Great Throughts Treasury

"It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds... Doctrines, let's not forget, supported slavery and apartheid... Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite."

"It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one."

"It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, "Let justice roll down like mighty waters," and quite another to work out the irrigation system."

"It is often said that the Church is a crutch. Of course it's a crutch. What makes you think you don't limp?"

"It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty."

"It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement."

"It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, 'Let justice roll down like mighty waters,' and quite another to work out the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for their cure."

"It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, for all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly."

"It's always a good time to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart."

"Joy is the most important emotion. Duty calls only when gratitude fails to prompt."

"Law is not as disinterested as our concepts of law pretend; law serves power; law in large measure is a recapitulation of the status quo; it confirms a rigid order designed to insulate the beneficiaries of the status quo from the disturbances of change. The painful truth--one with a long history--is that police are around in large part to guarantee a peaceful disgestion for the rich."

"Learning, and especially unlearning, can take place only in the absence of defensiveness.... We can drop our defenses only when we love and are loved."

"Love is in the giver, not the gift."

"Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself."

"Love does have a reward. Just as the proper benefits of education are the opportunities of continuing education, so the rewards of loving are to become yet more vulnerable, more tender, more caring."

"Love is to make us more human, and that demands that we care so much for each other that we have not to be nice but to be honest. We have to be honest, for most real faults are hidden and therefore demand an outside revealer."

"Many of us are eager to respond to injustice, as long as we can do so without having to confront the causes of it. There's the great pitfall of charity. Handouts to needy individuals are genuine, necessary responses to injustice, but they do not necessarily face the reason for injustice. And that is why so many business and governmental leaders today are promoting charity; it is desperately needed in an economy whose prosperity is based on growing inequality. First these leaders proclaim themselves experts on matters economic, and prove it by taking the most out of the economy! Then they promote charity as if it were the work of the church, finally telling us troubled clergy to shut up and bless the economy as once we blessed the battleships."

"Love, and you are a success whether or not the world thinks so. The highest purpose? which is primarily a way of life, not a system of belief--is to love one another."

"My own broken heart is mending, and largely thanks to so many of you, my dear parishioners; for if in the last week I have relearned one lesson, it is that love not only begets love, it transmits strength."

"Many of us overvalue autonomy, the strength to stand alone, the capacity to act independently. Far too few of us pay attention to the virtues of dependence and interdependence, and especially to the capacity to be vulnerable."

"My own feeling is you have to be as pastoral as you can be without surrendering one single iota of ethical initiative. Nothing ever stops a minister from saying, in the middle of the sermon: "What I now want to say it?s hard for me to say, so I can imagine how painful it?s going to be for some of you to hear. Let us remember that in the church, our unity is based not on agreement, but on mutual concern. So let me tell you what?s on my heart and mind and then you be good enough to tell me where you think I went wrong. But that?s not the way it?s done. Right now, not to address the conscience of the nation about what?s going on in the occupation of Iraq--you can?t even do that? Just get it out there. Say it softly, don?t say it loudly. A freshman at Yale once said to me, "May I give you a bit of advice? When it?s true and painful, say it softly." Very nice. You have to say what?s true and painful, and you better say it softly."

"No sermon on love can fail to mention love's most difficult problem in our time--how to find effective ways to alleviate the massive suffering of humanity at home and abroad. What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively..."

"Nuclear Weapons merit unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."

"Only reverence can restrain violence - reverence for human life and the environment."

"Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God's love doesn't seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement."

"People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both."

"Remember also that scars of all sorts are all right. Scars are wounds that have healed, not without a trace, but have healed nonetheless. Think of all the scar tissue around Christ's heart, Jesus our wounded healer."

"Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words."

"Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never."

"Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living."

"So I shall ? so let us all ? seek consolation in that love which never dies, and find peace in the dazzling grace that always is."

"Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well. As the old-church father said, 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive."

"So don't let money tell you who you are. Don't let power tell you who your are. Don't let enemies and -- for God's sake -- don't let your sins tell you who you are. Don't prove yourself. That's taken care of. All we have to do is express ourselves. It's difficult, but we're a lot more alive in pain than in complacency."

"That's why immediately after such a tragedy people must come to your rescue, people who only want to hold your hand, not to quote anybody or even say anything, people who simply bring food and flowers--the basics of beauty and life--people who sign letters simply, "Your brokenhearted sister." In other words, in my intense grief I felt some of my fellow reverends--not many, and none of you, thank God--were using comforting words of Scripture for self-protection, to pretty up a situation whose bleakness they simply couldn't face. But like God herself, Scripture is not around for anyone's protection, just for everyone's unending support."

"The afterlife I leave to God, who is merciful and far too busy for impertinent questions from me. I may want to know more, but I don't need to. One world at a time-that's my feeling and that's more than enough given the present anguish that engulfs it."

"The consequences of the past are always with us, and half the hostilities tearing the world apart could be resolved today were we to allow the forgiveness of sins to alter these consequences.... if we were to say of ourselves, 'The hostility stops here."

"The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance can restrain violence - reverence for human life and the environment."

"The banality of guilt is that it is such a convenient substitute for responsibility. It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out."

"The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history... Our military men and women...were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters?"

"The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die."

"The U.S. government should have vowed... to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force. [After September 11, 2001]"

"The joy that is of God is not opposed to earthly pleasures. Rather it infuses them with a foundation of meaning."

"The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system."

"There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country, a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with all the world."

"The world owes me a living'--that's passive. 'I owe the world and God a life'--that's active."

"The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman."

"There are two ways to be powerful. One is to seek and acquire power, the other is not to need it. There are also two ways to be rich. One is to gain riches, and the other is not to need them."

"There is more mercy in God than sin in us."

"There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation."

"There is no smaller package in the world that that of a person all wrapped up in himself."