“Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing" — like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves" — can easily descend into a blend of  benevolence and paternalism. We can start to see the "poor" as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are.”

“I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't imagine that God doesn't reveal God's self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity. In a way, I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.”

“Every time I go look for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross, in death and resurrection. This is our God.”

“I often think that the effort we put into trying to pretend something about us is true — that we are less than we are or more than we are or that one aspect of ourselves is the whole story — is based in a fear of  being really known, of  being truly seen, as we actually are. Perhaps we each have a wound, a vulnerable place that we have to protect in order to survive. And yet sometimes we overcompensate so much for the things we are trying to hide that no one ever suspects the truth…and then we are left in the true aloneness of never really being known.”

“When I tell other Christians of my time with the goddess, I think they expect me to characterize it as a period in my life when I was misguided, and that I have now thankfully come back to both Jesus and my senses. But it's not like that. I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't imagine that God doesn't reveal God’s self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity. In a way, I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.”

“We had started out caring about each other, but in the end none of us knew how to care for each other. But this experience taught me that a community based on the idea that everyone hates rules is, in the end, just as disappointing and oppressive as a community based on the ability to follow rules.”

“I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if  Jesus said "I was hungry and you fed me," then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ's presence is in the hungry being fed. Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for. And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because, as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh-and-blood people knows, the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of  Christlike people. And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of  Christlike people. We all are equally as sinful and saintly as the other. No, Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of  God might be known. ... No one gets to play Jesus. But we do get to experience Jesus in that holy place where we meet others' needs and have our own needs met.”

“There's not enough wrong with it to leave and there's just enough wrong with it to stay," Matthew later told me. "Fight to change it.”

“This was the bonus to liberal Christianity: I could use my reason and believe at the same time.”

“Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.”

“I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.”