Quotes from Eugene Peterson

If we get our information from the biblical material there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.

If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.

Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff.

The Spirit works through community. Somebody will have a stupid, screwy idea. That's okay. The point of having creeds and confessions and traditions is to keep us in touch with the obvious errors.

The life of faith is a daily exploration of the constant and countless ways in which Gods grace and love are expereinced

The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor.

American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we've ever had because it is so materialistic and it's so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it's just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have.

I think pastors are the worst listeners. We're so used to speaking, teaching, giving answers. We must learn to be quiet, quit being so verbal, learn to pay attention to what's going on, and listen.

Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.

Self is the soul minus God.

We care more for our possessions with which we hope to make our way in the world than with our thoughts and dreams which tell us who we are in the world.