Quotes about Text

Remember this: pure literalism always leads to a decrease in meaning. Mythology and sacred texts try to lead us and allow us to have the experience for ourselves. Through our experience we discover that encounter is not only possible but desirable. So often we struggle with experiencing our experiences.

I say to myself, if the text was good enough for my father and grandfather, it must be good enough for me. I admit, that is a rather personal way of approaching the text - or a prayer.

The ancient sages said the words of the sacred text were black letters on a white page—there's all that white space, waiting to be filled with our responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insights. We read the words, and then enter into the discussion that has been going on for thousands of years across cultures and continents.

The ancient Vedic texts known as the Upanishads declare, "You are what your deepest desire is. As is your desire, so is your intention. As is your intention, so is your will. As is your will, so is your deed. As is your deed, so is your destiny." Our destiny ultimately comes from the deepest level of desire and also from the deepest level of intention. The two are intimately linked to each other.

When you teach on a familiar text, you're capitalizing on common knowledge. When you teach on an unfamiliar text, you're having to build a bridge of understanding, and we need to do that as well.

Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly.

It is clear that human agents have been at work through the entire traditioning process. They witness to the will, purpose, and presence of YHWH, who remains inscrutably hidden in and through the text and yet who discloses YHWH's own holy self through that same text.

1. The first partner in the meeting is the text.

4. There is a text that looms in resilient power. There is a waiting congregation, perhaps not tired out, but too sure of self, pretending buoyancy where there might have been transformation. There is the voice that takes the old script and renders it to evoke a new world we had not yet witnessed (cf. Isa. 43:19). The fourth and final partner is this better world given as fresh revelation.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

An experiment in nature, like a text in the Bible, is capable of different interpretations, according to the preconceptions of the interpreter.

The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.