ive picked up Brennan Manning's "The Ragamuffin Gospel" again...i wasn't impressed last year...but lately ive realized i need to give it a second chance. after the first chapter, i know it as written for the likes of me...its just a matter of getting it down that darn journey to my heart and ultimately my life.

-> Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber's license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, "I think I can fix this."

-> [Paul Tillich says], "Grace strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.' If that happens to us, we experience grace." And grace calls out: youa re not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken, or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But youa re not just that. You are accepted. Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted.

-> Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

-> Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed white robes and holding palms in their hands, I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, who tearfully told me she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best seh could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who enver challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually-abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on teh street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick,' whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday School; the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust and raped the earth...

and thats just the first chapter.
have a good sabbath.