Rachel Renée Russell · 368 pages
Rating: (14.9K votes)
“felt SO insanely happy I could just . . . VOMIT sunshine, rainbows, confetti, glitter and . . . um . . . those yummy little Skittles thingies!”
“Miss Bri-Bri has designed a gazillion booty-ful dresses for very famous and important people, like Princess Sugar Plum, Selena Gomez, Beyoncé, and Mrs. Claus! And”
“HIDEOUS! Sorry, Mom, but vomit green is NOT my colour. And that dress is impossible to walk in! It’s so tight around my legs that it looks like a giant fish tail. While the other bridesmaids walked gracefully to the “Wedding March” song, I flopped my way down the aisle like a human-sized catfish or something! Those rug burns were pure agony! It was getting late and I was running out of time! The last thing I wanted to do was to traumatise Brandon by showing up at the dance looking like a MUTANT FISH GIRL or something. Right now I’m SO frustrated that I’m seriously considering just NOT going to the dance. Why is my life so hopelessly CRUDDY?!”
“WHAAAT?! No way! Brandon, You said you couldn’t go”
“So Brandon, would you like to take... A POP QUIZ??!!”
“FROM BRANDON: Hi Nikki, Looking forward 2 going 2 the dance with you. Good luck finding a dress that will actually make you look beautiful! 7:39 p.m.”
“What was zat, Miss Penelope?” she asked. “You are on zee phone with Dora zee Explorer and Boots zee Monkey? You say Boots needs new boots? Very well, dah-ling! Pencil him in before my six o’clock appointment with SpongeBob!”
“WHY in the world would MacKenzie ask ME to vote for HER for Sweetheart Princess when it’s so obvious that she HATES my guts?!”
“This morning I had these fluttery butterflies in my stomach that were making me feel SUPERnauseous”
“Kincaid after class, she told me I was in bio, not ART class. Then she”
“But of course I said all of that inside my head so no one else heard it but me.”
“I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles.
This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear.
But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God.
...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.”
“روضت نفسي على فكرة أني مجرد جزء ضئيل من مغامرة الحضارة العظمى، مجرد كسرة عابرة من شيء أعظم مني وأقوى.”
“Let me go.”
“No.” He pulled her closer. “Never.”
“Sometimes I get so caught up in my own drama, I forget I'm not the only one in the play.”
“He knew that no matter what, this woman, once his blood slave, then his greatest downfall, and finally his salvation would never fail to amaze him, never fail to bring joy and love to his live, and would hold him captive for eternity.”
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