Irregular Theology

As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robbed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.

— George MacDonald, Phantastes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 67.  (via chary)

Participation in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ was the template of Paul’s spirituality…He [Paul] would remind us of “his ways” in Christ Jesus, that the gospel is imitating Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, walking in the power of his Holy Spirit…To live the crucified life, to share life together as the body of Christ, to walk in the resurrection power of Christ would be good news for his time and for our time.

— Spirituality According to Paul – Rodney Reeves (Book Review) « nijay k gupta

The original Christians, in short, were about creating and sustaining a unique culture — a way of life that would shape character in the image of their God. And they were determined to be a culture, a quite public and political culture, even if it killed them and their children.

— Rodney Clapp
A Peculiar People

A Prayer for Concluding Prayers Speak to me, Lord; help me to listen; make me to hear your voice. Let me come to know you as you are, O God of infinite and perfect love — you who made the sun and the stars, and came near in Christ. Forgive me my sin, and deliver me into new life. Free me from the fear and the power of death. Make me your servant, faithful to the way of Jesus. For I do believe, Lord; help me in my unbelief. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

— Resident Theology: Sunday Sabbath Poetry: A Prayer for Concluding Prayers

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

— Elizabeth Warren, quoted here (via wesleyhill)

Lord, who has formed me out of mud,
And hast redeemed me through thy blood,
And sanctified me to do good;

Purge all my sins done heretofore:
For I confess my heavy score,
And I will strive to sin no more.

Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charity;
That I may run, rise, rest with thee.

— George Herbert, “Trinity Sunday,” in The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 61.  (via chary)

Everything is threatened, but meanwhile
everything presents itself:
the trees, that day and night
steadily stand there, amassing
lifetimes and moss, the bushes
eager with buds sharp as green
pencil points. Bark of cedar,
brown braids, bark of fir, deep-creviced,
winter sunlight favoring
here a sapling, there and ancient snag…

— Denise Levertov