News came today that Brennan Manning had died.

Manning was a friar, contemplative and author who wrote about the scandal of grace out of his intimacy with the Father with disarming honesty.

Books such as The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-up and Burnt out and Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging are classics that will far outlive his 78 years on this planet.

For today’s DWOD, would you please read and reflect on these quotes that came from the heart and pen of this humble yet powerful man of God?

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,” He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.”

“I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. ”

Finally, here is a prayer that you may wish to make your own:
“Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.”

Would you please share your reflections on these quotes with the rest of your DWOD family? Thanks in advance.