“Fundamentalists offer us a "loving" God who is some kind of divine stalker.”

“The spiritual life is a gift. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God's love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us.”

“Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,--loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.”

“Her compact, curvaceous body was laid out like some kind of offering to a pagen god. As someone who had once been a pagen god, he knew what he was talking about . . .”

“Constant endeavor to please God comes from love to God, called forth by wonder at the divine work of creation that surrounds us and by a greater wonder at the divine work of redemption that saves us.”

“Because that was some mega tense awkwardness, a real 'Hello my name is Ever and I'll be your next stalker' kind of moment...”