Wesleyan Quotes

I've always had a theory that some of us are born with nerve endings longer than our bodies

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.

Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. “Miss O’Connor,” he said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?” “He does not,” I said. He looked crushed. “Well, Miss O’Connor,” he said, “what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.

I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor.

I listen to the gunfire we cannot hear, and begin this journey with the light of knowing the root of my own furious love.

Do not make me into that man of hatred for whom I feel only hatred.

I want to be bruised by God. I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out. I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed. I want to be entered and picked clean.

Blessed are those who break off from separateness theirs is wild heaven.

He is being nibbled to death by ducks. --More Later, Less the Same

And if all I know how to do is speak, it is for you that I shall speak. My lips shall speak for miseries that have no mouth, my voice shall be the liberty of those who languish in the dungeon of despair… And above all my body as well as my soul, beware of folding your arms in the sterile attitude of spectator, for life is not a spectacle, for a sea of pain is not a proscenium.

They didn't have much trouble teaching the ape to write poems: first they strapped him into a chair, then tied the pencil around his hand (the paper had already been nailed down). Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear: 'You look like a god sitting there. Why don't you try writing something?

we can speculate on the relay of our common activity, make a circle round our errant roots. Dancing is what we make of falling. Music is what we make of music's absence, the real presence making music underneath. I'm exhausted so my soul is rested.

When a clock dies no one wakes.

You used to be alive, now you’re almost mythic.

Although upon doctrines of grace our views differ from those avowed by Arminian Methodists, we have usually found that on the great evangelical truths we are in full agreement, and we have been comforted by the belief that Wesleyans were solid upon the central doctrines.

Putting my hands on. What April couldn't fix Wasn't worth the time: Egg shell & dried placenta Light as memory. Patches of fur, feathers, & bits of skin. A nest Of small deaths among anemone. A canopy edged over, shadowplaying The struggle underneath As if it never happened

About the same time I came in contact with another Christian family. At their suggestion I attended the Wesleyan church every Sunday. For these days I also had their standing invitation to dinner. The church did not make a favourable impression on me. The sermons seemed to be uninspiring. The congregation did not strike me as being particularly religious. They were not an assembly of devout souls; they appeared rather to be wordly-minded people, going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom. Here, at times, I would involuntarily doze. I was ashamed, but some of my neighbours, who were in no better case, lightened the shame. I could not go on long like this, and soon gave up attending the service.

With the stone question In the heads of Greek statues Who ask where their arms And legs and the tips of their noses Have gone.

While in the water bird’s throat, the white, visible pulse of a fish. Between being and becoming, turning wildly as it falls.

Wesleyanism was at its most influential when it was a people movement that was reproducing like mad. It

That’s their philosophy,” said Greder, whose day job was associate dean of students at Illinois Wesleyan. “Dance with the ones who brought you.

Inside my skin, loving you, I am this space my body believes in. — Yuself Komunyakaa, from “Unnatural State of the Unicorn,” Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems. (Wesleyan University Press 1993)

known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: “Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.

I write by the light of what is not revealed in what I express. — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions, II. The Book of Yukel, III. Return to the Book] trans.by Rosmarie Waldrop (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)

I write by the light of what is not revealed in what I express. — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions, II. The Book of Yukel, III. Return to the Book], trans.by Rosmarie Waldrop (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)

How do I say it? In this language there are no words for how the real world collapses. I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars in this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever make sense.

be they lawyers soldiers princesses prostitutes actors activists or acrobats on five continents in dozens of countries in the world the women are lying down for the men the men of many museums (in ‘At the musée de l’homme’)

Our lives are eschatologically stretched between the sneak preview of the new world being born among us in the church, and the old world where the principalities and powers are reluctant to give way. In the meantime, which is the only time the church has ever known, we live as those who know something about the fate of the world that the world does not yet know. And that makes us different. —Will Willimon, Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition

A Blessing on the Poets Patient earth-digger, impatient fire-maker, Hungry word-taker and roving sound-lover, Sharer and saver, muser and acher, You who are open to hide or uncover, Time-keeper and –hater, wake-sleeper, sleep-waker; May language’s language, the silence that lies Under each word, move you over and over, Turning you, wondering, back to surprise.

Don’t sign your name between worlds, surmount the manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live. ― Paul Celan, “Don’t sign your name,” Glottal Stop. Translated by Heather McHugh & Nikolai Popov. (Wesleyan; 1st edition September 30, 2000)

The men she met all seemed to say they were “several years out of Wesleyan.” Their beds were never made, or else made poorly, when she climbed into them. No one yet had the time or inclination to take care of themselves, and it was unclear when that would ever begin.

The year after that novel was published, I was invited to teach at Wesleyan. I congratulated myself on a completed plan on that first day of classes. I know some people condescend to me when I mention that I was once a waiter, but I will never regret it. Waiting tables was not just a good living, but also a good education in people. I saw things I never would have imagined, an education in life out past the limits of my own social class. Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.

I ponder these questions by taking seriously this ancient, ambiguous, and diverse Bible we have as well as honoring my humanity—my experiences, my reasoning, when and where I was born—and I try to get all these factors to talk to each other. That may ring a bell with some of you. I am echoing the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral. We are always processing God and faith not from a high place, but from the vantage point of our inescapable humanity—our reason, experience, tradition, and scripture. (The Episcopal Three-Legged Stool is similar, but it combines reason and experience.)

The seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the Atonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no self-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no hell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting the obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside the secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude to the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it still stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable. The drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on such slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale as to be capable of them. The 'saved' thief experiences an ecstatic happiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to steal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals he has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief. Nothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort of restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter the fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he has conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man... Now though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the happier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view of the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope lies now. Consequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe in the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a right to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.'

I read at Wesleyan last week— “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After the reading, I went to one of their classes to answer questions. There were several young teachers in there and one began by saying, “Miss O’Connor, why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked quite disappointed. Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?” “He does not,” says I. He really looked hurt at that. Finally he said, “Well Miss O’Connor, what IS the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” "To cover his head," I said. He looked crushed then and left me alone." - Flannery O'Connor to Caroline Gordon

I believe in the violence of not knowing.

but all I see in the space between the words, / between drops of rain / is how we are both sad / in any language

Today could be described as a retired man humming tunelessly to himself.

In the updraft, the particulate glitz is beside itself.

We can also recite the failures of institutions and systems that are near and dear to us. The good news is that the past can be forgiven.

you have to wonder how a boy or the shape of a boy wound up here in this unstable field.

i know everyone i love who’s dead didn’t actually become the poem i wrote about them.

i’d lash myself to any new mast

But mostly we are made of a heavier stuff, the slow descent of breast, foot-arches flattening towards earth, the hundred ways the body longs for home.

I wake to a simple longing, all I want of this ordinary hour, this ordinary earth that was long ago married to time: to hear as a sand crab hears the waves, loud as a second heart; to see as a green thing sees the sun, with the undividing attention of blind love. — Jane Hirshfield, from “Rain in May,” Of Gravity & Angels. (Wesleyan; 1 edition February 15, 1988)

We have said that the duende likes the edge of things, the wound, and that it is drawn to where forms fuse themselves in a longing greater than their visible expressions. — Federico García Lorca, from “Theory and Function of the Duende,” trans. J. L. Gilli, 1933, Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950, ed. Melissa Kwasny (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)

In this sense, then, sanctification is primarily the process of redemption. It is process precisely because it is moral and personal and not simply legal. But in the process lie crisis points without which moral degenerates into a nonmoral naturalism.

At present, under the burden of canons and the burden of language’s deep complicity with countless atrocities, the very making of poems requires audacity. And if the audacity is well-intended, it requires a certain awkwardness as proof of its unrehearsed refusal to comply with silence.

Three in Translation]" for WCW I wish I understood the beauty in leaves falling. To whom are we beautiful as we go? I lie in the field still, absorbing the stars and silently throwing off their presence. Silently I breathe and die by turns. He was ripe and fell to the ground from a bough out where the wind is free of the branches

At the end of the small hours: life flat on its face, miscarried dreams and nowhere to put them, the river of life listless in its hopeless bed, not rising or falling, unsure of its flow, lamentably empty, the heavy impartial shadow of boredom creeping over the quality of all things, the air stagnant, unbroken by the brightness of a single bird.

TO DRINK I want to gather your darkness in my hands, to cup it like water and drink. I want this in the same way as I want to touch your cheek— it is the same— the way a moth will come to the bedroom window in late September, beating and beating its wings against cold glass; the way a horse will lower his long head to water, and drink, and pause to lift his head and look, and drink again, taking everything in with the water, everything. IN YOUR HANDS I begin to grow extravagant, like kudzu, that rank, green weed devouring house after house in the South— towards midday, the roof tiles start to throw a wavering light back towards the sun, and roads begin to soften, darken, taking your peregrine tongue, your legs, your eyes, home to shuttered windows, to the cool rooms

It reminded me of how I’d felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from Baron’s. He’d read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he’d say, ‘How does that sound?’ and I’d think, Sounds just like the last one. It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into – not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn’t realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, explains, “Racism is a structure, not an event.”13 American women’s struggle for suffrage illustrates how institutional power transforms prejudice and discrimination into structures of oppression. Everyone has prejudice and discriminates, but structures of oppression go well beyond individuals. While women could be prejudiced and discriminate against men in individual interactions, women as a group could not deny men their civil rights. But men as a group could and did deny women their civil rights. Men could do so because they controlled all the institutions. Therefore, the only way women could gain suffrage was for men to grant it to them; women could not grant suffrage to themselves.

What if I were turned on by seemingly innocent words such as “scumble,” “pinky,” or “extrapolate?” What if I maneuvered conversation in the hope that others would pronounce these words? Perhaps the excitement would come from the way the other person touched them lightly and carelessly with his tongue. What if “of” were such a hot button? “Scumble of bushes.” What if there were a hidden pleasure in calling one thing by another’s name?

We believe evangelism is more relational than confrontational, more communal than solitary, and is more a beginning point than an end. Evangelism involves not only sharing our faith with others, but also welcoming them into a community and enabling them to begin to grow in their faith. Above all evangelism is about love: God’s love for us in Jesus, our love for our neighbor, and the invitation to receive and grow in a new life that is characterized by love.

For too long has everything divine been utilized, And all the heavenly powers, the kindly ones, thrown away, Consumed for kicks by thankless, Cunning men, who, when the exalted One works in their fields, think they Know the daylight and the Thunderer, And their telescope might see them all and Count and name all the stars in heaven; But the Father covers our eyes with holy Night so we might remain. He loves no wildness! Our expanding power will never force heaven.

J’habite une blessure sacrée j’habite des ancêtres imaginaires j’habite un vouloir obscur j’habite un long silence j’habite une soif irrémédiable j’habite un voyage de mille ans j’habite une guerre de trois cent ans j’habite un culte désaffecté entre bulbe et caïeu j’habite l’espace inexploité j’habite du basalte non une coulée mais de la lave le mascaret qui remonte la valleuse à toute allure et brûle toutes les mosquées je m’accommode de mon mieux de cet avatar d’une version du paradis absurdement ratée -c’est bien pire qu’un enfer- j’habite de temps en temps une de mes plaies chaque minute je change d’appartement et toute paix m’effraie tourbillon de feu ascidie comme nulle autre pour poussières de mondes égarés ayant crachés volcan mes entrailles d’eau vive je reste avec mes pains de mots et mes minerais secrets j’habite donc une vaste pensée mais le plus souvent je préfère me confiner dans la plus petite de mes idées

By June the revival began to wane. But Roberts’s vision had been realized. An estimated 100,000 confessed Christ. The Congregationalists added 26,500 members. Another 24,000 Welsh joined the Calvinist Methodist Church. About 4,000 opted for the Wesleyan Church. The remainder were split between the Anglicans and several Baptist groups.13 The effect on Welsh society was undeniable. Output from the coal mines famously slowed because the horses wouldn’t move. Miners converted in the revival no longer kicked or swore at the horses, so the horses didn’t know what to do.14 Judges closed their courtrooms with nothing to judge. Christians wielded the revival as apologetic against the growing number of skeptics who derided religion. Stead argued: The most thoroughgoing materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected they have drawn, and are drawing, a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.15

The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocers’ shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the green-grocers’! the awful hats in the milliners’! all went by ugly, ugly, ugly, followed by the plaster-and-gilt horror of the cinema with its wet picture announcements, “A Woman’s Love!”, and the new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and big panes of greenish and raspberry glass in the windows. The Wesleyan chapel, higher up, was of blackened brick and stood behind iron railings and blackened shrubs. The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just beyond were the new school buildings, expensive pink brick, and graveled playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and mixing the suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson, just finishing the la-me-do-la exercises and beginning a “sweet children’s song.” Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song, would be impossible to imagine: a strange bawling yell that followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages: savages have subtle rhythms. It was not like animals: animals mean something when they yell. It was like nothing on earth, and it was called singing... What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living intuitive faculty was dead as nails, and only queer mechanical yells and uncanny will power remained?

Christian love creates an atmosphere in which all the creative conflicts may not only exist but also be matured and fully utilized without tearing apart the fabric of Christian unity.

Agape has suffered almost irreparable damage by translating it “love,” without the catharsis of careful scholarship.

LOVE takes the Harshness out of Holiness. Love takes the Incredibility out of Perfection. Love takes the Antinomianism out of Faith. Love takes the Moralism out of Obedience. Love takes the Gnosticism out of Cleansing. Love takes the Abstraction out of Truth. Love puts the Personal into Truth. Love puts the Ethical into Holiness. Love puts Process into Life. Love puts Urgency into Crisis. Love puts Seriousness into Sin. Love puts Fellowship into Perfection. —M. B. W.

No I am not crying I'm maybe um a demon

In every place you seem to end I have loved you

I'm standing directly in the shadow now everything is sufficiently bright, everything is very clearly Okay

Love is the gospel message. Christian love, revealed by God in Christ, is the correction of man’s limited, selfish, selective, perverted love. It stands against any human concept of love projected into a theory of God’s nature and His way with man. It is precisely this unlimited, impartial, indestructible love that needed to be “revealed” because the best in human love has been limited. The very nature of sin is love’s perversion, which makes the self the object of its own dedication.

Could the dogma of particular election as understood by some theological traditions be the projection of faulty human love into the very nature of God? The gospel was not born in human philosophy but in God’s heart revealed in Christ. This Wesley declared.

Image seems to refer to the experience of “standing before God” in responsible personhood. Likeness makes sense when it is a way of saying what man ought to do and what he does do about that experience of moral freedom.

The New Testament writer’s use of “death” to signify separation from God was well understood by the Jews, as was “life” by contrast.

Death seemed to depict the finality of the hopelessness which is man’s lot alienated from God. It does not, however, mean loss of any human faculty. Rather it describes the separation which exists between God and man.

Wesley was not concerned about speculating regarding the way the race became involved in sin.

Be particularly careful in speaking of yourself: You may not, indeed, deny the work of God; but speak of it, when you are called thereto, in the most inoffensive manner possible. Avoid all magnificent, pompous words; indeed, you need give it no general name; neither perfection, sanctification, the second blessing, nor the having attained. Rather speak of the particulars which God has wrought for you. You may say, “At such a time I felt a change which I am not able to express; and since that time, I have not felt pride, or self-will, or anger, or unbelief; nor anything but a fullness of love to God and to all mankind.” And answer any other plain question that is asked with modesty and simplicity. And if any of you should at any time fall from what you now are, if you should again feel pride or unbelief, or any temper from which you are now delivered; do not deny, do not hide, do not disguise it at all, at the peril of your soul. At all events go to one in whom you can confide, and speak just what you feel. God will enable him to speak a word in season, which shall be health to your soul. (Works, XI, 434-35, italics mine)

The second problem has to do with the way men appropriate grace. A question sharpens the issue. Does faith precede or follow repentance? Is obedience necessary, and why? These simply open the door to many more questions like them. In Scripture it is impossible to isolate such words as faith and love so that they could be said to stand in chronological order to each other. There is an element of repentance in faith that cannot be deleted. Faith is meaningless apart from enough awareness of sin and hatred of it to make believing decisive. Faith must always have enough self-awareness to reject one thing, enough to accept another. Biblical repentance is shot through with faith and obedience. In Scripture, faith is never divorced from the total personality. It must be supported by everything the man is.

Fear closes the mind and the heart and dries up the source of love.

Holiness is wholeness and health, and everything God requires of the person from the first stirrings of conviction to the last act of life is in the interest of that wholesomeness.

The point Wesley was making as he discussed law and faith puts his whole theology into focus. Faith, then, was originally designed of God to reestablish the law of love…. It is the grand means of restoring that holy love where in man was originally created. It follows that altho faith is of no value in itself … yet as it leads to that end, the establishing anew the law unspeakable blessing to man, and of unspeakable value before God. (Ibid., 464)

Judas, who (though his feet had also presumably been washed) was not united in this fellowship because his heart was not with them. He remained unclean.

3. Perfectionism may manifest itself in moralism. External conformity to law is of prior importance. Every human act is regulated by law. The law becomes so complex and intricate that dress styles and colors for both men and women, recreational possibilities, and every minutia of personal and corporate life are carefully proscribed. Holiness is measured by this conformity. That a very unpleasant and harsh spirit may accompany this conformity is no argument against it. In fact, it is said, harshness is needed to maintain it and is finally considered to be a sign and assurance of perfection and sanctity.

10. The most important single characteristic of the biblical meaning of perfection is its positive nature. Perfection is not, principally, the absence of all that is less than perfect, but the presence of love with all the dynamic meaning of love.

Purity is not an end in itself. Purity permits the personality to live in full expression of love to God and man. It is the power of a single-hearted devotion and must be kept intact by a daily fellowship with God.

There is a foundational need inherent in every human person to love someone and to be loved. The self is completed and integrated and wholesome only when there is rapport with others. Mental hospitals are full of people who cannot communicate with others. They distrust, dislike, hate, and finally withdraw from the world of other persons. The condition is called schizophrenia. The need for fellowship is much deeper than sentiment; it is basic to mental health and ultimately to truly human existence. It is not the totally independent person who is the epitome of strength, but precisely the person who is capable of responsible mutual interrelatedness with others while at the same time maintaining a sharp and growing self-identity.

Introduction This book is devoted to the blessed Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Daily working together as unified Godhead for our best interest. Would be incomplete without Jesus direct love bestowed upon me, through a perpetual act of faith in God. Fully trusting Jesus to lead me into a carefully laid-out plan. Dedicating this book to my children: Faith is 6, Christian 11, Christina 12 years old. Izzabella, my niece, is also featured in the story, Sally Saved Three Times. These Children are the inspiration for the characters in the stories. Added some personal experiences acquired during my childhood. Appreciate the support of my Mom, Dad, brother, Jacob, for being here for me the last five years. They helped me through hard circumstances when I needed them the most. Thank You! My second family is at the Erie Wesleyan Methodist Church on the corner of 29th and Liberty. They covered my life with prayer; great friends from the Lord; Supporting me on my journey towards my heavenly home. I am also thankful for Mike Lawrence who encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks, brother! This spectacular close friend of mine wrote the Forward of this book. He is God-given for moral support and prayer. Friends forever from Erie, Pennsylvania! There are scripture references, along with Bible lessons featured in each story. These short stories are ideal for devotions or bedtime stories. Suitable for parents and grandparents to read to children, grandchildren. Forward It is rare today to find Christians who are in love with doing the Lord's service. Many would sit to the side and let others bush-wack the path, but Bryan has always been the one who delights in making the way clear for others. His determination, commitment to producing these writings was encouraging to watch come to fruition. Take time now see for yourself how God is directing these works to provide something sincere, pure, innocent for families to enjoy. A pleasant respite from a sin-sick world. So, please, feel free to find a quiet place today and enjoy them alone or with your family. This body of work calls upon us to take time to be holy. I believe with all my heart that this is the authors intent, the Lord's plan, my hearts prayer that they bless you as much as they have blessed me. May God bless the time and energies sacrificed by the author in its production. Sincerely in Christ, Michael Lawrence. When writing with Shirley Dye on messenger about editing the book, she commented that this book would be a blessing to many people. That is my solemn humble prayer. Short Story Content 1. Mr. B.G. (My Testimony) 2. Trevor Wins Three Times 3. Winning The Man ON Rock-Hill 4. Sally Saved Three Times 5. Jonathan and Family Find God 6. Upright and Prideful Key Text, (Matthew 18:3), “And (Jesus) said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

By nature ye are wholly corrupted; by grace ye shall be wholly renewed . . . . Now ‘go on’ ‘from faith to faith,’ until your whole sickness be healed, and all that ‘mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus’!

we are all strangers / bound by the same spirits

aloneness is a bad fiddle I play against my own / burning

At the risk of being simplistic, a railway metaphor comes to mind. John Wesley's marriage was a train wreck (Wesleyan historian, Henry Rack called it a 'disaster' and 'catastrophe'); [George] Whitefield's was a freight train (satisfactory but functional); and [John] Newton's was a scenic passenger train (enjoyable and relational).

Say something about real love. Yes, true love—more than parted lips, than parted legs in sorrow’s darkroom of potash & blues. Let the brain stumble from its hidingplace, from its cell block, to the edge of oblivion to come to itself, sharp-tongued as a boar’s grin in summer moss —Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Safe Subjects,”Neon Venacular: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1993)

he is like a soldier or a saint: blank-faced, and given wholly to an obedience he does not need to understand.

C’est un tableau pendu dans un sombre musée Et quelquefois tu vas le regarder de près

Adam Clarke (1762–1832) was a respected Wesleyan/Methodist pastor, biblical scholar, and commentator whom I’ve referenced many times over the past years. Adam Clarke actually mentioned “dragons” several times in his Bible commentary. However, in Ezekiel 29:39 he clarifies what he really means by “dragon,” saying: The great dragon hattannim should here be translated crocodile, as that is a real animal, and numerous in the Nile; whereas the dragon is wholly fabulous. The original signifies any large animal.

This is why Kuyper’s common grace has to be clearly distinguished from the notion of prevenient grace that shows up in a number of traditions, particularly Wesleyanism and Roman Catholicism. From Kuyper’s perspective, prevenient grace is a way of downplaying the extent of human depravity by positing a kind of automatic universal upgrade of those dimensions of human nature that have been corrupted by sin. To put it much too simply, the goal of prevenient grace is the upgrade; it is to raise the deeply wounded human capacities to a level where some measure of freedom to choose or reject obedience to God is made possible. Common grace, on the other hand, is for Kuyper a divine strategy for bringing the cultural designs of God to completion. Common grace operates mysteriously in the life of, say, a Chinese government official or an unbelieving artist to harness their created talents to prepare the creation for the full coming of the kingdom. In this sense, the operations of common grace—unlike those of prevenient grace—always have a goal-directed ad hoc character.

What we haven't imagined will one day spit us out magnificent and simple. -Fury of Rain

What we haven't imagined will one day spit us out magnificent and simple.

The Rise of Theological Liberalism and the Decline of American Methodism,

Other people subjected to the early drafts were Tony Sheeder; Dr. Steve Horst of Wesleyan University, who made extensive and very lucid comments on everything having to do with brains and computers (and who suddenly came down with a virus about one hour after reading it); and my brother-in-law,

A conversation about grace in Wesleyan terms entails at least four different elements: the grace revealed in Jesus Christ, the free and unbounded character of God’s grace, grace in both creation and redemption, and the implications for living in and through grace.

For Wesley, there was no such thing as faith focused on personal piety; it was a contradiction in terms. Solitary religion disconnected from works of mercy and justice was simply not a possibility for Wesleyans.

The complete NIV Bible was first published in 1978. It was a completely new translation made by over a hundred scholars working directly from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. The translators came from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving the translation an international scope. They were from many denominations and churches—including Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Christian Reformed, Church of Christ, Evangelical Covenant, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and others. This breadth of denominational and theological perspective helped to safeguard the translation from sectarian bias. For these reasons, and by the grace of God, the NIV has gained a wide readership in all parts of the English-speaking world. The work of translating the Bible is never finished. As good as they are, English translations must be regularly updated so that they will continue to communicate accurately the meaning of God’s Word. Updates are needed in order to reflect the latest developments in our understanding of the biblical world and its languages and to keep pace with changes in English usage. Recognizing, then, that the NIV would retain its ability to communicate God’s Word accurately only if it were regularly updated, the original translators established The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT). The committee is a self-perpetuating group of biblical scholars charged with keeping abreast of advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English and issuing periodic updates to the NIV. CBT is an independent, self-governing body and has sole responsibility for the NIV text. The committee mirrors the original group of translators in its diverse international and denominational makeup and in its unifying commitment to the Bible as God’s inspired Word.

Despite all this schism, Wesleyan Methodism continued to grow by leaps and bounds throughout the nineteenth century, bringing Arminian views to the mainstream of American evangelicalism.