Quotes from Shane Claiborne

But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: "I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

de Chardin said, "Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.

If we remove the cross, we are in danger of promoting a very cheap grace. Perhaps it should make us uncomfortable.

That's the beautiful mystery: we have a God who chooses to need us. We have a God who doesn't want to change the world without us. We have a God who longs to cooperate with us, to allow us to fail and flounder and who promises to make up for our shortcomings, but nonetheless wants us.

written, "A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross — the way he carries me.

When we see the crucifixion as a legal transaction in which Jesus "paid the bill," we run the risk of cheapening the work of restoration at the heart of the cross. After

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That's the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That's the Christianity I have fallen in love with. In

Jeanne de Chantal, seventeenth-century founder of the Order of the Visitation, said, "No matter what happens, be gentle with yourself.

True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but als osharing sacrificially tob ring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation's groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies.

I'm not ready to walk on water, but I'm also not ready to let the televangelists and prosperity preachers hijack the supernatural stuff from the rest of us. Imagine what would happen if the prayer movement and social justice movement converged, and we had Christians who prayed like they depend on God and lived like God depended on them?

Of all people, we Christians should be building friendships and protecting the dignity of human beings, even those of other faiths. I loved seeing Christians in Iraq stand guard as peacekeepers outside the mosques while Muslims gathered for prayer, and Muslims doing the same for Christians.