every mentally ill person you’ve ever worked with is basically lonely

Richard Rohr quote:
I once met a psychiatrist who said something to me that initially I thought was an overstatement: “Richard, at the end of your life, you’ll realize that every mentally ill person you’ve ever worked with is basically lonely.”
“Oh, come on, that’s a little glib, isn’t it?” I replied.
“Oh, I admit, there are surely physiological reasons for much mental illness, but loneliness might just be what activates it. Every case of nonphysiologically-based mental illness stems from a person who has been separated, cut off, living alone, and has forgotten how to relate in one way or another.” I still wonder if that might be true.

Richard Rohr, with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 45.

Remember to FROG every relationship.

GIFTED FOR LEADERSHIP
APRIL 28, 2016
www.christianitytoday.com/gifted-for-leadership/2016/april/how-to-lead-dominating-male-leaders.html as of 4/29/2016
LINDA A. WURZBACHER
How to Lead Dominating Male Leaders
Three things I’ve learned as I’ve led dominant men
quote:

I like to say: Remember to FROG every relationship. FROG stands for “Fully Rely on God.” And that means keeping a teachable spirit before the Lord. Second John 2:27 says, “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.”
It has taken me way too many years to realize that God will help, teach, and direct me in every relationship I have. But one requirement is that I remain open, teachable, and accountable to him. 

Linda A. Wurzbacher is Lead Pastor of Blessed Hope Community Church in Rochester, New York.

Jesus put his body where his mouth was

Jesus put his body where his mouth was.
That's one reason why I trust him.
~ Truthful Grace

when the people of God are presented with the facts . . .

“I have most often seen that, when the people of God are presented with the facts, they do the right thing.”
~ Pastor John Bisagno,
currently the retired pastor of the 22,000-member First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas

no longer in the fight

“I pray that when I die, all of hell will rejoice that I am no longer in the fight.”
~ C.T. Studd

http://www.essentialcslewis.com/2017/01/07/ccslq-31-hell-rejoices/

What C.S. Lewis said about Humility

“It is better to forget about yourself altogether.”
from Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 8 (The Great Sin)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step.
The first step is to realise that one is proud.”
from Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 8 (The Great Sin)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will…not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”
from Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 8 (The Great Sin)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“May God’s grace give you the necessary humility. Try not to think—much less, speak—of their sins. One’s own are a much more profitable theme!
And if on consideration, one can find no faults on one’s own side, then cry for mercy: for this must be a most dangerous delusion.”
from The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3 (to Mary Willis Shelbrune on 1/9/1961)

http://www.essentialcslewis.com/2015/10/03/humility-is-not/

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself,
it’s thinking of yourself less.”

The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, 2002 (original) edition, Day 19, “Cultivating Community”

The Privilege, or the Burden, which Christianity lays upon Men

“It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us.”

from "Priestesses in the Church?" (in God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis)
http://www.essentialcslewis.com/2015/11/14/ccslq-12-monkey-bars/

Love people before they deserve it

If you want to be miserable,
go through life thinking of yourself as the "innocent victim."
If you want the joy of the Lord,
love people before they deserve it.
~ Truthful Grace

Jesus: But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
~ Luke 6:35-36 ESV

"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."
~ C.S. Lewis

The Road Is Too Rough - Olga J. Weiss

The Road Is Too Rough
(Poetry on the rejection and isolation Christ must have felt.)

The road is too rough," I said,
"Dear Lord, there are stones that hurt me so."
And He said, "Dear child, I understand,
I walked it long ago."

"But there's a cool green path," I said;
"Let me walk there for a time."
"No child," He gently answered me,
"The green path does not climb."

"My burden," I said, "Is far too great,
How can I bear it so?"
"My child," He said, "I remember the weight;
I carried My cross, you know."

But I said, "I wish there were friends with me
Who would make my way their own."
"Oh, yes," He said, "Gethsemane
Was hard to bear alone."

And so I climb the stony path,
Content at last to know
That where my Master had not gone,
I would not need to go.

And strangely then I found new friends,
The burden grew less sore;
And I remember--long ago
He went that way before.

Olga J. Weiss

What Jesus will be is a mother hen who defends her chicks

The well-known preacher Barbara Brown Taylor says,
"Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first."
Jesus came to be a suffering servant and live a life of self-sacrifice. And he calls us to that life as well.
Mickey Anders, The Fox and the Hen

"Do not corner something you know is meaner than you."

"I learned some invaluable lessons in Nashville that apply to both farming and show business:
Do not corner something you know is meaner than you;
keep skunks of all kinds at a distance;
if you forgive your enemies, it messes up their heads."
~ Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson, Turk Pipkin (2006). “The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart”, p.53, Penguin
http://www.azquotes.com/author/10736-Willie_Nelson

"Show 'em what you can do."

"I suppose I could have sat back and pitied myself. For a time I wondered if I'd ever be able to go on to a stage and perform again. After a couple of weeks I began to feel I could fight my way back to health if I put my mind to it. I thought to myself: 'Pity never did anybody any good. Go on. Patsy, show 'em what you can do.'"
~ Patsy Cline
http://www.azquotes.com/author/2994-Patsy_Cline

"I'm not going to limit myself just because . . ."

"I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else."
~ Dolly Parton
http://www.azquotes.com/author/11357-Dolly_Parton

"if you're feeling low, don't despair."

"If you're feeling low, don't despair. The sun has a sinking spell every night, but it comes back up every morning."
~ Dolly Parton
http://www.azquotes.com/author/11357-Dolly_Parton

"I look at their eyes and their smile and seek out the good first"

"When I meet someone, I look at their eyes and their smile and seek out the good first - it's easy to find when you're looking for it. You let a person shine with their own light and try to connect it to yours. As soon as I say hello, I go right to that light and I don't care who you are! I know we're all pieces of the same thing - I go for that common light because I know it's in all of us."
~ Dolly Parton
http://www.azquotes.com/author/11357-Dolly_Parton

Nelson Mandela, “with freedom comes responsibilities”

Nelson Mandela ended his extraordinary autobiography, entitled “Long Walk to Freedom,” with these words:

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”

so long as you show up

Steel Magnolias was not a great movie, but it had one magnificent line.
"God don't care which church you go to, so long as you show up."

www.facebook.com/E.C.M.churchhumor/

Did Jesus really have to die on the Cross?

Anselm's answer to someone wondering if Jesus really had to die on the Cross:

"You have not yet fully reflected on what a heavy weight your sin is."

"My iniquities have gone over my head"; they surround me,
"and like a heavy burden" weigh me down (Ps 38:5).
Free me, unburden me, and do not let "the abyss" of them "close its mouth over me" (Ps 69:16).

another translation:
Anselm: "You have not as yet estimated the great burden of sin."
https://www.ewtn.com/library/CHRIST/CURDEUS.HTM
CHAPTER XXI

Howard Thurman quotes

from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_Thurman  as of 3/1/2018

"Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, and death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial."
Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), p. 88

"The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires."
Footprints of a Dream : The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (1959), p. 7

"Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God….
I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray."
Disciplines of the Spirit (1977)