Some Sayings and Citations that have been Important for Me

1. For maturity is the integrity in and through inter-relationships, which makes it possible for each individual member of a group to be him or herself in togetherness and in togetherness each to be him or herself.  (Paul Lehman)

2. While in psychoanalysis, maturity is self realization through self acceptance, Christian maturity is self acceptance through self-giving. (Paul Lehman)

3. Self mastery: the battle we fight with ourselves is the toughest battle we will ever fight and it is the sweetest victory we will ever win. (My father often said this.)

4. The tone of a classroom: There are two kinds of order. We do not want the conscious order that ends in respectability, but the unconscious order that looks like chaos on the top, but is the hustle and bustle of real learning. (Sylvia Ashton Warner)

5. We do not want uniformity but unity. A false habit of mind sets off the individual against the group. True unity differentiates, it does not confound. (to paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin)

6. There is no system given whereby we must be saved.

(I’ve gotten this by interpolating law into system and Galatians 3:21: “For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law.” In other words, the law is no longer the way of salvation, but our Lord Jesus Christ is.)

7. We need the freedom to make a choice as well as the freedom of the context to make it in. Baptism and holy communion supply this freedom of Christ’s truth for us, as well as the truth of his freedom.

(That insight came to me after reading the existentialist philosopher, Nicholai Berdyaev. See his book, Dostoevsky, (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books or The World Publishing Company, 1968), page 68ff. This work of Beryaev was first published by the YMCA Press in 1934.)

8. Hatred locks us into the past; love opens the future.

(This insight came to me reading Berdyaev’s The Origin of Russian Communism, translated from the Russian by R. M. French, (London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1955 and first published in 1937), page 184. Berdyaev writes: “Hatred always turns to the past and always depends upon the past. A man who is gripped by the emotion of hatred cannot be concerned with the future, with a new life; only love turns a man towards the future, frees him from the heavy shackles of the past and is a means of creating a new and better life.”)

Some of my sayings:

On dying: When you come to the end of a sentence, there is a period. Suddenly you wonder what it is that your whole life said.  (12/07/1970)

We have to bear with each other until we are born.

The congregation is the womb of Christ.

How can we bring the children up, if we can’t bring something up?

You can plan all day long and things can still go wrong.

Groping and muddling through: is that the best we can do?  (7/27/2011)

Balancing ignorance with knowledge results in mediocrity. (1/28/2013)

Three funny sayings that Peter Moogan, my brother-in-law told me:

“If you haven’t grown up by the time you’re fifty, you don’t have to.”

“Peter Rabbit has a psychotic break when he realized he had pulled himself out of a hat.”

“I’ve gone to find myself. If I should return before I get back, keep me here.”