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“Tell me, ye mighty waters, why did ye sustain the ponderous load of misery?... And God…be not angry with us while we come into this, thy sanctuary, and make the bold inquiry in this, thy holy temple, why it was that thou didst look on with the calm indifference of an unconcerned spectator…?”
~ Nathaniel Paul
An Address Delivered on the Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery in the State of New York, July 5, 1827
“It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have
studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors
as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing
to treat them either as brothers or as human beings.”
~ Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
~ Victor Frankl
God comes to us not where we should have been
if we had made all the right choices in life;
not where we could have been
if we had taken every opportunity
that God has offered us;
not where we wish we were
if we didn’t have to be in the place
where we find ourselves;
not where we think we are
because our minds are out of sync with our hearts;
not where other people think we are
or think we ought to be
when they are attending to their own agendas.
God meets us where we really are.
~ Margaret Silf
Spirituality is about seeing.
It's about intimate relationship with things
rather than achieving results or meeting requirements.
Once you see fully, the rest follows.
You don't need to push the river,
because you are already in the river.
God's life of love is being lived within you,
and you must simply learn how
to say yes to that life.
~ Richard Rohr
There are hard things
that I must do today, dear God.
Hard things, but I
should like to do them well,
and bravely as I can.
I ask for courage.
Let me not give up
when things go wrong,
but gladly try another way.
Dear God, be near me through the day
and help me do the hard things well.
~ Edith Kent Battle, “For Hard Things”
“Loneliness is as universal as love…Is it possible that the lonely place in you and me is somehow essential and even a gift from God, if we have eyes to see it?”
“Many of us who claim to believe that we’re being made whole by grace behave as if our worth in the world depends on what we get done and how well we perform.”
Life is not meant to be a burden. Life is not a problem to be solved. It is a blessing to be celebrated. Every dimension of life, its gains and its losses, are reason for celebration because each of them brings us closer to wisdom and fullness of understanding.
~ Joan Chittister
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
~ Thomas Merton
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In the state of abandonment [to God] the only rule is the duty of the present moment. In this the soul is light as a feather, liquid as water, simple as a child, active as a ball in receiving and following all the inspirations of grace.
~ Jean Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
"I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished. I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged… My life has been extended by death, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it."
~ Etty Hillesum
“We are too complicated. We have made God too complicated. We have been so anxious to define and to control, that God has been lost in all the definitions, the rituals and the rules. God is. And that, perhaps, is too simple for us.“
~ Edwina Gateley
"I have the immense joy of being a [human being], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."
~ Thomas Merton
"Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source."
~ Thomas Merton
But if I say, “I will not mention his word
or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.
~Jeremiah 20:9
“…deliver it, early now,
long before death
Give beauty back,
beauty, beauty, beauty,
back to God,
beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.
I have not love
except it comes from Thee.
Help me, please,
to carry this candle against the Wind.
~ Wendell Berry (b. 1934)
To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds,
to babes and sages with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurrying never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
~ William Ellergy Channing (1780-1842)
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At First Baptist DC, giving is the fuel that powers every congregational expression of hospitality, compassion, generosity and justice. FBC relies on the congregation for regular, sustainable financial support.
The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C.
1328 16th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 387-2206
