Carter Heyward Quotes

• In the Spirit which draws us into honest engagement with one another, including those who may be very different from us in various ways, God calls us to wake up and learn how to love and respect one another, period.

  Carter Heyward

  Love, God, Respect

  57 Copy quote

• Love is a choice — not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guide. Love is a conversion to humanity — a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life.

  Carter Heyward

  Healing, Love Life, Love Is

  "Our Passion for Justice". Book by Carter Heyward, 1984.

  30 Copy quote

• The only theology worth doing is that which inspires and transforms lives, that which empowers us to participate in creating, liberating, and blessing the world.

  Carter Heyward

  Peace, Blessing, Creating

  26 Copy quote

• For god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love.

  Carter Heyward

  God, Names, Empowering

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

  28 Copy quote

• If we are to live with our feet on the ground, in touch with reality, we must help one another accept the fact that we who are christian are heirs to a body-despising, woman-fearing, sexually repressive religious tradition. If we are to continue as members of the church, we must challenge and transform it at the root. What is required is more than simply a "reformation." I am speaking of revolutionary transformation. Nothing less will do.

  Carter Heyward

  Christian, Religious, Reality

  Carter Heyward (1989). “Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God”, Harper San Francisco

  16 Copy quote

• the very minute we think we 'have' God, God will surprise us. As we search in fire and earthquakes, God will be in the still small voice. As we listen in silent meditation, God will be shouting protests in the street. God is warning us that we had best not try to find our security in any well-defined concept or category of what is Godly - for the minute we believe we are into God, God is off again and calling us forth into some unknown place.

  Carter Heyward

  God, Believe, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• Faith is a process of leaping into the abyss not on the basis of any certainty about where we shall land, but rather on the belief that we shall land.

  Carter Heyward

  Faith, Land, Belief

  Carter Heyward (1976). “A Priest Forever”, HarperCollins Publishers

  19 Copy quote

• Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies.

  Carter Heyward

  Sweet, Inspirational Love, Heart

  "Our Passion for Justice : Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation". Book by Carter Heyward, 1984.

  24 Copy quote

• To say I love you is to say that you are not mine, but rather your own.

  Carter Heyward

  Love You, Say I Love You, Mines

  Carter Heyward (2010). “The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation”, p.225, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  16 Copy quote

• The whole inhabited earth is sacred space in which God lives, breathes, and acts.

  Carter Heyward

  Space, Earth, Sacred

  Carter Heyward (1989). “Speaking of Christ: A Lesbian Feminist Voice”

  14 Copy quote

• If women were in charge, abortion would be a sacrament, an occasion of deep and serious and sacred meaning.

  Carter Heyward

  Abortion, Serious, Would Be

  17 Copy quote

• To forgive is not to forget, but rather to re-member whatever has been dismembered.

  Carter Heyward

  Forgiving, Forget, Members

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

  8 Copy quote

• God reveals herself through our relationships not only to other people but also to other creatures and nature.

  Carter Heyward

  God, People, Our Relationship

  Carter Heyward (1989). “Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God”, Harper San Francisco

  4 Copy quote

• But doubt is a crucial to faith as darkness is to light. Without one, the other has no context and is meaningless. Faith is, by definition, uncertainty. It is full of doubt, steeped in risk. It is about matters not of the known, but of the unknown.

  Carter Heyward

  Light, Darkness, Risk

  Carter Heyward (1976). “A Priest Forever”, HarperCollins Publishers

  8 Copy quote

• We are born in relation, we live in relation, we die in relation. There is, literally, no such human place as simply "inside myself." Nor is any person, creed, ideology, or movement entirely "outside myself."

  Carter Heyward

  Community, Movement, Born

  Carter Heyward (1989). “Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God”, Harper San Francisco

  7 Copy quote

• Faith is the new, the mysterious, the surprising. Nobody has ever been there before.

  Carter Heyward

  Faith, Mysterious, Surprising

  Carter Heyward (1976). “A Priest Forever”, HarperCollins Publishers

  9 Copy quote

• Lovers re-create the world.

  Carter Heyward

  World, Lovers

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

  4 Copy quote

• Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile.

  Carter Heyward

  Love Is, Choices, Rational

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

  10 Copy quote

• It's obvious throughout secular and church history that significant legislation follows only after dramatic action.

  Carter Heyward

  Church, Action, Dramatic

  9 Copy quote

• I'm a priest, not a priestess. Priestess implies mumbo jumbo and all sorts of pagan goings-on. Those who oppose us would love to call us priestesses. They can call us all the names in the world -- it's better than being invisible.

  Carter Heyward

  Names, Religion, World

  9 Copy quote

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