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Nadia Bolz-Weber QUOTES

Nadia Bolz-Weber QUOTES

1 " The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it's the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

2 " I cared about Ben, but I was never in love with him. I was in love with what it said about me that I had a boyfriend like Ben, and that's just different. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

3 " My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn't yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn't necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

4 " I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realisation that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

5 " Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death - ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

6 " I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors....Jesus could have hung out in the high-end religious scene of his day, but instead he scoffed at all that, choosing instead to laugh at the powerful, befriend whores, kiss sinners, and eat with all the wrong people. He spent his time with people for whom life was not easy. And there, amid those who were suffering, he was the embodiment of perfect love. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

7 " No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don't continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that's different from spiritual self-improvement. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

8 " The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can't, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

9 " As a teenager, I loved how I looked in the outfit of using drugs and exercising poor judgement. I had tried it on, spun around in the mirror, and decided I would choose this look, this image, this identity. But eventually and without realising it, the ability to choose had gone. I had become what at first I had only pretended to be. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

10 " Every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

11 " Church isn’t perfect. It’s practice. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

12 " What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God’s ability to work through sinners. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

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

― Nadia Bolz-Weber

14 " That's the crazy thing about Christianity — the idea that the finite can contain the infinite. After all, what is the incarnation if not that? So there's an incredible physicality to the spiritual within the Christian story. There's not this weird sort of  Greek separation, where there's a higher spiritual world and a corrupted, bad world of  flesh. It's all one. Because if God chose to have a body, there's a way in which spiritual things are revealed in the physical things that are all around us — bread, wine, people, tears, laughter. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

15 " God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of  Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

16 " There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafés in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don't think it has to do with social revolution. Images of  Mary remind us of  God's favor. Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

17 " I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm responsible for what they hear — and hearing the gospel, the good news about who God is, slowly forms us over time. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

18 " We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

19 " I know that people who don't believe in God might scoff at the idea that the creator of the universe has the time or inclination to try incessantly (and with not much long-term success) to change my heart. I get it. I just have no other explanation. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint

20 " God, please help me not be an asshole, is about as common a prayer as I pray in my life. "

― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint