Phyllis Tickle Quotes

I’m not out to save the world, just to be part of it.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration I may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.†

about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale. And, he goes on to say, we are living in and through one of those five-hundred-year sales.

Religion, whether we like it or not, is intimately tied to the culture in which it exists. One can argue—with only varying degrees of success, though—that private faith can exist independent of its cultural surround. When, however, two or three faith-filled believers come together, a religion—possibly more of a nascent or proto-religion—is formed. Once formed, it can never be separated entirely from its context. Just as surely as one of the functions of religion is to inform, counsel, and temper the society in which it exists, just so surely is every religion informed and colored by its hosting society. Even a religion’s very articulation of itself takes on the cadences, metaphors, and delivery systems of the culture that it is in the business of informing. Thus, when we look at these semi-millennial tsunamis of ours, we as Christians must be mindful of the fact that the religious changes effected during each of them were only one part of what was being effected, and that all the other contemporaneous political, social, intellectual, and economic changes were intimately entwined with the changes in religion and religious thought.

Come sing, your choirs exultant, those messengers of God, Through whom the living Gospels came sounding all abroad! Whose voice proclaimed salvation that poured upon the night, And drove away the shadows, and filled the world with light. In one harmonious witness the chosen four combine, While each his own commission fulfills in every line; As, in the prophet’s vision from out the amber flame In mystic form and image four living creatures came. Four-square on this foundation the Church of Christ remains, A house to stand unshaken by floods or winds or rains. How blessed this habitation of gospel liberty, Where with a holy people God dwells in Unity. Latin, 12th Century

The general tendency in Emergence Christian theology is to question with real vigor and precision whether or not the connection between faith and doctrinal precision is essential to the soul’s salvation. Dogma, yes, but doctrine, not so much. That is, do one’s brainwaves and verbal utterances actually make one’s faith? Emergence Christians can often take this even a step further and reference those places of spiritual primacy where Jesus taught (as in his judgment of the nations as told in the Gospel of Matthew, for example) that a life is what constitutes and demonstrates a disciple, rather than a mind-set.

Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence,2 argues that we are undergoing the most recent of our every-500-year “rummage sales”—an upheaval in culture and worldview that will inevitably reshape our faith interpretations and institutions as surely as the Great Schism of the eleventh century and the Great Reformation of the sixteenth century. This tsunami of change is well under way, marked by the postmodern and post-Christian sensibilities of the millennial generation.

Phyllis Tickle, Marcus Borg, Brian McLaren, Barbara Brown Taylor, Jim Wallis, and Lauren Winner for their encouragement, support, and friendship. Anne Howard, Joseph Stewart-Sicking, Linnae Himsl Peterson, Kathy Staudt, Jonathan Wilson, and Howard Anderson are good friends who offered insights along the way.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Ephesians 4:4–7

Let us bless the Lord God living and true! Let us always render him praise, glory, honor, blessing, and all good things! Amen. Amen. So be it! So be it! St. Francis of Assisi

When I, at 6:00 am arise for Prime, I join all the other Benedictines and fixed-hour pray-ers in my time zone. For those few minutes and regardless of where we physically are as individuals within our time zone, we are together in the communion of our prayers. The words we speak to our God are the words that have been raised only an hour before in the time zone just to the east of us; and when we are done, they are the words that will be raised before Him by our fellow Christians in the time zone immediately to the west of us, until the globe itself has been circled by our prayers and each day brought to its ending so another may begin. It is the communion of the saints horizontally and across all space.

The Lord is my shepherd and nothing is wanting to me. In green pastures He hath settled me.

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we who glory in the mystery of our redemption may have the grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

The Petition Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Shield Your joyous ones, and all for Your love’s sake. Amen.§

Renew in my heart, O God, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that I may love you fully in all that I do and love all others as Christ loves me. May all that I do proclaim the good news that you are God with us. Amen.†

Late have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved thee: for behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me to break open my deafness: and you did send forth your beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: you breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and I do now pant for you: I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you: you touched me, and I have burned for your peace. St. Augustine

Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. St. Thomas Aquinas

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