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" Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us. "

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" Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. "

" Ministers are powerless people who have nothing to boast of except their weaknesses. But when the Lord whom they serve fills them with His blessing they will move mountains and change the hearts of people wherever they go. "

" The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. "

" I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real. "

" Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it. "

" In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered. "

" The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful. "

" Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity. "

" To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship. "

" Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking. "

" Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God's suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through. "

" Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his 'being different' gets in the way. "

Being Different

" Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg. "

" Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. "

" The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time. "

" Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. "

" Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy. "

" Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on. "

" Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. "

" One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal. "

" The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised. "

" I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys. "

" The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares. "

" When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness. "

" The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear. "

" The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results. "

" Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. "

" To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age. "

" The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. "

" In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. "