Quotes

Being a pastor, I am occasionally asked why I quote other people in my sermons, rather than simply engaging in an exposition of the Bible. I believe I use quotes from others as an integral part of my exposition of a biblical passage, use them to dig deeply into the meaning of a passage and the meaning of a passage for our lives. Some will also ask why my blogs don’t focus more on the Bible. I have two blogs, this one, and one on which I post my weekly sermons, sermons which dig into Bible passages to ask what it means to be a person of Christian faith today. So I use this blog to share thoughts that, while shaped by my engagement with the Bible (because my whole life is thus shaped), take a freer form and frankly engage cultural sources as much as strictly religious sources.
Recently I discovered this quote from St. Augustine which strengthens my case for my approach in preaching and writing. Every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s, On Christian Doctrine 2.18.28. I like to find truth in a wide variety of sources and enjoy having truth come at me slant.
William James: I have always held the opinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon other readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality whom he may discover in his explorations (“A Pluralistic Mystic”). William James is well-known, and by me well-loved, but inspired by James and Augustine, I share a few quotes from authors who may be less well-known to those of you who stumble across or into this blog now and again.
The capacity for pathos toward oneself, the capacity to acknowledge and accept one’s suffering as real and poignant and, sometimes, unjustified, is important and constructive. A sense of pathos represents a coming to terms with our relative helplessness in the face of many aspects of our lives…. Genuine pathos entails compassionate acceptance of suffering caused by events and forces outside our control. Without pathos, we delude ourselves into denying our finitude, our limitations, our mortality. But accepting the limited control we have over our own lives is difficult, and genuine pathos teeters always on the brink of what we might term “pitifulness”: victimology and self-pity. (Stephen Mitchell - the psychoanalyst, not the translator and anthologist, Can Love Last, 167, 169). This is not an argument for irresponsibility, which would be a species of victimology and self-pity, but a case for compassion toward oneself in a world where we do not control everything.
Freud was to discover that the ways we protect ourselves tend also to be the ways we imprison ourselves. (Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness, 62-63). We need a sense of security and safety, but what we use to construct that sense can become the bars which constrict our lives. Life is an on-going struggle to balance pathos with our need to act to improve our lives and the world; and an on-going struggle to balance security with adventure. I believe God is One whose Spirit is always inviting us to compassion and adventure.
To love God with all your heart, soul, might and to feel the heartbreak at the center of existence, and the deeper joy, working within the storm, in the feel of feelings, the feel of life, the feel of one’s life (Michael Eigen, Conversations with Michael Eigen, x. Eigen is a writer I have discovered in the past year and I find his work incredibly rich and insightful. He is a psychoanalytically-oriented therapist who writes about God, the Bible, the mystic as well as about therapy and psyche).

With Faith and With Feathers,
David