Some of my favorite Madeleine L'Engle & Sheri Dew quotes...

Bright Evening Star Madeleine L’Engle

“God, who is al power, gave away power! And yet he ability to give power away, lavishly, lovingly, is greater than having onto power as human beings try to do. With us power is control. With God it is freedom.”

“Jesus promised our lives matter. Our deaths matter.”

“God is lavish with power, not grasping it, as we do, but joyfully giving it away.”

“’I believe that God knows all the possibilities,’ my editor said,’ everything you or I could possibly decide or choose. Thus, every way we would choose would be within God’s knowledge, but it is not determined’”

“We do not own stories, and when we try to limit them, squeeze the life out of them, lose the love that gave them to us and fall back into that fatal human flaw, pride, hubris, we’re right back to Adam and Eve who listened to the power of the snake instead of the creativity of God.”

“If you don’t forgive the sins, what will you do with them?”

“I’m not happy with the Big Bang theory being called the big bang, because these words seem to feed into our world of violence, where the good guys are the most powerful and win with their force. I like to think of that beginning as the time when Christ quietly called all things into being, and although there is undoubtedly a great deal of violence in the formation of galaxies- like the violence of childbirth- it is not a matter of power and winning but of creating and rejoicing.”

“The more openly we read the Gospels, trying to listen to them freshly, the more we understand Jesus, and the more we understand how easily he was misunderstood. And the more we understand why he was feared.”

“What Satan was doing was tempting Jesus to retrieve power, to emphasize his divinity above his humanness, to reverse the Incarnation.”

“Christ came to us as Jesus, a mortal, in order to show us how to be human, and he never gave in to the temptation to take the easy way out- no stones into bread.”

“Love is not power. Love is giving power away. Power in the sense of control. When our babies are little infants we have to use loving power to see that they are properly clothed, fed, have the right immunizations, are given love and cuddling and laughter. As they grow up we try to step aside, hoping we have taught them to make the right and loving decisions. If we try to control or manipulate (and there are parents who continue to do this long after the children are grown) then we are not loving; we are using power for our own ends. There’s a very fine line here and it’s very easy to step over it: power and love and power as manipulation. Thinking of Jesus and his calm rejection of power in favor of love is a help. Weren’t the miracles power? Yes, but never just for power’s sake. Never to prove a point. Never for Jesus to show off or to get his own way.”

“Whenever I love, I give away power. If I try to control or manipulate, then I am not loving, I am using power for my own good, even if I am convinced it’s for someone else’s good.”

“If I sell a family watch to a pawnbroker, it has to be ‘redeemed’. I have to return the price I received for it, and more. In the days when grocery shoppers were given green stamps they could be redeemed for some kitchen appliance, a blender, a set of mixing bowls. Redemption is a reminder that you don’t get something for nothing. Jesus came to redeem us by offering his human life as the price, the whole life, from conception to resurrection. In the Beatitudes he tries to show us how we are to understand what he is doing.”

“He not only resisted Satan’s temptations, all of which were to reject his humanness and do something magic and flashy, but he refused every temptation put in his path to drop his mortality and show himself in terms of Satan’s false perceptions of divinity. Satan left heaven because he did not understand God; he knew only his own pride. And so he kept tempting Jesus with his own faulty understand which stopped him from being either human or divine.”

“Change can be disastrous as well as creative and once we admit that change is needed, we are open to both possibilities.”

“Jesus did not condemn [the woman in adultery]. Jesus tells us to stop whatever it is that we are doing that separates us from God.”

“We tend to be most impressed with Jesus’ telling the man to get up and walk, but our physical health avails us little if we are bent and burdened by sin.”

“Do we want to be healed? Before we can be healed we have to let go of whatever it is that is holding us back. Sometimes we are unaware that we are holding onto something, a disease which makes us feel important, an anger that we have been unfairly treated, a guilt that keeps nagging at us.

“Forgiveness is a gift of grace, not an act of will.”

“What surprised us, and what we are often not willing to accept, is the Jesus’ stories, and his answers to the questions put to test him, almost always turn things around, upside-down, inside out, and the tendency of the Pharisees, and our tendency today in our churches, is to try to get everything right side up again, back into the familiar boxes of recognizable laws and customs.”

“Our wrong choices are ours, not God’s. The terrible things that happen are usually because of our wrong choices.”

“Jesus kept his promise to be human for us so that we might be human, too. It is difficult for us to understand his dual nature, but impossible if we diminish his humanity.”

“I have children and grandchildren, and they give vulnerability, not security.”

The Irrational Season

“Righteousness begins to reveal itself as that strength which is so secure that it can show itself as gentleness, and the only people who have this kind of righteousness are those who are integrated and do not suppress the dark side of themselves.”

“I can conceive of forgiveness without hilarity, but not mercy, which is the step beyond and leads to joy.”

“I look at the Beatitudes not only as thought each were a description of Jesus, but also a definition, they shine in a powerful and brilliant light so that light and darkness are suddenly alike.”

“If something can be proved we don’t need faith in order to believ in it.”

“Death is often brutal but death does not win”

“If, when we die, Christ looks on us with love in his eyes and we are able to respond with love, then we know heaven. But if he looks at us with love and we respond with fear or hate or indifference, then we know hell.”

“If we will allow it, myth will integrate intellect and intuition.”

“It is difficult to laugh freely as long as we are clutching all that we have accumulated and are afraid to lose.”

“Any kind of hate which would annihilate, any kind of lust for power which makes people expendable, is an example of three multiplied by zero equals zero.”

“Any spirit which promises us easy ecstasy is not the Holy Spirit.”

“I have witnessed healing, which is more profound than curing, several times in my adult life.”

”To say ‘I’m sorry’, to be silent, to say ‘I love you,’ ‘I care’ It is these little things that are going to make the difference. For God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, the weak to overthrow the strong.”

“Our reasonable view of things just isn’t the real view.”

Walking on Water

“If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.”

“Some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos on the canvas.”

“Faith is for what lies on the other side of reason.”

Unamuno said “Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

Bertrand Russell, “People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.”

“Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.”

“The world tempts us to draw back, tempts us to believe we will not have to take this test. We are tempted to try to avoid not only our own suffering, but also that of our fellow human beings, the suffering of the world, which is part of our own suffering. But if we draw back from it (and we are free to do so), Kafka reminds us that ‘ it may be that this very holding back is the one veil you could have avoided’.”

“Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike.”

“Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation or how we earn our living.”

“The faithfulness of doubt is a prerequisite for living faith.”

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

John Donne “Would you know the truth? Doubt, and then you will inquire.”

H.A. Williams, “The opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue.”

“’The decision you have made [not to have children] means that you will never have to go through the anguish I’m going through now. But I don’t think I would want to be in a position where I could not know it.”

“The Jesus we grasp and the Jesus who grasps us may differ.”

“If it turns out to be wrong, I have done it, and I must bear the responsibility. It is not somebody else’s or something else’s fault. If it is I am less than human.”

A Circle of Quiet

“I think that the part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but our ontological selves; what we are meant to be.”

“It’s lots easier to visualize people we don’t know very well.”

“We aren’t always careful about who are our mirrors.”

High Bishop: Love is not an emotion, it’s a policy.

“Too often churches have become buildings that are a safe place to go to escape the awful demands of God.”

I do not think that it is naïve to think that it is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance, rather than general, impersonal charities.”

“The gap between our ‘real’ and ‘actual’ selves is, to some degree, in all of us; no one is completely whole. It’s part of what makes us human beings instead of gods. It’s part of our heritage from our mythical forebears, from Adam and Eve. When we refuse to face this gap in ourselves, we widen it.”

“A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn’t diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too ,want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe. This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent. A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write. This response on the part of any artist is the need to make incarnate the new awareness we have been granted through the genius of someone else.”

George MacDonald: “It may be infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.”

Edward Nason West: Charity (agape) means “a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other, be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.”

“When we choose a generality, an idea, a cause, instead of a person, when this becomes the accepted, the required thing to do, then it doesn’t matter if villages ore destroyed by bombs; traffic deaths become statistics; starting babies can be forgotten when the television is turned off; “

“Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.”

“When I do something wrong, I tend to alibi, to make excuses, blame someone else. Until I can accept whatever it is that I have done, I am only widening the gap between my real and my ontological self, and I am thus excluding myself so that I being to think that I am unforgivable.”

The Rock that is Higher

It is easy to believe in facts. We certainly don’t need faith, not for facts. Faith is for the part of the story that superficially isn’t believable.”

“Faith is more a matter of joy than security.”

“Myth- that which was true, that which is true, and that which will be true.”

“My bishop told me that when the wise men gave their gifts to the Christ child, they were giving him their magic; they were magi; magicians; alchemists; and they gave up their power to the one they recognized as Lord.”

“We are homesick, not so much for something that was, and was lost, as for something that will be, and is to be found.”

“Sometimes we are in situations where this is no right choice and we have to make the choice which we prayerfully believe to be the least wrong, never forgetting that it is wrong.”

“Life is full of questions and we are free to ask them to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer, or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on.”

“My friend the theologian said that if we die and Jesus looks at us with love and we respond to that look with love, then we are in heaven. But if Jesus looks at us with love and we respond with fear or hate or anger, then we are in hell. It is the same look, but it is we who make it heaven or hell.”

“Jesus did not start a leper’s rights organization or a lepers’ liberation group or make categorical pronouncements about why some people were afflicted with demons. Instead he touched people, one by one, forgave them, and healed them.”

“Karl Barth wrote that he took the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.”

“If we can make ourselves believe that the man had a beam of wood in his eye, literally, then we don’t have to look at our own faults, be challenged by Jesus’ story, or maybe even feel that we have to do something about our faults. Literalism is a terrible crippler, but it does tend to let us off the hook.”

“The great writer does not tell us what ought to be done, or what we think.”

“Knowledge is changeable (as Adam and Eve found out) but truth is eternal.”

“One sad result of the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that we have, as a result, depended too much on knowledge and not enough on wisdom. We are, all of us, male and female, supposed to contain within ourselves the qualities of each.”

“Perhaps fact and truth are like male and female; we need both to make the image of God. The battle of the sexes is not so much a battle between men and women as a battle within our own selves. Dare we use our intellects fully at the same time that we trust our intuitions?”

“If we do not truly enjoy our faith, nobody is going to catch the fire of enjoyment from us.”

“I pray not to use Jesus’ love in self-righteous pride.”

“My faith is not a magic charm, like garlic to chase away vampires. It is, instead, what sustains me in the midst of all the normal joys and tragedies of the ordinary human life.”

“I do not want to explain the Gospels, I want to enjoy them.”

“When our religion brings hate to our hearts, it becomes terrorism, not religion.”

“If my faith is secure, then I should not be surprised when I am criticized or misunderstood. And I must not expect of myself super-human virtue. Virtue is not the sign of a Christian. Joy is.”

“Real grief accepts that there is no security. Unhealthy grief usually has qualities of resentment. Or self-pity. Or sullenness.”

“Far too often we diminish ourselves instead of expanding ourselves. We tidy ourselves up, removing the uglier characteristics, but that is, ultimately, dehumanizing.”

“Sin is separation from God. If Jesus was like us, but sinless, it wasn’t that he never did anything that the moral majority of his day considered wrong. Indeed, he did many things that they considered sin, such as breaking the law by healing people on the Sabbath. But he was never separate from the Source, while we, of our essence, separate ourselves over and over.”

“Suddenly Adam and Eve became aware of knowledge- intellectual knowledge, and there weren’t yet ready for all that they learned. It was out of chronology and inconsistent with God’s time. Perhaps, in God’s time, when Adam and Eve were ready, God would have called them to the tree and said, ‘Eat’. But they took matters into their own hands and ate too soon. Their intellectual and spiritual development was sundered. We are still paying for that sundering. We know with our intellects far more than we know with our spirits….sometimes the story is so extraordinary that it is difficult for us to understand, especially if we try to understand, as Adam and Eve did after they had left the Garden, with mind alone, and not with heart and spirit.”

“Literalism makes no demands of us, asks of us no faith, does not cause us to grow. Story pushes and shoves us.”

“Codependence is when you have to get your sense of self from someone else, rather than from God’s image within you.”

Dean Inge “God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.”

“Honest struggle with the truth is more creative than taking it for granted.”

“I don’t think any of us is completely immune from liking a pat on the back, from being told we’ve done a good job. But that’s very different from the need for constantly gathering spiritual merit badges.”

“One cannot have humility without humor, and they both come from the same root, humus- of the earth, earthy.”

“If we think only in terms of success, then our success becomes more important than compassion; if we feel compelled to succeed, we don’t have time to know anybody in the cause by name.”

“When we start to think it terms of success, we begin to think of the cause of social justice, the cause of world hunger, the cause of the poor, the old and the ill. It doesn’t hurt us to be involved in a cause because we don’t have to name the individual people who make up the cause or see them one by one. We may be politically correct, but we are far from being truly human.”

H.A. Williams “How can I love my neighbor as myself unless I am deeply aware of what I am, that I am being loved into life by the Father of us all?...It is only the degree in which I can begin to apprehend his love for me that I can begin to apprehend his love for all men.”

“Might we say that the opposite of love is power?”

“True grace involves knowing that people, even those we like least, those we find hardest to forgive, are more important than things.”

Sheri Dew: If Live Were Easy It Wouldn’t Be Hard

“We really don’t know what we believe or believe in until we’re tested.”

Joseph Smith, “A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.”

“Our mortal experience is designed to test what we really care about, what we really believe, what we really want to become, and how we really feel about our Father and His Son.”

“We don’t really know what we believe in or care about until what we believe in or care about is threatened, challenged, or measured.”

“As I flew back to the United States, I couldn’t help but reflect that far too often those of us who live in America have everything except happiness. Those women [in Africa] who had so relatively little of the world’s good had nothing but happiness.”

Gordon B. Hinckley “Just do the best you can, but be sure it is the very best. Then leave it in the hands of the Lord.”

“It is not possible to come unto Christ with all of our hearts if our hearts are tied in knots with envy or anger or resentment or pride.”

Author unknown, “In essentials, let there be unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.”

“Charity is not an emotions or an action. It is not something we feel or do. Charity is who the Savior is. …We are actually pleading for our very natures to be changed, for our character and disposition to become more and more like the Savior’s, so that we literally feel as He would feel and thus do what He would do.”

C.S. Lewis, “What a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man his is. Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth…. If there were rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly, but the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am…”

A little girl, impatient with being told not to be afraid of the dark because Heavenly Father was always with her, responded, “Mom, don’t you know” Sometimes you need someone with skin on.”

“Every time physical intimacy is abused it destroys spirituality.”

“One of life’s greatest ironies is that those who partake unworthily of sexual intimacy, and wish to do so forever, won’t be able to.”