Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.
Interpretation
Grace celebrates life and encourages everyone to join in its joy.
This quote by Robert Farrar Capon describes grace as an exuberant force that actively invites people to celebrate life. Its relentless nature suggests that it reaches out to those who might be indifferent or disconnected, urging them to engage with the joy and beauty of existence, culminating in a communal dance of celebration when everyone finally joins in.
In practice
In a speech about community engagement, one might say, 'As Robert Farrar Capon puts it, grace is the celebration of life, reminding us to invite everyone to join in our joy.'
For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself-and it is our glory to see it so and to thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.
If God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn't be, either. Maybe our compulsion to wash God's hands for him is a service he doesn't appreciate. Maybe - all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary - evil is where we meet God. Maybe he isn't bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation. Maybe - just maybe - if we ever solved the problem, we'd have talked ourselves out of a lover.
Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however - the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over - period.
The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.
So long ago, was it in a dream, was it just a dream?
I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough
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