"Some days, I believe the Christian story even more than I believe in Australia. After all, I have never been to Australia, it is just a picture on a map. I don't know if I will ever go there, but I kn..."
- Lauren F. Winner
"In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness ..."
"But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying..."
"Sure, sometimes it is great when, in prayer, we can express to God just what we feel; but better still when, in the act of praying, our feelings change. Liturgy is not, in the end, open to our emotion..."
"... I am not the author of my prayers; when they come, they come from God."
"It is a great gift when God gives me a stirring, a feeling, a something-at-all in prayer. But work is being done whether I feel it or not."
"I knew, as soon as I woke up, that the dream had come from God and it was about the reality of Jesus. The truth of Him. The He was a person whose pronouns you had to capitalize. That He was God."
"The anxious heart, in its flailings, loses its hold on whatever grace God has bestowed upon it, and is sapped of the strength to "resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to f..."
"It means the God who worries about our sins is not only God the judge, but also God the caretaker. He worries about sin because He craves righteousness, but also, simply, because He loves us."
"Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I'm there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not good in a tak..."