Priest

God is bigger than our sins. God wants you as you are—stumbling, sinning, confused.

Whatever happens after this, I just want you to know that this was worth it. You were worth it. You were worth everything.

Find whatever love is left in your life and hold on to it tightly. And one day, things will have gotten less gray, less dull.

One day, you might find that you have a life again. A life that makes you happy.

a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.

The pain of one-sided love, of knowing that I had loved her more than she had loved me

if this was what love was, then I didn’t know how anyone could bear the weight of it.

There was life after fucking up, after all, even for those who lived without fucking.

she was the kind of woman who couldn’t live without meaning, powerful and real meaning, in her life.

There was a beat of perfect completeness, a moment where I felt as if I could pluck each and every atom out of the air, where magic and God and something sweetly beyond complete understanding was real, completely real.

I cared about her as a person, as a soul, and I wanted to fuck her, and that was the recipe for something much worse than carnal sin. It was a recipe for falling in love.

I wanted to show her all of my burdens and have her lift them from me with her clever mind and her elegant compassion.

Do we focus on pruning out all evil, or do we focus on growing love?

Worry is a sin, even I know that, yet I am more than just a lily of the field. I’m a lily that’s been plucked from the ground and laid at your feet. When it comes to you, I’m rootless and helpless and at your mercy for sunshine and water. And I’m not even supposed to be yours. How can I not worry?

This is what laying down a cross feels like. This is what taking up a new life feels like…it feels like Poppy Danforth.

This was love, this was sacrifice, the opposite of sin, and maybe it was fucked up to feel like God was here with us in the back room of a strip club, but I did, like He was bearing witness to this moment where Poppy opened herself to the worst of me and erased it with her love, just like God did for us sinners every moment of every day.

A man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I've seen

was the only halo I ever wanted again, a circle of wicked wants and devilish delights.

God dwelled in sex and marriage just as much as He dwelled in celibacy and service,

Was it truly so terrible for a man of God to have sex? The Protestants had been doing it for half a millennium and they seemed no more hell-bound than the Catholics for it. And was it so wrong to want both? I wanted to lead this church, I wanted to help people find God. But dammit, I wanted Poppy too, and I didn’t think it was fair that I had to choose.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do…for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.

I’d seen enough grief as a priest to know that people never really moved on, at least not in the linear, segmented way our culture expected people to.

Could a vow be not all the way broken? Could a sin be not all the way committed?

She was indeed the perfect package on the surface…but below it, I sensed she was so much more. Messy and passionate and raw and creative—a cyclone forced into an eggshell.

Sometimes the best decisions were the ones with the most short-term unhappiness

As always, she had both of us under control when she surrendered her control to me.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do… for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.

In a way, it’s easier to dwell on sin and guilt than it is to dwell on love and forgiveness—especially

I thought, this is what it’s like to be torn apart for love. This is what it means to be reborn.

Her eyelashes made me hard. That was a new benchmark for me, I had to admit.