book three

Our bodies are perhaps the best metaphor of the paradoxical experience we all have of being human. We are fragile yet fierce, susceptible yet strong, ordinary yet also one-of-a-kind. We are valueless dust inhabited by priceless divinity.

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because.

It’s easy to believe that God uses us in spite of our failures, in spite of our doubts, in spite of our mistakes. But what I’m realizing is that more often, God uses us not in spite of but because of those flaws.

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Nyan Pieth: spending our lives on what's good

After watching the Oscars last night, I’ve been thinking about all the things we can live for in the world. We can live for security, for superiority, for wealth, for fame, for attention, for success, for prestige. But those ambitions often enrich us to the exclusion of others’ good, building our transient ladders of pride and sand castles of self-aggrandizement at other people’s expense.

But there is another way.

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Sarah ThebargeComment
my soul wanted you: choosing desire over deprivation this Lent

During the next forty days, may we create the stillness and the silence to hear the Voice that whispers to us, "I created you, my precious child, because my soul wanted you."  And may we say, over and over again for the 40 days (and the lifetime) it takes us to reach the Resurrection, "My soul wants You, too."

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being a single saint on Valentine's Day/Ash Wednesday

On Valentine's Day three years ago, I told a saintly, septuagenarian nun, "My life is harder than yours." She raised her eyebrows.  "I mean, it's harder for me to be single than it is for you," I explained. 

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(half) the sky is falling: why John Piper's words should grieve men, too.

It's not that we need to unseat the already-seated orchestra. It's just that the orchestra we have is incomplete. There are notes missing that we don't even know are missing because we haven't ever heard them. 

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just one more time

It's right here, right in this moment, that we have an incredibly important choice to make.  This choice is going to define how we feel New Years Eve 2018, looking back at how we spent the 365 days of possibilities that we were gifted this year.  We can either choose to give up, or refuse to give up.

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how to make our wounded world well

In upstate New York today, there's a 13-year-old black, Muslim, refugee girl walking around with a broken heart who needs a kind smile, a gentle hug, a generous gesture. There are people like that in my neighborhood in San Francisco -- and your neighborhood, too.  

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what's the best step you can take today? (hint: it's probably very, very small)

Taking the smallest step you can think of might sound insignificant, maybe even silly. But this is how change happens. It happens with small, incremental, nearly-imperceptible steps.  But the important thing is -- it happens.

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