Walter Wangerin Jr. Quotes

#1. Have you noticed the words which Old Testament people use when someone important calls them by name? They don't say "What?" or "Yes?" They answer with the curious sentence, "Here I am". So much is in that sentence: readiness to respond, a willing servitude, an offering of oneself to the other.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#2. Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#3. All the world's an empty place when one voice weeps uncomforted.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#4. Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal - and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#5. Volunteering also honours the sort of work your spouse is obliged to do if you choose cheerfully to do it for him or her. It abolished distinctions and degrees of value. All work is valuable in the house where no work is held in contempt, and where love is not kept in hiding.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#6. You are married. Healing is not a profession but a way of life. Your spouse is not your patient but your flesh. Healing, then, is a task for your heart as well as your head and your hand.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#7. I agreed Paul knew his limits. But I never believed he'd choose to live within them.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#8. He went wordless, and wordless he sat beside her. He knew the size of her sorrow.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#9. Neither does she have a name
none that I could find even in my most persistent researches: Julian's gentle lady, I mean; she whom I sought and chased and wooed (as it were) down a warren of historical tunnels.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#10. She had caused to surround us the very atmosphere of "home," so that however far we traveled, however strange the territory, I was "home" as long as I was with her.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#11. A grudge may be strong. But a grudge isn't strength!

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#12. So go back to the books. They will comfort you and cheer you. If you earnestly work with them, neither sorrow nor anxiety nor distress nor suffering need trouble your mind any more, no, not evermore.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#13. Her ballad did nothing to make the serpants lovely. Her ballad hid nothing of their dread. But the music itself spoke of faith and certainty; the melody announced the presence of God.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#14. Let heaven intrude upon our earthly affairs to rip our attentions from the world to you again.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#15. And the strongest trust is built by the smallest actions, the keeping of the little promises. It is the constant truthfulness, the continued dependability, the remembrance of minor things, which most inspire confidence and faith.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#16. In your attempts to heal this beloved one, the Holy Spirit finds opportunity to keep the promise of Jesus - and indeed, to heal.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#17. But the talk of dialogue involves the work of knowing, acknowledging the other, of shaping speech toward him, for her. It is neither done or done well until it has been well received by that particular hearer.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#18. How many battles make a war?

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#19. True "volunteering," then, obeys no law, seeks no returns, pays no debts, plans no praise for yourself, nor proves your goodness

Walter Wangerin Jr.