the FB, good quotes, and great friends

I love quotes; many people I love, they love quotes.  It’s so good to see a thumbnail sketch, a pithy rendition of something we’d considered…but had never seen come together so elegantly, in a turn of phrase.

I also love my friends. My friend Shelly is amazing.  She and her affianced Aaron were our good, best neighbors on the 2nd floor last year– and they were _good_ to me.  Fat Ladies and good stories when my bone was broken, sharing of cooking, and LOST, and babysitting, support in the hall on the way to class, introduction to some beautiful things I’d never seen before, and some strong ideas I’d never thought before.  Shelly is a powerful person. I admire her.  She’s currently an Episcopal priest serving in Vancouver, WA.  She and Aaron are two of exactly three people who I really, really missed at our wedding.

One of my favorite things on Facebook is to look through in “Info” where people have their favorite quotes. I don’t even know what I have on mine— what quotes came to mind when I was creating my page.  A few days ago, I was clicking through Shelly’s, and was just inspired and amazed by the quality of her quotes. Isn’t that a dorky thing for me to admit?  I can’t help it: I hadn’t read some of them before, and said a silent, “Amen” to a few of them, and just wanted to write them down, all of them, for myself.  I FB-e-mailed her, and asked if I could share them in their entirety on my blog.  She must love the dorky parts of me, because she agreed.

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“Be careful how you interpret the world: it is like that.” – Erich Heller

“Whatever you say about God, you should be able to say standing over a pit full of burning babies.” – Elie Wiesel

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” -MLK, Jr.

“A man was attacked and left bleeding in a ditch. Two sociologists passed by and one said to the other, ‘We must find the one who did this – he needs help.’”

“Along came Paul, impotent old fussbudget. He could eat like a horse, but for some reason he either couldn’t or wouldn’t function sexually, or took no pleasure in it if he did. So sex became a sin.” – Jack Woodford

“We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.” – Alan Bennett

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.” – Laurence J. Peter

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.”
-Fr. Pedro Arrupe