WE SEE THE FALL IN DAILY LIFE

'What we know of the Fall from Scripture, we verify daily through experience.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery, p.22.

BEING IN THE IMAGE OF GOD MEANS BEING INCOMPLETE WITHOUT HIM

'To be created "in the image" of God is to exist on the basis of a relationhip. It is to be constituted in such a way that our being and flourishing depend on a power outside ourselves that exceeds us infinitely. This relational nature of man - the fact that we are, by definition, incomplete in ourselves - lies at the heart of religious obedience.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery, p.21.

YOU ARE A SIGN OF DIVINITY IN CREATION

'God, we know, is Spirit. He cannot be bound by time and space. He cannot he contained in matter. Yet with the creation of man, he leaves an imprint of himself in the temporal, spatial reality of our world. The human being is to be a sign of divinity in creation, a bridge between time and eternity.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery, p.20.

THE HAPPINESS THAT COMES FROM DEPENDENCE

'The religious person constructs his life on the certainity that he is not autonomous, and glories in it. Happiness, he knows, is a function of dependence; true freedom, for him, is found through obedience.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion, p.20.

GRACE IS BY DEFINITION UNDESERVED

'The problem of expecting to live in a perfectly fair world is that there is no grace in that world, for grace is grace only when it is undeserved.'

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised, p.112.

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING MATTER

'Hilary was a fast reader and dreaded nothing more than being stranded without print. He would read anything sooner than nothing...'

Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost, p.124.

HOW TO JUDGE A CUTURE

'A culture is no better than its woods.'
WH Auden in Michael Malay, Late Light, p.209.

LIFE

'We live the given life, and not the planned.'
Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p.178.

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.