—BIRTHDAYS JUNE 16—
JOHN SHELBY SPONG 1931-2021 “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” “Jesus for the Nonreligious”. “The Sins of Scripture”
THERE’S an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance.
THE CHURCH is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.
THE BIBLICAL TEXTS that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.
THE BIBLE has lost every major battle it has ever brought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the Bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.
CHRISTIANITY IS, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.
I TREASURE THE BIBLE, I live in it and work on it all the time. But it is not the word of God. It’s the tribal story of a particular people, and the best thing about that story is that the story keeps growing and evolving.
WHEN THE DUST SETTLES and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.
THE VIEW of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
PRAYING AND LIVING DEEPLY, richly and fully have become for me almost indistinguishable. Prayer is being present and, sharing love, opening life to transcendence. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wonderously and invite others to do so.
THE BIBLE is full of dreadful things. There’s a Psalm that says “Happy will you be when you take your enemy’s children and dash their heads against the stones.” Don’t read this to me on Sunday morning and say “This is the word of the lord.” It’s like the crazy man down in Alabama who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in his courtroom.
I THINK that anything the begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God.
JOYCE CAROL OATES 1938—“Where are you Going . . .” “Blonde”
IT”S where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.
THE CHALLENGE is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.
I never change, I simply become more myself.
THERE’S NOTHING “ordinary” ABOUT REALITY.
READING is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.
HOW LOVELY THIS WORLD IS, REALLY: ONE SIMPLY HAS TO LOOK.
BLESSINGS TO EVERYONE