Cite
Lee, Cindy S. Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022.
Jeremy
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FirstAuthor:: Lee, Cindy S.
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Title:: Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation
Year:: 2022
Citekey:: leeOurUnformingDeWesternizing2022
itemType:: book
Publisher:: Fortress Press
Location:: Minneapolis
ISBN:: 978-1-5064-8478-5
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Abstract
Christian spiritual formation resources and teachings have primarily come from Western spiritual traditions. Our current approach to formation comes out of that way of thinking and being, communicating that the white experience of God is the norm and authority. In Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation, Cindy S. Lee proposes that we as the church need a new way to engage in spiritual formation. To thrive in our increasingly diverse contexts, we need an unforming and a reforming of our souls. We need to unform the ways Western-dominated church leaders have understood formation. We need to reform—to imagine and create a more intricate spirituality that includes diverse experiences of God. Our Unforming is organized into three cultural orientations and eight postures. Lee proposes that when we consider non-Western cultural ways of being—turning from linear to cyclical, from cerebral to experiential, and from individual to collective—the formation journey shifts. We live out these movements through postures, ways of entering into deeper spiritual transformation. The eight postures reflect our experience of time, generations, imagination, uncertainty, language, work, dependence, elders, and harmony. Lee offers a more robust spirituality to hold the complexities of a multicultural God and the God-human relationship. Our Unforming is sure to inspire further conversation as it shifts how we approach formation in our diverse communities .
Notes
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contemplation. In all my studies and explorations of Christian spirituality, however, it suddenly dawned on me one day that as much as I esteem the many saints and mystics of our faith … very few of them look like me. — location: 104
You are reading a book on Christian spirituality by an Asian American author. I hope, though, that you don’t categorize or marginalize my writing as “other” or as “only for Asians.” Instead, I hope that you can receive my experiences of the sacred as one layer of our collective human experience of God. — location: 115
Ineresting that we are asked to elevate the voice of others because they were unable to capture the entirety of the whole picture of God because of their race and gender. I totally get the sentiment, and I totally get the need for diversity, just a weird contrast to begin with interms of highlight the need followed by answering it with the same stroke (albeit a much smaller brush).
societies. We also need to be re-formed in order to discover the sacred in one another. Sadly, voices are missing from this conversation. We need to hear from one another and make space for one another so we can evolve and mature into a more dynamic spiritual community. — location: 126
Spirituality, the divine-human relationship, starts with an ache. Our souls ache each time we recognize that there is something missing in our experiences of the sacred. — location: 129
I like this definition. I’m not sure I’ve heard of something like this, or at least it hasn’t hit me like this. Reminds me a lot of Inside Out where joy came because sadness compelled it.
Whereas theology attempts to figure out and articulate what we know about God, spirituality refers to what we experience of God. — location: 134
In spirituality, we bring all of our humanness—broken, smelly, and beautiful—before God, just as God comes with all Godness to meet with us. Spiritual formation, then, refers to the transformation that happens in us as we encounter God again and again and again. Spiritual formation includes all the practical ways we try to clear the clutter in our souls in order to meet with God and hear from God. — location: 139
This like making our house beautiful for a new guest, but as they come around more often, they see the real you, which allows for vulnerability.
Historically, the church prioritized preparing souls for the afterlife but failed to form us to be healthy human beings in this life. The church overemphasized teaching the right beliefs but, in doing so, failed to form us to be people who ask God questions. If we don’t learn to ask God questions, we don’t allow God to reveal Godself to us but allow others to define God for us. Spiritual formation is the inner transformation we need to be better human beings. — location: 145
The soul is the space where your sacred self dwells. This means your soul is also the space of prayer—where your most honest, sacred self meets with God. Rather than thinking of prayer as an activity or practice, I like to think of it as sharing space with God. Sometimes in prayer, we have conversations with the Spirit, and on the days when we’re not sure what to say, we may simply sit in silence together. In that space, God sees us clearly. And on the good days, we see God clearly too. — location: 151
As a spiritual director, my role is to create a physical space that models the soul space. I set the room and create a space for my directees to sit with the divine Creator. — location: 161
This is what we try to do at Journey so often: create a space to encounter God.
discipleship. As we unform, we particularly need to address the harm of Western colonialism in the church. Unforming can sometimes be hard and painful, but it requires us to participate with the Spirit in the process of clearing out. Thankfully, as we are brought bare before God, God comes with all tenderness and compassion to meet with us in this unforming work. — location: 185
People of color in the church need to unform the ways we’ve disregarded our own cultural identities in order to conform to the Western values of the church. — location: 194
I have to think about this more, as many of the ancient traditions were formed in the Middle East (research this, it’s an assumption). And at what point does something become an effor to be different and something truly missing. It is possible that we may arrive at the same practiced, but done so in a way that is not forced upon them. But are people open to that?
As Desmond Tutu famously said, “When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself.”3 When fear of the other festers, we can no longer see ourselves or God clearly. — location: 196
me. BIPOC communities have always expressed their spiritualities in subversive ways, but those spiritualities were not recognized. Although I am not qualified to write about these diverse spiritualities, this book reflects how my soul has been inspired and influenced by different authors of color. — location: 219
I find, however, that constant deconstructing has left my soul with many questions. I am wondering, What’s left? How do we participate with the Spirit in forming something new? My soul now needs the Creator God who speaks new things into being. — location: 238
I truly hope that this is true.
another. The more we listen to and learn from one another, the more we will discover we share experiences of God. But the question at the heart of this book is, Why do we allow the Western traditions, rather than the non-Western cultures that have known these spiritual wisdoms all along, to be the authority? And what new insights can we gain when we start listening to non-Western perspectives? — location: 262
According to cultural psychologists Kaiping Peng, Julie Spencer-Rodgers, and Zhong Nian, the Western understanding of change tends to be linear.1 Although change is unpredictable and disruptive, we in the West tend to believe that all change leads to progress. We are a future-orientated culture, so we expect change to result in continual advancement, — location: 297
In Western spiritual writings, the image of a journey is often used to describe the Christian life, with a beginning, a destination, and markers of progress along the way. — location: 316
In the evangelical tradition, presenting faith as dependent on a single decision is dangerous because it does not adequately prepare us for a life of long faithfulness. — location: 322
Amen to this! Even the holiness tradition is the same. “I’ve been made holy! I’ve made it!”
When spiritual maturity is measured against perfection, I get caught in a never-ending cycle of performance trying to meet the demands of a false perfection. — location: 339
Perfection is a myth
The strength of a linear cultural orientation in spirituality is that it is optimistic, hopeful, and focused on growth. Even in suffering and grief, we can soothe our pain with the belief that God can use our sufferings for good. We expect positivity and growth even in the deepest of sufferings. The drawback of a linear orientation is when things don’t go as planned, when life turns messy and complicated, we lack the spiritual vocabulary and depth needed to navigate. — location: 345
In a cyclical orientation to the spiritual life, there is no finish line. There are no steps or stages. Our spiritualities are simply our relationships with God; there is no point when it ends. — location: 358
This is very mystical leaning
Circles remind us that instead of being a destination to reach, the spiritual life is the transformation that is happening within as we experience the sacredness of God, the earth, community, and ourselves. — location: 364
I believe that in a cyclical formation, we are also returning to ourselves. We began not when we were born but when God first imagined us. Our spiritual lives are the cyclical journey of becoming that person God first saw, still sees, and will always see in us. In a cyclical formation, we are never incomplete or insufficient, but along the way, our visions become distorted as we try to conform to the social expectations around us. — location: 375
A cyclical formation can be frustrating, as we are continuously unforming and re-forming. Sometimes we feel like we’re coming back to the same issues again and again—the same wounds, the same bondage. This is the work of unforming. Sometimes we are coming back to deep generational wounds that have been cycling through our family’s story for centuries. But spirituality was never meant to be easy. In — location: 387
messes. Making mistakes is part of being human, and I am not any less worthy because of my mistakes. Some time ago, I began to realize that it’s actually the imperfections that make a piece of visual art interesting and beautiful. — location: 395
Cyclical formation offers no clear direction or measurable markers. The reason we may experience our spiritual formation as ups and downs, back and forth, highs and lows is not that we’re lost or confused in the journey but that these are the natural cycles of the spiritual life. — location: 399
The Eastern way of meaning making creates a cyclical pattern that revolves around one center. Repetition is used to expand an idea. — location: 423
We treat time like our own possession. We can see this whenever we become irritated and angry when we think someone is wasting our time.1 — location: 445
lives. When we try to control time, time ends up controlling us. Our busy schedules take over our lives. This relationship with linear time forms us to be impatient, in a hurry, and constantly productive. This anxiety-ridden relationship with time has carried over into our spiritual lives. We tend to impatiently wait on God’s responses to us based on our understanding of days, months, and years. We balk at the seemingly slow work of God. — location: 457
Those who grow up in cultures that place a high value on hospitality learn an alternative posture of time. They learn that an event or meeting begins not at the scheduled time but when all the guests have arrived. One moves from one meeting to another not because of a planner but when one conversation has naturally come to an end and a new one begins. — location: 468
The movement of life determined by a rhythm of people instead of a clock seems much more in tune with God’s sense of timing. — location: 474
Unless you require structure to function at the best possible capacity.
In a cyclical spirituality, our interactions with God are continuous. There’s no point where we finish or complete our formation, so there is no hurry to be done. We are not “projects” to God. God is not in a hurry to be finished with us. Therefore, we assess our formation not by how long it takes but by the fullness of inner transformation. — location: 483
The practice of responding immediately to my desires rather than routines trained me to be more attuned to my inner voice and the movements of the Spirit. I experienced a new freedom in a spirituality of desire rather than disciplines. — location: 497
Is this something only a mature Christian can do?
In order to live into God’s sense of time, we must learn to embrace a posture of waiting. — location: 506
disciplines. When we think of disciplines, we think of actions that we need to schedule into our day or week. Disciplines require us to exercise our own willpower and self-control. Over time, we can engage with spiritual disciplines as routine and not even notice or pay attention to what we’re doing. — location: 513
This is true of many things, and important reason to continue to keep them. How can you know you’re not present in something if you’re not even doing it?
Thus, by not truly facing the past, in the United States, we continue to pass on the generational cycles and repercussions of constant racial violence, murders, injustices, systemic inequalities, and divides. The healing work of unforming and re-forming requires a spiritual posture that enables us to look back and hold the past, no matter how difficult or shameful. — location: 544
All BIPOC Christians have a complicated relationship with the history of the Christian faith, whether through the history of white patriarchy, colonization, and slavery or, in the case of Indigenous communities, genocide. But I was never taught in my formation how to confront this history and what it means for my own faith. — location: 566
How would our spiritual lives change if we asked ourselves “how” instead of “why”? As a spiritual director, I was trained to never ask “why” questions. “Why” can imply blame or shame. I believe that asking “how” in our formation is a humble posture for facing our history and allowing our history to inform how we live today. Listen to the difference between the question “Why did colonizers and missionaries suppress Indigenous expressions of spirituality?” and “How did colonizers and missionaries suppress Indigenous expressions of spirituality?” — location: 584
A spiritual posture that embraces the past while holding the present and future can be found in the word sankofa from the Akan tribe in Ghana. Sankofa means “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.”4 — location: 591
Remembering is a spiritual posture. Unless we remember who God was to our ancestors, we will forget in the future who God is to us. We need practices that help us pay attention to the gentle nudges, dreams, and memories that may be our ancestors speaking. We need practices that help our bodies remember. We also need practices of storytelling so our grandchildren will remember. — location: 633
The defense of singular, one-dimensional ideas has evolved into our current polarized political culture. — location: 684
A spirituality of certainty utilizes religion to give us a sense of control by setting rules and delineating beliefs that will not change. A spirituality of certainty is located in the mind. It is verbal and literate because it depends on human language to define God. Bible studies, written liturgies, prayer books, devotionals, and Sunday schools all come out of a formation meant to define and know God. Ultimately, we look for a God who is safe and predictable because we want our lives to be safe and predictable. — location: 691
Those with privilege and power can especially build their lives around the delusion of certainty. Those with more influence and wealth can attempt to build up walls of protection against uncertainty by using their power to control circumstances and the people around them. But any certainty we attain is always temporary. Those who live in constant poverty and oppressive conditions recognize they have no choice but to live in a constant state of uncertainty. — location: 695
Certainty is an illusion. — location: 706
There is a difference between a theology of suffering and a spirituality of suffering, however. A theology of suffering asks why. A spirituality of suffering may not be able to explain why but allows us to stay in the discomfort of not knowing and not understanding to survive and to be present to the suffering community. — location: 707
5 Holmes explains that the moan was the only fitting sound of prayer shared by those on slave ships who did not speak the same languages but shared the same cry of distress. The moan became their united sound of a desperate prayer. These moans and the cyclical rhythms of spirituals sustained the soul in times of uncertainty when what was happening all around could not be explained or justified with words. — location: 727
Daoists believe that the only absolute truth is change. The assumption of constant change rather than unchanging rules forms us to expect uncertainty. Furthermore, rather than assuming absolute truths exist, Daoists believe that contradictions naturally exist in all things. For example, we cannot understand good unless we also understand evil. Thus, contradictions are always to be held together, not separated. — location: 739
Although I long for the comfort of certainty as much as anybody else, I think we need a spirituality that forms us for uncertainty. I love liturgy, and I recite liturgical prayers daily. Western hymns are also beautiful descriptions of our Western faith that provide certainty. But I recognize that while the comfort and strength of written liturgy and hymns give us words of certainty whenever we feel uncertain, we fail to learn a spiritual posture that helps us stay in the uncertainties of life without having to define, give words to, comfort, or justify our experiences. — location: 750
God doesn’t need us to defend God. A spirituality of uncertainty is one that wrestles, questions, and doubts God instead of trying to cover over or move on with certainty. — location: 761
Our Western theological institutions train leaders to be experts on knowledge so that even our leaders are not prepared for the unexpected changes and tragedies in the communities they lead. — location: 765
think about this. Institutuions should teach people how to think, not how to be a know it all. Bachelors→Masters→Doctorate
loss. If uncertainty is first experienced in our bodies, then a spirituality of uncertainty is also found through our bodies. Not knowing removes the focus from the mind, where anxiety is located, and moves us into our bodies. We need spiritual practices that do not rely on words but allow us to engage our bodies. — location: 779
As white voices became the authority for who God is and what the Christian life should look like, we lost the ability to experience God for ourselves. — location: 812
In this cerebral faith, “spiritual formation” often becomes a process of learning these right beliefs through study and then living out what is studied through self-will and discipline. Spirituality, however, is lost in a cerebral faith because we no longer tangibly interact with a living and dynamic God. In a cerebral faith, God becomes an abstract idea. God becomes entirely invisible and unseen. — location: 823
In experience, God is active. Therefore, an experienced spirituality opens us to be surprised by the expanse and the nearness of God and allows God to move and speak. — location: 834
In an experienced spirituality, body and spirit become united again because they were never meant to be separated. — location: 838
Our bodies are the sacred sites that mediate our direct connections to God. We are equipped in our bodies to touch God, hear God, smell God, taste God, and see God, but we will encounter God only if we are expecting God to be right here. We need to redefine spiritual formation not as growing or learning, which can be centered on the mind, but as our dynamic and tangible everyday encounters with and in the Spirit. — location: 858
The Christian mystics were the Pentecostals of their time, and Pentecostals are the mystics of our time. — location: 874
Disagree with this
We need to learn how to bring our physical and spiritual worlds together as one integrated experience of the holy. We need to embrace our everyday, physical experiences as sacred and magical. Thus, our bodies are essential to our formation, because it is through our bodies that we interact with God. — location: 876
To de-westernize our spiritual formation, we need to reclaim and rediscover our dances, expressions of joy and laughter, sharing meals, working, taking care of one another, and mourning as spiritual practices. We need kinesthetic and tactile spiritual practices that help us move into our felt bodies. — location: 890
Imagination helps us see beyond our current reality of racism and white supremacy and envision a different way of community. — location: 947
Whereas privileged communities might find hope in imagining a heaven where there will be no more racism, poverty, or tears, that vision dismisses the pain of reality right now. — location: 953
White superiority is so ingrained in our systemic and cultural ways of being that we need imagination to step into a new way of being that we have never experienced before. — location: 959
Young children can spend a long time playing pretend and imagining themselves in all sorts of roles. They can become superheroes, chefs, or teachers. But somewhere along the way, reality steals our imaginations. We become limited by what is practical. We become restricted by what’s in front of us. We can no longer see or operate outside of our oppressive social, systemic, and religious structures. Just — location: 976
God also needed to imagine in order to create. Thus, imagining is a holy act. Before speaking into being, God first had to see something that never existed before. Imagination is an active prayer in which the Spirit gives us the power of divine sight to see things anew, to see what we may have missed, and to see what might not yet exist. — location: 979
Imagination is refusing to let the “buts” and “impossibles” get in the way. Only the things we can first imagine are possible—if not in this generation then for the next. — location: 998
The practice of listening to ourselves is a reminder that we are worthy of being listened to. — location: 1012
Imagination is our souls’ way of seeing. Our capacity to imagine is magical because we can see things that don’t yet exist; thus, it is a sacred spiritual posture. — location: 1043
Developing an active, supernatural connection with the Spirit begins with these questions: Do you believe God speaks? Do you believe we as human beings can encounter and have conversations with the Creator? And does God have something to say in our times? If your answer is yes, then these are the next questions you must ask yourself: How do I listen? How do I meet with God? How we answer these questions determines how we pray. — location: 1058
God’s silence is not a void; it’s not an empty silence. Rather, it’s a thick silence. It’s the same silence in which the stars and skies communicate so loudly and clearly. — location: 1122
Because our words are so limited, for us to get a full experience of God, maybe only silence will do. — location: 1124
God’s sacred silence is not the absence of language but the fullness of presence. It forms us in a posture of listening, seeing, and being with one another before trying to define one another. It is a universal language shared by all people and all creation. — location: 1130
From a shared silence, we discover our common prayers; even through language barriers, we share common needs, emotions, and desires. — location: 1132
Our modern society tends to avoid silence in favor of more and more information. Silence can be traumatic, as it often forces us to face ourselves, our pasts, and God. Silence can also be weaponized, as oppressed people have continuously been silenced and not given the opportunity to speak. Therefore, — location: 1134
The Desert Mothers and Fathers believed that prayer had nothing to do with talking to God. Instead, they experienced prayer as resting in God.6 — location: 1146
Western theology has overemphasized original sin and, in so doing, led to teachings that our desires and wants are sinful. We forget, however, that in the creation narrative, before original sin, there was original goodness. We can trust our ability to discern what is right and good. In discernment, then, we are not listening for God’s voice over our own. We may not be listening for a voice at all. Rather, we listen for where our own desires and the Spirit’s desires align. — location: 1156
In the Western church, teachings on discernment often assume individual agency and power, and thus, discernment is focused on decision-making and actions. This understanding of discernment leaves out those who do not always have the privilege and power of choice. Discernment is not decision-making. Rather, discernment is allowing God to show us who we are to be in this world. — location: 1166
But through our own desires right?
An individualistic understanding of discernment also disregards those who live in communal cultures, in which one’s family and community speak into one’s life. But discernment is not just individual; it is a collective posture of listening. In a communal practice of discernment, we can take time to listen together and to listen on one another’s behalf. — location: 1171
But a Western approach to rest comes out of an individualistic perspective of spiritual formation. We live in a world where not everyone has the privilege and opportunity to rest or get away, however. — location: 1197
Always? Or as a result of “urbanization”
We need the working class, and yet we don’t protect the workers. We dehumanize people as machines. — location: 1218
Ties into disability theology in that people should be valued as people not valued for what they provide
Sabbath breaks the nonstop, violent cycle of production and consumption. It breaks our greed by forcing us to stop continually trying to do more and gain more. The Sabbath system is a just and equal system because all—animals, land, landowners, servants, and foreigners—enjoy the same rest. — location: 1229
The practice of communal rest is meant to train us into a way of living as a society. As someone who is privileged to take days off and go on retreats, I need to look at my community. These are questions I’ve found helpful to ask myself: Who can I free to rest? Who is exhausted? Who is not getting enough rest? And what little part can I do to help lessen their load so they can rest too? — location: 1247
Where does the balance come in protecting oneself and caring for others? That’s the dangerous pendulum swing I think.
The Sabbath system requires a regular rhythm of letting go. — location: 1250
As we enter into rest, we unform through practices of letting go. We then experience a holy rest through the practice of stopping. When it is time to work again, we carry our holy rest into our work. Rest is the center of this rhythm, and work flows in and out of our rest. — location: 1253
When I started working outside of the church and went home after a long day of work, however, I suddenly understood why it was so hard to motivate people to show up to church multiple days a week. The issue is not that people aren’t taking their faith seriously; they’re just exhausted. An event-based church, dependent on attending programs and volunteering, becomes just another job to juggle with our work lives and family responsibilities. — location: 1277
In letting go, we acknowledge what we can’t do—and what we need God to do. — location: 1286
Rest unforms the economic abuse in our bodies, and it is also a posture of the soul and mind. In addition to physical rest, we need internal rest from striving and anxiety—not just a temporary numbing over but an intentional time to reconnect with God and self. — location: 1290
A true Sabbath rest, a holy rest, is present when we stop after letting go. We stop to look at God, just as God stopped to look at us on the seventh day of creation. — location: 1293
We experience a holy rest when we realize we don’t have to do or accomplish anything at all. Our identities and worth are found in God’s loving gaze. — location: 1305
I like this, but I also like delighting in doing something fun with no purpose of accomplishment.
Through good work and good rest, we honor our human abilities and skills. Approaching work as a spiritual posture enables us to be attentive to the good work we are doing. — location: 1321
word such as calling implies that we have a choice in how we spend our time, but it alienates those without that privilege, those who simply work to pay the bills and to put food on the table. We need to recognize that this, too, is good work. — location: 1325
It was not until late in life that my dad found his place in the church. He started fixing cars and unclogging sinks for members of the immigrant church. He finally felt like his work contributed something to his community and for the first time experienced belonging. — location: 1331
How does this balance with rest?
Although my dad felt belittled in the church because he worked with machines, he experienced his creativity and good work whenever he found new ways of fixing things. — location: 1335
When does belittlement become an identity issue? To me, in this story, he recognized what he was good at, lived into, was recognized as someone worth having a voice in the church, but stepped down and kept doing what he liked.
We all long for intimate relationships in which we are truly seen, heard, and known. In the West, however, we have developed an event-based way of being in community.1 Church has become synonymous with attending worship services, Bible studies, or special classes or volunteering. We have also turned the commandment to “love your neighbor” into service projects and outreach events. — location: 1352
This focus on preaching by an individual further distanced us from a communal experience. — location: 1361
The pastor’s self-identity can become tied to their preaching and production, and they are often evaluated and criticized by the congregation based on their performance. — location: 1365
An event-based community centers around individual leaders rather than the whole. Whenever a problem arises, we may address them by creating another event or a new program. — location: 1372
The churchless masses long for deep community and experiences of the sacred, but they are not finding it in the institutional church. — location: 1378
An inverted hospitality is one-directional. The host controls how the hospitality is offered and how it is to be received. The host maintains power in the relationship. In the church today, we continue this inverted hospitality whenever we use hospitality as a tool for evangelism, outreach, or church growth, expecting others to conform to our own expectations. — location: 1387
Individualist cultures, therefore, should not be teaching the global church about community or hospitality. We need to unform this historical misuse of hospitality in the church. — location: 1400
Ironically, hospitality is a space we need to create within ourselves before we can offer that space to others. — location: 1409
Cultivating an inner hospitality frees us to offer an open, nonjudgmental space for others. — location: 1420
Hospitality facilitates seeing and being seen, listening and being listened to, knowing and being known, caring and being cared for. So to receive hospitality, we need to ask ourselves, Are we willing to be seen, to be listened to, to be known, and to be cared for? — location: 1430
community and in relation to one another. Hospitality is the start of a collective spirituality because it opens us to others and teaches us how to be present to one another. The following postures of dependence, elders, and harmony continue to nurture our collective soul. — location: 1442
The West taught children verbs and individual agency, while the East taught familial relationships and an obligation to those relationships. — location: 1462
This emphasis on self-care is overturning many centuries of a faith disconnected from our bodies and the abuse we put our bodies through in our distorted relationships with our work. — location: 1470
A spirituality focused on individual practices and self-care will always be temporary unless we take care of the collective. We need a collective spirituality to engage in movements of liberation. — location: 1480
Language and stories are used to form us in our interconnectedness. Instead of calling adults “Mister” and “Miss,” children learn that everyone is an aunt or uncle, brother or sister, godfather or godmother. We learn to see the world as a large web of interconnected relationships. — location: 1482
I want to reclaim the word dependence, because dependence facilitates communities of grace. Dependence is the recognition that we are utterly reliant on the grace and mercy of the earth, and in the same way, we are reliant on the grace of God. — location: 1498
Just as much as we need divine grace, we also need to live in communities of grace, and the only way to experience deep community is to depend on one another. — location: 1506
A practice of learning to receive slowly unforms our deeply ingrained self-sufficiency. — location: 1518