"I know that our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out." pg. 237
"The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands." pg. 239
"Essays...are pieces of art that plunge the depths of the heart to stir vigor in men and woo women." pg 205
"Too much of our time is psent trying to chat God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder." pg 205
"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things." pg 217
"Mr. Spencer then asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider realtionships. What metaphors do we use when we thinkn of relationships? We value people...we invest in people..relationships could be bankrupt...people are priceless. All economic metaphor. I was taken aback. And that's when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is that we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did no agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones that did." pg 218
"I replaced economic metaphor, in my mind with something different, a free gift metaphor or a magnet metaphor. That is, instead of withholding love to change somebody, I poured it on, lavishly. I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson." pg 220
"Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them." pg 220
"The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true.
Now, since Greg Spencer told me about truth, when I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them. I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true." pg 221
"And the scary thing about relationships, intimate relationships, is that if somebody gets to know us, the us that we usually hide, they might not love us; they might reject us." pg 146
"I'm saying there is stuff I can't tell her, not because I don't know her, not because I don't want to, but because there aren't words. It's like we are separate people, and there is no getting inside eachother to read each other's thoughts, each other's beings. Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two peole can get, but they can't get all the way to taht place of absolute knowing. Marriage is the most beautiful thing I have ever dreamed of...buit itsn't everything. It isn't Mecca. She loves everything about me; she accepts me and tolerates me and encourages me. She knows me better than anybody else in the world, but she doesn't know all of me, and I don't know all of her. And I never thought after I got married there would still be something lacking. I always thought marriage...would be the ultimate fulfillment. It is great, don't get me wrong...But there are places in our lives that only God can go." 146
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