William P. Young famous quotes

Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat.
-- William P. Young

#Letting Go #Forget #Throat

Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.
-- William P. Young

#Relationship

Don't ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.
-- William P. Young

#Heart #Healing #Water

...if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will be the same again.
-- William P. Young

#Kindness #Heart #Forgiving

Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.
-- William P. Young

#Color #Grace #Suffering

It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
-- William P. Young

#Believe #Responsibility #Thinking

Love is not the limitation; love is the flying.
-- William P. Young

#Love Is #Flying #Limitation

Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive.
-- William P. Young

#Forgiveness #Forgiving #Way

So, why do I have so much fear in my life?" "Because you don't believe. You don't know that we love you. The person who lives by his fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe that I am good not know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it, you talk about it, but you don't know it.
-- William P. Young

#Believe #Love You #Heart

I had a very angry father and was disconnected from my family.
-- William P. Young

#Father #My Family #Angry

Jesus picked up the conversation. "As the crowning glory of creation, you were made in Our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with Me and one another. If you had trully learned to regard one another's concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy.
-- William P. Young

#Jesus #Would Be #Needs

Mackenzie, you cannot produce trust, just as you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.
-- William P. Young

#Love You #Humility #Fruit

I'm an accidental writer.
-- William P. Young

Emotions are the colors of the soul.
-- William P. Young

#Color #Soul #Emotion

I really do believe that God is love, one of deep affection and grace and forgiveness and inspiration.
-- William P. Young

#Believe #Inspiration #Grace

I was raised in a tribal situation, among cannibal people.
-- William P. Young

#People #Situation #Raised

You are free to love without an agenda
-- William P. Young

#Agendas

Transformation without work and pain, without suffering, without a sense of loss is just an illusion of true change.
-- William P. Young

#Pain #Loss #Suffering

All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.
-- William P. Young

#Relationship #Jobs #People

So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.
-- William P. Young

#Relationship #Believe #Knowing

You cannot produce trust just like you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not.
-- William P. Young

#Humility #Like You #Produce

Somehow the pain, the losses, the hurt, the bad, God is able to transform these into something they could have never been, icons and monuments of grace and love. It is the deep mystery how wounds and scars can become precious, or a ravaging and terrifying cross the essential symbol of relentless affection.” “Is it worth it?” whispered Tony. “Wrong question, son. There is no ‘it.’ The question is and has always been, ‘Are you worth it?’ and the answer is and always, ‘Yes!’
-- William P. Young

#Hurt #Pain #Son

Nothing in life is ritual.
-- William P. Young

#Life Is #Ritual

I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it.
-- William P. Young

#Punishment #People #Joy

Jesus is not the 'founder of Christianity.
-- William P. Young

#Jesus #Christianity #Founders

I think people are tired of religion and how it divides and damages people. You can name it whatever you want, Islam or Christianity, but if you have a system in which God is distant and angry all the time, and you're trying to please him through the right disciplines, it isn't going to work for everyone.
-- William P. Young

#Tired #Thinking #Names

You cannot heal yourself. You cannot heal anybody else. We're designed to do this in community because we were created inside community for community by community.
-- William P. Young

#Community #Heal

Thank goodness there are women in our lives -- that's all I can say. We get saved by the women in our lives.
-- William P. Young

#Goodness

I think one of the greatest losses to humanity was the domination of women. I think every religious system has found ways to be kind to them in a kind of subordinate way. Very patronizing, very colonial. But if you start looking at the fabric of society, even religious systems, they would fall apart if it wasn't for the embedded ability of the women who are involved.
-- William P. Young

#Religious #Women #Fall

Most birds were created to fly.  Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly.  Not something I want for you. Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.  And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.
-- William P. Young

#Pain #Hands #Wings

You... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around... Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly... A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image. Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying. I AM love.
-- William P. Young

#Mean #Love Is #Wings

pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly, and if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.
-- William P. Young

#Pain #Wings #Able

Part of my journey is to say that the soul of the human being must be a massively intricate, wonderful creation that God has a respect for in ways that we do not and that leaves a huge amount of space to go explore.
-- William P. Young

#Journey #Space #Soul

City and country -- each has its own beauty and its own pain. Some of the smallness of small towns -- cattiness, everybody knowing everybody's business -- that can be challenging. And cities can be challenging, because no one can connect except electronically.
-- William P. Young

#Country #Pain #Cities

I'm not an actual author but an accidental one.
-- William P. Young

I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.
-- William P. Young

#Journey #Thinking #Creative

you are a beautiful mess, you are the melody…
-- William P. Young

#Beautiful #Beautiful Mess #Mess

I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
-- William P. Young

#Relationship #Hurt #Pain

You do understand," she continued, "that unless I had an object to love -- or, more accurately, a someone to love -- if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all? You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could love only as a limitation of his nature.
-- William P. Young

#Capable #Limitation

He was sick of God and God's religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn't seem to make any real difference or affect any real changes.
-- William P. Young

#Religious #Real #Differences

...humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.
-- William P. Young

#Mean #Intention #Humans

Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve.
-- William P. Young

#Way #Limits #Will Power

Perhaps there is supranatural: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.
-- William P. Young

#Reality #Data #Definitions

So no, I’m not too big on religion...and not very fond of politics or economics either...And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?
-- William P. Young

#Men #Anxiety #Earth

Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.
-- William P. Young

#Mean #Color #Grace

I don't just want a piece of you and a piece of your life. Even if you were able, which you are not, to give me the biggest piece, that is not what I want. I want all of you and all of every part of you and your day.
-- William P. Young

#Giving #Want #Able

Does that mean," asked Mack, "that all roads will lead to you?" "Not at all," smiled Jesus..."Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.
-- William P. Young

#Jesus #Mean #Doe

In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerner's access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.
-- William P. Young

#Book #Communication #Voice

Something in the heart of most human beings simply cannot abide pain inflicted on the innocent, especially children. Even broken men serving in the worst correctional facilities will often first take out their own rage on those who have caused suffering to children. Even in such a world of relative morality, causing harm to a child is still considered absolutely wrong. Period!
-- William P. Young

#Inspirational #Pain #Children

Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.
-- William P. Young

#Pain #Wings #Able

Each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. That is why you cannot love two people the same. It simply is not possible. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you.
-- William P. Young

#Love #Unique #Two

It's quite simple really. Being always transcends appearance-that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simple no longer matter. That is why Elousia is such a wonderful name. God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things-ultimately emerging as the real-and appearances that mask that reality will fall away.
-- William P. Young

#Real #Fall #Simple

Jesus?" he whispered as his voice choked "I feel so lost" A hand reached out and squeezed his, and didn't let go. "I know Mack. But it's not true. I am with you and I'm not lost. I'm sorry it feels that way, but hear me clearly. You are not lost.
-- William P. Young

#Letting Go #Jesus #Sorry

But, enough of that for now. Let’s get lost again in the starry night.
-- William P. Young

#Night #Enough #Lost

Did I hear God call me an idiot?
-- William P. Young

#Idiot #Call Me

Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence
-- William P. Young

#Father #Broken #Parent

God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellect.
-- William P. Young

#Voice #Paper #Authority

You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship.
-- William P. Young

#Children #Color #Games

Mack was getting frustrated. He spoke louder, 'But, don't I have a right to...' To complete a sentence without being interrupted? Not in reality. But as long as you think you do, you will surely get ticked off when someone cuts you off, even if it is God.
-- William P. Young

#Cutting #Reality #Thinking

When we three spoke ourselves into human existences the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitation that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird (a jay), whose nature it is to fly, choosing to only walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly.
-- William P. Young

#Son #Blood #Bird

Why would the God of the universe want to be submitted to me?' Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship. I don't want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.
-- William P. Young

#Brother #Circles #Want

those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control
-- William P. Young

#Law #Independence #Trying

Women, in general, will find it difficult to turn from a man and stop demanding that he meets their needs, provides security, and protects their identity, and return to me. Men, in general, find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and turn to me.
-- William P. Young

#Men #Hands #Identity

Once you have hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.
-- William P. Young

#Order #Law #Missing

religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right... but i am about the process that takes you to the living answer... it will change you from the inside. there are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all.
-- William P. Young

#Smart #People #Brain

And the Law that once contained impossible demands -- Thou Shalt Not... -- actually becomes a promise we fulfill in you.
-- William P. Young

#Law #Promise #Demand

Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.
-- William P. Young

#Relationship #Love And Respect #Obedience

The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.
-- William P. Young

#Independence #Normal #Will Power