The world will resist you.  It will exceed your grasp.  It will gractivce indifference towards you.  Like a borrowed shirt, it will fit you imperfectly, it will be loose in the neck, short in the cuff, and the tag will itch.  The world will irritate you, bruise you, thwart you, anger you.  In the end, it will even--for at least a time--kill you.  Suffering the indignity of these rounds, yo will, be default, be tempted to just flit from one offense to the next, simmering in frustration, stewing in quiet desperation.  But to live, you will have to let these offenses go.  You will have to learn how to make and accept recompense.  You will have to forget the fiction of cash equivelances and barter with whatever is at hand.  You didn't get what you wanted?  Or even what you needed?  Your life was repurposed by others fro something other than what you had in mind?  Join the party.  I'm sympathetic, but in the end these objections are going nowhere.  That bus, while always idling, never actually leaves the station.  You presume a world that doesn't exist, and you fantasize a fixer-God who, unlike ours, is Himself doing something other than divinely serving, borrowing, and repurposing.  Ask instead, what were you given?  where were you taken?  what was your recompense?  Learn to like lemonade.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 57

To address the unconditional character of the present moment is to address the nature of my relationships with my parents and family.  To lay aside the screen of judgment and preference in favor of life is to set myself the task of unknotting the threads of fear and desire that have prevented me from unconditionally embracing my family and my family from unconditionally embracing me.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 17

In sin, we become unplugged.  When we refuse the givenness of life and withdraw from the present moment, we're left to wander the world undead.  Zombie-like, we wander from one moment to the next with no other goal than to get somewhere else, be someone else, see something else--anywhere, anyone, anything other than what is given here and now.  We're busy.  We've got goals and projects, We've got plans.  We've got fantasies.  We've got daydreams.  We've got regrets and memories.  We've got opinions.  We've got distractions.  We've got games and songs and movies and a thousand TV shows.  We've got anything and everything other than a first-hand awareness of our own lived experience of the present moment. 

If we are not capable of being where we are right now, we will not be capable of being fully present when we arrive at some ostensibly more desirable destination later on.  Thus unplugged, what good would heaven be?

The zombie-life of sin sets us wandering away from the present moment because it sifts everything through a screen of preference that inevitably filters out the absolute givenness of life itself.  Spiritually undead, we see things only in terms of our own (often legitimate) preferences.  Undead, we see things only in terms of our selves.  How will this benefit me?  How will this harm me?  How might this current situation be leveraged for my own profit?  If something doesn't show up as being to my advantage, then typically it doesn't show up at all.  Absent the appearance of what fails to comport with my preferences, the fountain of life is squeezed back to a trickle.\

....

Sin refuses the unconditional givenness of life by imposing its own conditions.

The results are predictable. Striving after the gnat of pleasure, straining away from the sting of pain, we ignore the bulk of life and marvel at our own morbidity.  Failing to be where we are, to receive what is given, to feel what we are feeling, we fantasize instead about what has not come, fret over what has already passed, and are bored to tears by the grace of what is actually present.

Fantasy, fear, and boredom: the hallmarks of sin.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 11-12

The present moment, so irreparably and unconditionally given, brings the full weight of life to bear upon us.  givenness gives without consulting us, without condition, without recourse.  We suffer the imposition of its grace with an unavoidable passivity.  In opening our hands to receive what it offers and give what it requires, we must confess our dependence, our insufficiency, our lack of autonomy.  but we grit our teeth at the shame of it, refuse to suffer the grace of it, and seek refuge from the present moment in the conditional character of sequence.  we cower before the absolute, failing to recognize its image in our countenances, and hide behind a fragile veil of fantasies, memories, and projected improvements.  we withdraw from the present, abandon life, give ourselves wholly to the past or future, and die.

Sin: a refusal of life.

Sin: a refusal of givenness

Sin: a refusal of grace

Sin: a refusal of the present moment

Sin: death.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 10-11

A formula for attending to the givenness of life: take no thought for tomorrow but attend to the unconditional character of the present moment.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 6

To the extent that work is instrumentalized as a means to an end, its value is conditioned by that end.  Work, in and of itself, is devalued.  In order to take work seriously, a theology would hav to uncouple work from its outcomes and consider it non-sequentially.  That is to say, in order to take work seriously as work, we would have to acknowledge its unconditional givenness.  We would have to see work as a grace.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 8

Grace is not a kind of conditional supplement ot the present moment that takes us to some other place we would rather be.  Rather, grace is the unconditional fullness of the present moment.

Grace is the substance of life itself.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 8-9

A common feature at work in all of this living is that things are given and things are recieved.  Breath, rest, words, food, excrement, handiwork, sensations, ideas, bodies, and intentions--each of them, the very stuff of life, are given and each of them are recived.  Life is this giving.

A guiding axiom: life is givenness

A theological version of this axiom: life is grace.

Grace names what comes as a gift.  In short, grace names what is given.  Or, more precisely, as Jean-Luc-Marion puts it, grace names the givenness of whatever is given and received.

Givennes names the giving and receiving that constitute life.  It names our interdependence.  It names a dynamic process of exchange, of giving and receiving, acceptance and conversion, that is always already dependent on things outside of itself.  here, to be alive, to give and receive, is to be in an open relation of interdependence with the world for food, air, words, materials, sensations, and companionship.
...

The primary difficulty faced in approaching life in terms of grace is that grace so easily slips the knot of our attention.  Our preoccupation with what is given and received so easily eclipses any awareness of its having been given, of its givenness.  How easy it is to receive a gift from someone and, in light of its heft, shine, and appeal, forget that it is a gift.  How difficult it is to keep its gifted-ness at the forefront of our attention.

Addressing ourselves to the givenness of life (and not just to what is given), will require a kind of focused attention that we don't generlaly employ.  We will have to attend to the immediacy of life with a kind of awareness that we rarely bring to bear.  We will have to shift down a few gears, ease off the gas, and be patient enough to linger with the given-ness of the present moment.  If we are racing off to somewhere else, we will see only what is given and its givnness will fail to appear.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 4-5

In Mormonism, Christ's work of atonement is generally seenas operating on two related but distinct planes.  I propose that as a basic schema, we should see it as working on at least three planes.  Traditionally, Christ's atonement (1) gathers up and reunites human bodies with human spirits through the resurrection, and (2) reunites or reconciles human beings with God.  This is sound Biblical doctrine.  But in light of Joseph Smith's revelations, it seems essential to see the atonement as being at work on at least one additional plane: Christ catalyzes not only the reunion of bodies with spirits and humans with God but, additionally, he gathers and seals husbands to wives and parents to children.  Christ's work will not end until the whole human family has been gathered together in "one."

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 3-4

Happiness emerges from being fully sentient and fully alive, which only means that it comes with being a sufferer. Which raises the question: Is it a weakness to want happiness? In some categorical sense, the answer is obviously no. But it is if we want it like a drug, if we feel anger or betrayal when it slips from our hands, if we feel that it is something we can control or demand.

George Handley, "Patience in Suffering"

The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.  If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.  God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful...whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

What we call the virtues are precisely those attributes of character that best suit us to live harmoniously, even joyfully, in society.  Kindness only exists when there is someone to whom we show kindness.  Patience is only manifest when another calls it forth. So it is with mercy, generosity, and self-control.  What we may have thought was our private pathway to salvation, was intended all along as a collaborative enterprise, though we often miss the point.  The confusion is understandable, since our current generation's preference for "spirituality" over "religion" is often a sleight of hand that confuses true discipleship with self-absorption.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 112-113

We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering, and in imagining a heaven above, than creating a heaven in our homes and communities.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 111-112

As long as it is God's nature and character we are striving to emulate, and not His power and glory, we are on safe ground.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 105

God would not have commanded us to forgive each other seventy times seven, if He were not prepared to extend to us the same mathematical generosity.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 100

The work of love in remembering one who is dead is a work of the utmost unselfish love...If one wants to make sure that love is completely unselfish, he eliminates every possibility of repayment.  but precisely this is eliminated in the relationship to one who is dead.  If love nevertheless remains, it is in truth unselfish.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Quoted in Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 98

If the whole mission of Christ and His atonement is to enable change, to render repentance and personal transformation possible, to empower and sanctify, then what are we to say about the billions who have lived in obliviousness to such power and grace?  The question is not how can they be rescued from damnation, but how can the be elevated or ennobled, given their inability to participate in all that His grace makes possible?

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 95

Two Obstacles to spiritual growth that are often reflected in Mormon mantras:

1.  SUPERSTITION.  Mormon's aren't superstitious.  We are modern and sophisticated; we don't dance in circles or chant incantations. Or do we?  If someone uses words or actions to influence God to do what they want, I believe that is superstition.  Prayer and ordinances were designed to put us in harmony with God so we can be spiritually nourished.  They are not designed to turn God into a cosmic vending machine.  Acts of service are designed to benefit others, not to motivate God to be nicer to us.  Keeping commandments should be acts of faith and love, but too often they seem to be approached as ways to get "blessed" (which, in our minds, usually means getting what we want or avoiding what we don't want).

2.  "BAD" RELIGION.  Bad religion occurs when the ordinances and practices become ends in themselves rather than support for spiritual growth.  I've seen couples extend themselves to become worthy to get "married int he temple" only to return to past problem behaviors afterwards.  They somehow thought the ordinance itself would be transforming and give them power over sinful attitudes and behavior.  In counseling, several Latter-day Saints have said to me: "I keep the Word of Wisdom, pay my tithing, and serve faithfully in my calling.  Why is my marriage failing?"  Or "Elder _____ said in conference that if we attended the temple regularly, our marriage would be successful!"  My response is usually something like, "I'm glad you are doing all this good, church-related stuff,  but until you learn how to be patient, kind, affectionate, and emotionally honest, your marriage is going to be a mess."  There is no doubt that LDS practices and ordinances can help us acquire these qualities but only if they are seen as supports and not ends.

-Philip McLemore, "Mormon Mantras", Sunstone, April 2006

While suffering may indeed be a soul-making process (some psychological research indicates this to be true), it is not inflicted for this “greater good.” Perhaps it is not that God allows our hearts to broken, but, in many cases, He simply cannot prevent it. But because of the love He has and the at-one-ment He seeks with us, His own heart is broken and yearns to heal both ours and His. Atonement is about unity, unity is about love, and love is about vulnerability.

Walker Wright, Mourn With Those Who Mourn: The Weeping God and Me

[A]s soon as it is recognized, as in modern revelation it is, that there is more than one eternal will in the universe--indeed, an infinity of such wills or autonomous intelligences--we have cut the thread that supposes God can “do anything.” In all-important ways even He, the greatest of all, can only do with us what we will permit Him to do. Our center selves can agree or disagree, assent or resent, cooperate or oppose. To say, as the scriptures do, that God has all power and that He is almighty and that with Him all things are possible is to say that He has all the power and might it is possible to have in this universe of multiple selves. And as soon as it is recognized, as in modern revelation it is, that there are eternal inanimate things which are subject to laws, to “bounds and conditions” which God did not create but Himself has mastered, we have cut another thread of illusory omnipotence…[God] can do only what our wills and eternal laws will permit. In short, He did not make us from nothing and what He makes of us depends on us and the ultimate nature of a co-eternal universe.

Truman G. Madsen, "Human Anguish and Divine Love," Four Essays on Love, 57-58

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thomas Keating advises people over and over again not to look for the fruits of this prayer in their subjective experience of it.  Centering Prayer is not about accessing sublime states of consciousness or having mystical experiences.  The fruits of this prayer are seen in daily life.  They express themselves in your ability to be a bit more present in your life, more flexible and forgiving with those you live and work with, more honest and comfortable in your own being.  These are the real signs that the inner depths have been touched and have begun to set in motion their transformative work.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 14

[The sacred word] is not a "special" word....It is simply a place-holder, the finger pointing at the moon of your intention...

After a while you begin to discover yet another added benefit of this sacred word: It will sometimes pop up even when you are not in Centering Prayer--right int he middle of your busy life--to bring you back to center when you find yourself getting agitated or ungrounded.  I can't recall the number of times I've been caught in traffic jams or airport security lines, my blood pressure escalating rapidly, only to have my word sweetly bubble up from the depths to remind me that every moment I'm actually here, I'm in the presence of God.

...the word itself is neutral.  It's your intention that makes it sacred.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 26-27

Whatever your mind serves you up is just fine.  If you sink immediately into such depths of stillness that when the bowl bell is rung at the end of twenty minutes, it seems like only a minute, great!  You've had an easy and blessed time of it.  If every minute feels like twenty and you've been bedeviled by thoughts more prolific than the heads of Medusa, but still you've been doing your best to let them go and return to the openness, great!  You've gotten a good aerobic workout of your "muscle" of surrender.

...For the moment it's enough simply to reiterate Thomas Keating's reassurance that "the only thing you can do wrong in this prayer is to get up and walk out."  To sit there and quietly continue to do the practice, even if you perceive your efforts as totally unsuccessful, is, in his words, to know what it means to "consent to the presence and action of God within us" in whatever for it comes.  The power of this prayer lies in the consent.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 24-25

I sometimes call Centering Prayer "boot camp in Gethsemane," for it practices over and over, thought by thought, the basic gesture of Jesus' night of struggle in the garden: "Not my will be done, Oh Lord, but thine."

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 24

In one of the very earliest training workshops, led by Thomas Keating, a nun tried out her first twenty-minute taste of Centering Prayer and then lamented, "Oh, Father Thomas, I'm such a failure at this prayer.  In twenty minutes, I've had ten thousand thoughts."
"How lovely!" Responded Thomas Keating without missing a beat.  "Ten thousand opportunities to return to God!"

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 23-24

Meditation rests on the wager that if you can simply break the tyranny of ordinary awareness, the rest will begin to unfold itself.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 16

If we could picture our plight, then, in this unusual state of our being, which spiritual masters from time immemorial have described as "sleep," we could say that each one of us has a Mary deep within us, glued to the feet of the Master.  There are incredible luminous depths within in which we know how to listen and to whom we are listening.  But the clarity of our listening is obscured because out on the periphery we also have a Martha who thinks that the whole world is riding on her back and drowns out the inner music with her constant barrage of "I need," "I want," "Pay attention to me,"

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 15

At the center of our being is an innermost point of truth which shares not only the likeness, but perhaps even the substance of God's own being.  And yet, following the bent of Christian tradition, he makes it absolutely clear that access to this center is not at our command; it is entered only through the gateway of our complete poverty and nothingness.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Payer and Inner Awakening, pg. 14

In its final formulation by the Prophet, Mormonism...is generous, open, and expansive. Whether it is so in its embodiment in the world depends on the willingness of individual Latter-day Saints to continue their prophet's reformation by reforming Mormonism as it exists in their personal faith and lives...Mormonism will 'revolutionize and civilize the world' no faster than individual Mormons receive erstwhile enemies and strangers as friends and brothers and sisters. Mormonism will...build a heaven on earth no faster and more effectively than individual Mormons shoulder this responsibility themselves

Dom Bradley, "The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism: Joseph Smith's Unfinished Reformation," Sunstone Issue 141, 2006

Our vision of others is distorted, because we see them only through the refracted image of ourselves. We play at love, but perform it immaturely, childishly. Paul doesn’t really explain how being able to “know, even as we are known” is related to enduring charity. But in that moment of really seeing Dwayne, I started to understand that once we see each other, we love readily, even inevitably. And real love–Christ’s–comes, undeserved and even unbidden, as a gift of clear sight. Because charity is a gift of God, and not an act of will, it bears all things–even human contradiction; it can come to us even in anger, disgust, or fear, as the infant Christ came to a dark, forgotten corner to dwell among the beasts and his beastly and beloved human kin.

Kristine Haglund, www.bycommonconsent.com, "To See Face to Face"

You might picture [spiritual awareness] as a kind of interior compass whose magnetic north is always fixed on God.  It's thre, it's as much a part of what hold you in life as your breathing or your heartbeat.  And its purpose, just like a compass, is for orientation.

...spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging.  It's something like sounding the note G on the piano and instantly hearing the D and the B that surround it to make it a chord.  and since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness.

If we have within us a compass pointing to the magnetic north of God, does this mean taht God dwells within us, as the center of our being?...Caustously, the answer to this question is "yes."  I say "cautiously" because Christian theology makes very clear that the human being is not god and that ht einnermost core of our being is not itself divine.  And yet theology has always upheld the reality of our own divine being become more and more mysteriously interwoven.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, pg. 12

Like most of the great spiritual masters of our universe, Jesus taught from the conviction that we human beings are victims of a tragic case of mistaken identity.  The person I normally take myself to be--that busy, anxious little "I" so preoccupied with its goals,fear, desire, and issues--is never even remotely the whole of who I am, and to seek the fulfillment of my life at this level means to miss out on the bigger life.  This is why, according to his teaching, the one who tries to keep his "life" (i.e., the small one) will lose it, and the one who is willing to lose it will find the real thing.  Beneath the surface there is a deeper and vastly more authentic Self, but its presence is usually veiled by the clamor of the smaller "I" with its insatiable needs and demands.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, pg. 10

Intentional silence almost always feels like work.  It doesn't come naturally to most people, and there is in fact considerable resistance raised from the mind itself: "You mean I just sit there and make my mind a blank?"  Then the inner talking begins in earnest, and you ask yourself, "How can this be prayer?  How can God give me my imagination, reason, and feelings and then expect me not to use them?"  "Where do 'I' go to if I stop thinking?"  "Is it safe?"

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, pg. 8-9

Silence is God's first language.

-John of the Cross

quoted in Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, pg. 7

What goes on in those silent depths during the time of Centering Prayer is no one's business, not even your own; it is between your innermost being and God; that place where, as St. Augustine once said, "God is closer to your soul than you are yourself."  your own subjective experience of the prayer may be that nothing happened--except for the more or less continuous motion of letting go of thoughts.  But in the depths of your being, in fact, plenty has been going on, and things are quietly but firmly being rearranged.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, pg. 6

The law of moral agency, of choice and consequence, does not require that we entirely bear the burden of our own choices made in this life because those choices are always made under circumstances that are less than perfect.  Our accountability is thus always partial, incomplete.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 92

What can it mean, that Christ's blood was spilt for our sins, that "by his bruises we are healed"?  Perhaps His perfect love means His identification with human suffering is so complete, that in one fell vision He comprehended the depth and range and terror of all our individual pain.  Perhaps it is the almost irresistible power of His superabundant love manifest in His choice to suffer what He suffered, that transforms the sinner's heart.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 90

The great healing of the universe is centered on the breach in our relationship with our God.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 90

Heaven is not a club we enter.  Heaven is a state we attain...we acquire Heaven in accordance with a growing capacity to receive it...heaven depends on our attaining a particular mode of being, a character and mind and will that are the product of life-long choosing.  Conforming to celestial law, we become celestial persons. "That which is governed by the law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same (D&C 88:34-35)" in the language of scripture.  Salvation, in this light, is the imitation of Christ--or, to make the concept clearer, the imitating of Christ.  One is only merciful to the extent one extends mercy.  One is only honest to the extent one practices honesty.  One is only truthful to the extent one speaks truthfully, and so on.  That is why, all good intentions and Christ's grace notwithstanding, whosoever chooses "to abide in sin,...cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy."  heaven is a condition and a sanctified nature toward which all godly striving tends; it is not a place to be found by walking through the right door with a heavenly hall pass.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 88-89

...all this talk about punishment and rewards, about justice and merit an deserts, can be wrongheaded and misleading.  We are not in some contest to rack up points.  We will not someday wait with bated breath to see what prize or pain is meted out by a great dispenser of trophies.  We cannot so trivialize life that we make of it a coliseum where we wage moral combat like spiritual gladiators, for a presiding Authority on high to save or damn according to our performance.  Where would be the purpose in all of that?  He might take the measure of our souls at any moment and deal with us accordingly, saving Himself, not to mention us, a great deal of trouble.

How much more meaningful is a life designed for spiritual formation, rather than spiritual evaluation.  All tests evaluate, and life is no exception.  But the most meaningful and productive tests are those that assess with an eye to improvement, that measure in order to remedy, and that improve and prepare us for the next stage in an upward process of advancement. For these reasons, all talk of heaven that operates in terms of earning rather than becoming is misguided.  Such ideas misconstrue the nature of God, His grace, and the salvation He offers.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 87

We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out.  That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character...What we are worshipping we are becoming.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

quoted in Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 87

Only by choosing the good and experiencing its fruit do we learn to savor and embrace the good.  Similarly, only by choosing the evil and living through its consequences do we learn what evil is and why it deserves to be rejected.  Or as Julian saw, "So pain endures for a time.  Its role is to purge us, make us know ourselves, and it drives us to the Lord."  Ther in lies the "needfulness" of sin, the part it has to play.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 84

We find ourselves in a universe pervaded by laws that define the relationship of action and consequence. Some are manmade: speed and you get a ticket; rob and you go to jail; break curfew and you're grounded.  Some are physical: let go of a rock and it drops; expose potassium to air and it forms hydrogen gas; mix baking soda and vinegar and you get a frothing pot worthy of the witch's concoction in Shakespeare's Macbeth.  And some laws are moral: nurturing hatred cankers the soul; practicing kindness and forbearance develops serenity.

Parents and police officers alert us to the first category.  Physicians and chemists may give us fluency in the second.  But nothing short of trial and error will convert us to the unyielding strictures of the third.  To be adept at the first entails outward behavior.  Mastering the second challenges our mind.  but to live in harmony with the moral law of the universe requires body and soul, heart and mind, the will and the affections of the undivided self.  This is the meaning of Jesus' words that living the highest and holiest law; loving God, requires "all your heart, and...all your soul, and...all your mind."

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 84

Commandments are the expression of those eternal laws that will lead us to  a condition of optimal joyfulness.  They are the beacon lights of greater realities that define the cosmic streams in which we swim.  Operating in harmony with those realities, as a swimmer who works with the current rather than against it, empowers and liberates us to fill the measure of our creation. 

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 83

What is always at stake in any decision we make is what that choice turns us into.  We may suffer the unfortunate consequences of other peoples' choices.  People may honor or abuse us, harm or nourish us. But for the most part, it is our own choices that shape our identity.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 81

Sin is not an arbitrary category that God imposes.  And it is not synonymous with simple error or misjudgement.  This is a truth, like others we are examining, that is best revealed in the searchlight of honest introspection.  We know the difference between regret and remorse.  We regret giving erroneous directions that get the stranger lost.  We feel remorse for the slander deliberately spoken.  We regret an action that leads to harm.  We feel remorse for choosing that action to inflict harm.  Legitimate guilt, the kind we cannot explain away or therapeutically resolve, involves more than bad judgment or human error.  The degree of guilt we experience is proportional to the deliberateness with which we cause hurt.  Herein lies the clue to the meaning of sin, and the way beyond it.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 80

God is invested in our lives and happiness, because He chooses to be a Father to us.  His concern with human sin is with the pain and suffering it produces.  Sympathy and sorrow, not anger and vengeance, are th emotions we must look to in order to plumb the nature of the divine response to sin. 

...Sin is pain, and the intensity of His response to sin is commensurate with the intensity of that pain He knows sin will entail, and in which He has already chosen to share.  For He is the God who weeps.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 79

"A...paradox is evident in the prophet's admonition, that we "feast upon [Christ's] love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever."  Why should we need firm minds to feast upon love?  Like all gifts, love can be hard to recieve.  As children we welcome presents and affection with the same ready heart and hand, but we tend to lose knack as we grow older and more self-sufficient.  Love may be a heavy burden because of pride; we want to be self-made men and women, paying our own way, and are ashamed of our need.  Perhaps we are made to see our own littleness, by the great chasm that opens up between our merit and the gift.  Or perhaps we are genuinely ill ast ease, as one who knows at what great cost the gift has come.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 74-75

Our task is to school our appetites, not suppress them, to make them work in concert with a will that disciplines the spirit as much as the flesh.  For desire has both spiritual and bodily expression, and our life is a journey to purify both.  Along the way, we discipline and honor the body, even as we aspire to perfect the soul, finding in the end that the body and spirit, fitly framed together, do indeed provide the deepest joy.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 72