One great author I admire is Brennan Manning. He’s a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan order who combines theological reflection with personal authenticity. He wrote “The Ragamufin Gospel” – a classic for many - and the more recent “The Importance of Being Foolish.”  He’s written about topics a wide as being in love with God, alcoholism, devotion to faith, justice in South America, the need for community, grace, and surrender. Here are some fun quotes that came across my desk recently, sent my way by a friend (thanks Serena!) that reminded me of some of the ‘basics’ – enjoy!Â
“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt. I hope and I get discouraged. I love and I hate. I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said, ‘I am an animal;’ I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”
“On some given day when grace overtook me and I returned to prayer, I half expected Jesus to ask, ‘who dat?’ ” Â
“Perhaps the real dichotomy in the Christian community today is not between conservatives and liberals or creationists and evolutionists, but between the awake and the asleep.”
“If there is little power and shallow wisdom in our preaching, teaching, worship and ministry, I believe it is because the Crucified Christ has been ignored in favor of a lot of ‘burning theological issues,’ most of which are neither burning nor theological.”
and i’ve added you to mine! thanks for your comment, and for your own honesty. yes, i’d love to do coffee. e-mail me and let’s try to work something out, eh?
when i was student-directing uo my senior year, we had all of our program leaders read “compassion”. i came back to school for our first meeting (which we’d planned to revolve around discussion of the book) cynically and fully expecting that no one would have read it and that we’d sit around picking at our split ends, trying to find things to say. i couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised – we couldn’t have kept them quiet if we’d tried! nouwen always finds ways to provoke, to challenge, to inspire, with words that i never could have thought to string together in a sentence. i love him for the role he’s played in my life and for the ways he puts into words the emotions and thoughts that swirl within me.
Hi, Liz!
I’m glad that we found each others’ blogs. You can most certainly add my blog to yours. I hope that you are doing well. I think it’s so funny that we both know Erik!
Kjersten
Liz,
I enjoyed reading this post and also your article The White Choice and Kingdom Community. I struggle constantly with how to connect our theology to our everyday life and how to live out of authenic faith. I must say I get a little exasperated with theologians who seem to have all their knowledge in their heads yet don’t know how to apply it. I tell people that I learned my theology in the refugee camps in Thailand and it is true. I don’t think that I really understood what Christianity was about until I had the opportunity to apply it in a situation in which I was faced with dying kids and the kind of suffering that I will probably never know. I often think that the best way to teach theology is to push peple out into their communities rather than sitting them down in chairs and yakking at them.
Probably the same with diversity – it is only because I have worked with people from all over the world that I really appreciate the richness of diversity and the gifts that every culture brings to the Christian table. The best way to encourage an understanding of diversity is to push people into situations where they live and work together with people from a variety of cultures. Encouraging multicultural churches is a great start.