Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age (New York: Riverhead Books) 2023.
But more and more I crave being part of a congregation, a group of people with whom I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep me on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to the ideas that bewilder and challenge me....
I may not have a divine voice whispering in my ear to render it all clear, but I'm fairly certain that God--however you conceive of them--didn't plan for any of us to be racist. ... A spiritual practice that blankets us in the analgesic of self-acceptance is just a bandage for our narcissism. Congregations--ones that are allowed to express diversity of thought--hold us to account (pages 98-99).
Katherine May,
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times(New York: Riverhead Books) 2020.
After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don't allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. We seem to be living in an age when we're bombarded with entreaties to be happy, but we're suffering from an avalanche of depression... (page 236).
It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now ... (page 241).
Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (New York: Convergent) 2025.
Something must break us out of the reward-punishment frame. It is too small and too self-serving. It makes the God of the ever-evolving and expanding universe seem equally small and petty, and it has already shown itself to create far too many small, petty, largely competitive, and happily vengeful humans....
Somehow, the loving people I have met all across the world seem to know that if it is love at all, it has to be love for everybody. As soon as you even begin to parcel it out, you are not in the great field of love (pages 158-159).
Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays, The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) 2024.
As it did for the Johannine author, love looms large in our thinking. Is there a simpler or more direct statement about God in the Bible than "God is love?" ... Paul offers a way to decide whom to follow when visions conflict and people disagree. Follow the way of love. ...
It's not accidental that love also became a key principle for St. Augustine. He wrote, "anyone who thinks that he [or she] has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them but cannot by his [or her] understanding built up those double love of God and neighbour, has not yet succeeded in understanding them" (page 220).
Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say (New York: Random House) 2019.
Once a week I take off all my jewelry, slip into a shapeless blue polyester volunteer coat, clip ID tags to my lapel, and drive 5.3. miles through Piedmont and down 52nd Street to our local children's hospital. I park, take the elevator to the third floor, and buzz myself into the NICU. Standing at a wall of metal sinks, I scrub up to my elbows for a full minute, enjoying the smell of the soap and the sound the brush makes against my fingernails. I dry off, gown up, and walk the nurseries, listening for babies in distress....
Though I'm always curious to know the details of their traumas and conditions, privacy laws forbid all reference to personal or medical information with volunteers. It wouldn't be useful anyway, not to the babies, who I am there to serve. As in most situations, it's not important why someone hurts, only that they do (pages 190-191).
Pádraig Ó Tuama, Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans) 2024.
Jesus,
when the man
struck your face
you asked him a
question
of integrity.
Help all of us
in situations of
stress
to ask direct
questions.
Because you did.
And while it
didn't save you,
it kept you
close to
your own
beautiful heart.
Amen (day 26).
Niall Williams, Four Letters of Love (New York: Bloomsbury) 1997.
"She will come," Nicholas said aloud, "she will," and was suddenly aware that the reason was quite simple, that it was because that was how the world fitted together, not how we plan it, nor with a shape we conceive, but with a crazy pattern of its own that runs through all the twists and griefs of every day unto the point of me lying here knowing I am to love her and the plots of love and God are one and the same thing. She will come (page 341).
Kate Baer, How About Now (New York: Harper Perennial, 2025)
Somewhere a voice says:
Why not remake the world?
Why not embrace it
with the softest forms of love?
What I think she’s trying to say is:
What are we waiting for?
(page 79)
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017)
“And whereas one of my students asks a visiting poet about education vaguely getting at what is worth pursuing? The poet suggests looking at whatever is/was missing in one’s life and begin there. So many nods in the room around that table they acknowledge it too. In the missing: power” (67).
David Gate, A Rebellion of Care (New York: Convergent, 2025)
“yes, everyone is struggling right now
so please be gracious
be kind & patient, but subvert
every institution that relies on our suffering” (198)
Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (New York: WW Norton and Company, 2015)
“We will plant songs where there were curses” (109).
Naomi Shihab Nye, The Tiny Journalist Poems (Rochester: BOA Editions, Ltd, 2019)
“Who you are, exactly, or what you have been doing
all these years appears to be of little interest to Israeli
authorities when they jail you….
Israel receives 38 billion dollars from the United
States to comfort them. Why would they care who you are?” (47)
Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh (New York: Convergent, 2022)
“People talk about God as three distinct persons in one. If this is true, it means the whole cosmos is predicated on a diverse and holy community. And if we bear the image of God, that means we bear the image of a multitude. And that to bear the image of God in its fullness, we need each other” (page 73).
Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies (New York: Covergent, 2024)
“God of wisdom,
It’s hard to know what to say to a God claimed by those who have wounded us. Can we trust you? We have known what it is to exist in spiritual spaces that are more interested in controlling us than loving us” (page 81).
John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2025)
Pardon the language, but this quote does seem to get right to the point.
“Jesus, time and time again, refuses to be a dick” (page 128).
