QUOTES ON GETTING BY WHILE GETTING OLD [R, 3-24-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

[Okay, these aren’t all about getting old, but I’ve collected them and don’t want them to go to waste…]

“Comfort is the enemy of progress.” So… progress is overrated.

I see the world with the same clear vision with which I have always viewed it, but the world looks back at me with the misty, wrinkled eyes of irrelevance. JRMcF

Life is like a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a helicopter, either.

I thought getting old would take longer.

“Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.” Madeline L’Engle, quoting an anonymous friend. P. 54, Walking on Water

“…you had but one job…” as the joke goes. At my age, I have but one job, to get ready to die, by discarding all the unnecessary stuff--from my spirit, from my body, from my relationships, from my possessions.

            Actually, that’s the one job at any age. I sort of wish I had understood that better, earlier.

“Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel.” Rachel Remen

“The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his.” George MacDonald

“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, not in God himself.” Unamuno

“I am tired of having the front of my mind tickled.” Leslie Tizzard, on superficial preaching.

‘Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Christ saves many who do not think they know him.” CS Lewis

“A grumbler may finally become a grumble.” CS Lewis

“If you want to teach children to love God, teach them to love nature.” Anne Lamott

I am often nostalgic for times that never were. JRMcF

“I was born to reject rejection.” Hal David

“The pre-Easter Jesus is St. Francis with an exclamation point.” Marcus Borg

The surest way to be irrelevant tomorrow is to be too relevant today.

“Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing if I truly want it.” Madeline L’Engle

“The holy scriptures were not given to us to enclose them in books but to engrave them on our hearts.” St. John Chrysostom

“We cannot easily give our hearts to something that our minds reject.” Marcus Borg

“Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.” D.T. Niles

“When old men become irrelevant, young men become irresponsible.”

“God contains everything and nothing contains God.” Irenaeus

“Sometimes all that is needed is the sense of possibility.” Rachel Remen, MD

“People are zealous for a cause when they’re not quite positive it is true.” Madeline L’Engle

“Moving into the unknown is often where we find the healing.” Dean Ornish

“Only in poetry is a word that means only one thing dysfunctional.” Billy Collins

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