Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

If I repented to avoid hell, only my actions change, not my heart or outlook. If I’m repenting by leaning in closer to life, trying not to focus on everyone and everything that annoy me, then my perspective changes and I’m kinder.

Maturity is retaining a modicum of grace when you do not get your own way.

But if you are married, you are stuck with the person. They consider “my house” to be “their house.” Even if they begin to wear on you, they won’t be going “home.” Marriage means you are their home.

When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are.

Most of these prophets were introverts. Jesus definitely was. He’s never really doing all that much, if you think about it. He doesn’t even tell His own stories. He’d be fired from most churches today. He’s in a world of great fear, there’s evil, violence, and need all around him, so He often finds He needs time alone—in silence, in the desert, on

Ninety percent of the time, this is the solution: Tell it. Cry if you can. If you can’t, sit in a dejected posture, hunched over, and stay with this awhile. It will shift, and become less acute.

I want to contribute to the aquifer that runs underneath our communities, of people who have made peace with others against all odds, because that groundwater helps restore and sustain life.

Connection to anything real, to the ancient, to the mystical, to the moment, is weak, so there is bound to be existential exhaustion.

At one end of the spectrum are those in the throes of lifelong forward thrust, who are focused on goals that turn out to be meaningless, greyhounds at the track who’ve caught the mechanical rabbit of prestige, and at the other end are people with slow-motion tragedies unfolding in their lives.