the wood of the tree, "puntured by nails", causing blood to flow "as the price of a great salvation". This is a lesson to be pondered often and in silence.'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.74.

INCARNATE INTIMATE LOVE

'Some time ago I read a remarkable book, the Confessions of a Chiropodist. The writer reveals an interesting fact: all her patients (she insists this is a rule without exception) ask, when they first turn up, forgiveness for their feet - for the general state of them, their shape, their relative smallness or largeness. Most of us, it seems, are ashamed of our feet. That explains, perhaps, why so many people are reluctant to take part in foot-washing on Maundy Thursday. It sheds light, too, on what went that night, long ago, in the Upper Room. When Jesus took the feet of the Twelve, one by one, into his hands it was to say: "I know you as you are. I love you as you are."'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.40.

THEOLOGY & PRAYER

'If you are a theologian, you will truly pray; and if you pray truly, you will be a theologian.'

Evagrius in Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.39,

THE FACT OF DEATH

'Death is the greatest fact in life. It faces us from our earliest consciousness. There is nothing startling in it to the child's mind.'

Frances Comper in Sarah Perry, Death of an Ordinary Man, p.183.

THERE ARE NO ORDINARY LIVES

'...now I understand that there are no ordinary lives - that every death is the end of a single event in time's history: an event so improbable it represents a miracle, and irreplaceable in every particular.'

Sarah Perry, Death of a Ordinary Man, p.6.

THE POWER OF FIRE

'"If everyone sat in front of a fire once a week," he said, "the people who made tranquillizers would go out of business.'"

Laurie Colwin, Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object, p.107.

GRIEF IS METABOLIC

'As the days went by, I realized that grief is metabolic it crawls through you like disease and takes your energy away. Then it gathers and hits like [a] sudden migraine, like being hit by a car, like having a large, flat rock hurled at your chest.'

Laurie Colwin, Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object, p.27.

THE LENGTH OF SORROW

'Sorrow is the longest thing in life...'
Niall Williams, Time of the Child, p.238.

THE LIMITS OF A THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

'In the seminary there had been no preparations for this, first, because none of the teachers were married, none knew first-hand of the numberless ways human relations could go wrong, or acknowledged that one plus one did not always equal two, and second, because once that book was openened, once you started a chapter What to do if, no one would ever get to ordination.'

Niall Williams, Time of the Child, p.234.

REJOICE WITH THOSE WHO REJOICE, MOURN WITH THOSE WHO MOURN

'Love never stands aloof from other people's joys or pains. Love identifies with them, sings with them and suffers with them. Love enters deeply into their experiences and their emotions, their laughter and their tears, and feels solidarity with them, whatever their mood.'

John Sott, The Message of Romans, p.333.

THE TROUBLES OF RICHES

'Riches cannot buy a cheerful spirit and a light heart. There are troubles in the getting of them, troubles in the keeping of them, troubles in the using of them, troubles in the disposing of them, troubles in the gathering of them, and troubles in the scattering of them.'

JC Ryle, Happiness, p.20.

TRUE HAPPINESS

'To be truly happy, a person's highest needs must be met and satisfied. The requirements of our wonderously created constition must all be met.'

JC Ryle, Happiness, p.14.

WE ALL LIVE UNDER A TOTALITARIAN REGIME

'Reading Luke's Gospel I see why Steiner is so terribly wrong when he says that only people living under totalitarian regimes can produce art worthy of the name. We all live under the totalitarian regime of the world's evil. And it's in the terms in which our own culture manifests it that we have to expresss our struggle against it, our longings for glimpses of good.'

Helen Garner, How to End a Story:Collected Diaries, p.419.

WHEN WE FINALLY GET TO BE OURSELVES

'"Won't it be nice when we die, Edie, and we can finally be ourselves?"'

Laurie Colwin, A Big Storm Knocked it Over, p.163.

THE BEGINNING OF GOD SETTING EVERYTHING RIGHT AGAIN

'..with the resurrection of Jesus God's new world has begun; in other words, his being raised from the dead is the start, the paradigm case, the foundation, the beginning, of that great setting-right which God will do for the whole cosmos at the end. The risen body of Jesus is the one bit of the physical universe that has already been "set right", Jesus is therefore the one through whom everything else will be "set right".'

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part 2 Chapters 13-28, p.93. 

THE HEAVENS DECLARE

'After the world had been created, man was placed in it as in a theatre, that he, beholding above him and beneath the wonderful works of God, might reverently adore their Author.'

John Calvin in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.236.

DON'T BE A FISH OUT OF WATER

'As a fish lives in the water as in its element, and dies when it is out, so a Christian lives in prayer as in his element, and his heart dies when he is out of it.'

William Bridge in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.167.

OUR PATIENT GOD

'To read the Bible well is to become acquainted with God's patience.'
Esau McCaulley, Lent, p.60.

THE LORD'S SUPPER: RITUAL & ENCOUNTER

'Christ doesn't just teach us about himself in the Eucharist; he comes to us and nourishes the weary believer. We can have both. Ritual is both a means of spiritual formation (we learn through repetition) and an encounter (God meets us in the act of worship and praise in the liturgy).'

Esau McCaulley, Lent, p.55.

BECOMING A CHRISTIAN

'To transition from believing you live in a world where death is the end, to one in which an almighty God calls dead things to life.'

Esau McCaulley, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, p.7.

BIBLICAL MEDITATION

'Meditation is a middle sort of duty betweeen the word and prayer, and hath respect to both.'

Thomas Manton in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.131.

HOPELESS? HOPEFUL PRAYER

His prayers lean upward
on the dark and fall
like flares from a catastrophe.
He is a man breathing the fear
of hopeless prayer, prayed
in hope.

Wendell Berry, from '1994 VI' in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p.181. 

SCRIPTURE AS RAPPORT

'Scripture is the ongoing rapport between heaven and earth.'

Herman Bavinck in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation, p.91.

HOW BEAUTY CREATES A HUNGER FOR TRUTH

'The beautiful, almost without any effort of its own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction - to locate what is true.'

Elaine Scarry in Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling, p.118.

TELLING THE TRUTH

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson in Karen Swallow Prioer, You Have a Calling, p.95.

OVERVALUING CHURCH MINISTRY

'This persistent assumption that church work is higher or nobler than "worldy" work (a form of neomonasticism) is the source of all kinds of evil.'

Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling, p.62.

LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE ASK YOU TO DO

'When someone calls, it means they think they have a need you can fill. This is the heart of vocation. Vocation is not being able to fulfil our desires, pursue our passions, or follow our bliss. Vocation is about being called by others to serve.'

Karen Swallow Prior; You Have a Calling, p.65.

MOTHERS

'She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare.'

Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet, p.260.

OUR BUSINESS: CO-CREATION

'That is our calling: co-creation. Every single one us, without exception, is called to co-create with God.'

Madeleine L'Engle in Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Voaction in the True, Good & Beaitiful, p.13. 

WHAT BIBLICAL LAMENT DOES

'Lament allows a person to do two critical things: to express the pain and bewilderment of suffering, and to do so in a way that maintains an orientation towards God.'

Steve Midgley, Understanding Trauma: A Biblical Introduction for Church Care, p.151.

FRIENDSHIP PERFECTIONISM

'We friendship fans have an obvious vice, which is to set the bar too high, unwittingly laying a trap for those who are much more casual about what friendship involves. Falling out is much my fault as theirs, because those poor friends flunked an exam they didn't even know they were sitting.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.56.

DEATH & FRIENDSHIP

'Death doesn't really end a friendship, it sanctifies it. It makes a closeness permanent. The fact that you won't see the friend again is a bitter loss, but at another level their vital presence may be guaranteed, a friendship that is now safe from the vagaries of human nature and changeable weather. Death is a disaster but also a fixity, I suppose, which traps in aspic every brilliant relationship it touches. There will be no more to add, just a perpetual reflection on the living value of what has been.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.43.

FRIENDSHIP VS. ROMANCE

'Ironically a friend is someone whom you repay for not wanting to possess you, and it may count among the nuances of love that we cannot extend that same consideration to those we fancy.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.12.