just some quotes from the book i'm reading...

on baptism...

"sometimes people wonder how babies can be baptized; indeed, that very wondering is the genesis of the baptist church. baptists believe babies shouldn't be baptized. they say there's no scriptural precedent for it, that jesus and john were both baptized as adults. hannah, who's a baptist, often says that a baby can't promist to do everything one promises in baaptism. i have never found this a very persuasive argument. it strikes me as too individualistic. the very point is that no baptismal candidate, even an adult, can promise to do those things all by himself. the community is promising for you, with you, on your behalf. it is for that reason that i love to see a baby baptized. when a baby is baptized, we cannot labor under the atomizing illusion that individuals in christ can or should go this road alone. when a baby is baptized we are struck unavoidably with the fact that this is a community covenant, a community relationship, that these are communal promises (p 80)."

i love this. i always cry when babies are baptized. and i always think of the time scott walked that baby over to kevin, a member of the congregation who happens to be blind. he knelt down with her, kevin felt her face, he met her, as a child of the covenant, was one with her in the family of god, i bawled. i also love this paragraph because it is the notion of community that draws me forever into the church, i love that the sacraments of the church are communal, that they are not individualistic, but they involve the entire community, it's a family affair.

on friendship...

"there are a few people out there with whom you fit just so, and, amazingly, you keep fitting just so even after you have growth spurts or lose weight or stop wearing high heels. you keep fitting after you have children or change religions or sop dyeing your hair or qui your job at goldman sachs and take up farming. somehow, god is gracious enough to give us a few of those people, people you can sretch into, people who don't go away, and whom you wouldn't want to go away, even if they offered to (p 85)."

these are the best friendships, the blessings, the soulmates of life, i love the way she describes them... these are the relationships that remind us of the community in for which god created us...

she talks about a letter, a democratic epistle, her father wrote...

" i don't have that letter anymore, and all i remember of it is a line about bootstraps: that the major difference between democrats and republicans was how they treated the poor; republicans wanted people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but democrats recognized that sometimes poor people couldn't afford any bootstraps on which to pull (p 108)."

this just reminds me of an argument i had with a friend's mom once about socialism and taxation, and the importance of self versus the importance of community...

a quote about reading, something she is adicted to and her pastor suggested she give up for lent (holy cow, talk about hard)...

"giving up books for six weeks did not just leave me with more free time. it did not just save mee some money. it also left me starkly alone with my life. i read, i think, for many reasons. i read for information, i read for pleasure, i read because i want to figure out the craft of putting a sentence together. but i also read to numb any feelings of despair or misery that might creep my way. sven birkerts once wrote, 'to read, when one does so of ones own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off towards it. and like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. to open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one's life or of one's orientation toward it (p 128).'"

i can't imagine giving up reading. it blows my mind that there are people in the world who do not read for pleasure. i think it's an amazing things to have given up for lent, much more of an impact than chocolate, cokes, beer... wow...

on prayer...

"augustine wrote that god sometimes does not give us what we ask in prayer. 'of his bounty, the lord often grants not what we seek, so as to bestow something preferable (p 148).'"

this is so true and we hear it a million times, but it is still so difficult to accept... i wish i really felt more comfortable praying... sometimes i feel like a spoiled brat praying only when i really want something, like when mom would take me to grocery store as a little girl, hear i am sitting in the cart, god pushing me through the walmart of life and i can't stop whining about the aisle of candies we just breezed by...

 

1.17.2005
not an addict...