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But if you do choose to walk through the depths—even the depths of your own sin and mistakes—you will come out the other side, knowing you’ve been taken there by a Source larger than yourself. Surely this is what it means to be saved. Being saved doesn’t mean that you are any better than anyone else or will be whisked off into heaven. It means you’ve allowed and accepted the mystery of transformation here and now. And as now, so later!

Almost all of Jesus’ kingdom parables are quiet stories. According to Jesus the kingdom of God is like seed being sown, like plants growing, like bread rising. It’s domestic, not militant. It’s like a woman sweeping her house, like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep, like a wayward son coming home at last.

Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.[ 5]

Romans 8:24-25:
For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Richard Rohr: Paul seems to say (and I partially paraphrase), hope would not be the virtue that it is if it led us to quick closure and we did not have to “wait for it with patience” (Romans 8: 24– 25).

The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore. The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide. This is exactly why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all, so we dare not avoid them, but for the young they have perhaps not yet taken place at any depth, so young people are always very fragile.

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A Christianity that understands itself as a salvation community can save us from the distinctly modern curse of individualism. Christianity knows that John Donne is right—No man is an island.

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The only final and meaningful question is “Is it true?” Not “Who said it?” “When and where did they say it?” “Does the Bible or the pope or my president say it?” or “Do I like it?” The only meaningful, helpful, and humble question is “Is it objectively true?”

“We pray the Psalms, not to express what we feel, but to learn to feel what they express.”
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