The Lover of Field Lilies

Quote of the Week

brought to you by David James Duncan

I’m still working my way through God Laughs and Plays.  This weekend we’re on the Washington Coast with some friends and I read this as I sipped some leftover espresso from the morning and looked out at the endless Pacific ocean that goes so, so, so far out up here in Washington.   I haven’t left institutional religion but sometimes I want to.   Duncan calls himself a Jesus-loving non-Christian and the way he describes it here sounds alright to me.

“As for my having left institutional religion behind without bitterness: how in the Name of the Lover of field lilies, the poor, the prostituted, and His own murderers, could I be bitter about having traded self-righteousness, pharisaism, judgmentalism, and church pews for sunlit river banks and rising fish and moonrises over Rocky Mountain ridges and the path of intuition and salmon runs and great literature and world Wisdom traditions and abiding friendships and the incessant following of the sweet scent of love?”