Tabitha

“If one cannot make a living at writing, then writing is freed from the responsibility of supporting us. We choose to do it anyway.”

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith, pp. 5.

“This family, of whom it is uniquely true that they are chosen by God to carry forward His will for humankind, must be as unhappy as any family could be. When we consider what the favor of God can look like, Jacob and his sons should surely be borne in mind.”

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson, page 206 (talking about the saga of Joseph’s

“Eighty percent of any meeting or gathering might be stupid and beneath you, but the other twenty percent will save you: it will open up your brain and expand your life and give you connection, a place in the family of man.”

— Anne Lamott, Somehow (121)

“Abram again show little understanding of the nature of God. In imagining his relationship with God as exclusive, he denies respect to these strangers whose righteousness God Himself recognizes, values, and protects.

The moral appears to be that fear of outsiders, which amounts to contempt for them, leads to unrighteous behavior, and also that God

“But rationalizing what God does involves the risk of losing its difficulty and otherness to human expectations. His great forgiveness of the first criminal offends people’s sense of justice, unless they can find a way to read vengefulness into the tale. We are instead to learn that mercy is nearer than justice to Godliness, and that mercy can

“The opposite of murder is creation—creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness.”