Quotes about Support

We said that we believed that the truth would set us free, and the truth was that the Sunday-school staff was burned out, that there were almost no people of color, and that if we didn't get more help, we'd have to close down.

It turns out that welcome is solidarity. We're glad you're here, and we're with you. This whole project called you being alive, you finding joy? Well, we're in on that.

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.

Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.

Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.

We worry that we're not in the right emotional moment to do our work. And mostly, we give away our agency, begging someone, anyone, to do the hard part of summoning the muse or getting us approval or a gig or support so that we can maybe, just maybe, feel the light again. It's a trap. Flow is the result of effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around. Set up your tools, turn off the internet, and go back to work.

I'm not in charge of you, and I'm not manipulating you. I'm simply establishing the conditions for you to get to where you said you wanted to go. You tell me where you're going and what you need. You make promises about your commitment and skills development. I'll show up to illuminate, question, answer, spar with, and challenge you. I'll work tirelessly to make sure you're part of a team of people who are ready to care as much as you do.

a hospital for the broken, not a museum for the perfect.

What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. But hurting believers whose lives are in tatters often need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church.