14 Quotes by Kate Bowler

I was immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.

The hardest lessons come from the solutions people, who are already a little disappointed that I am not saving myself. There is always a nutritional supplement, Bible verse or mental process I have not adequately tried. “Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!” said a stranger named Jane in an email, having heard my news somewhere, and I was immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.

Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel's assurance that we can muster the future with our words and attitudes. I can barely admit to myself that I have almost no choice but to surrender, but neither can those around me. I can hear it in my sister-in-law's voice as she tells me to keep fighting. I can see it in my academic friends, who do what researchers do...Buried in all their concern is the unspoken question: Do I have any control?

A lot of Christians like to remind me that heaven is my true home, which makes me want to ask them if they would like to go home first.

I think I'm running out of time...," I say finally. "I'm not trying to be dramatic, but here's what I worry about: What if you are too?" She knows what I am saying...her selflessness has caused her to surrender too much of herself to "someday." And now someday has come, at least for me.

I was surrounded by the world's luckiest people in a culture that doesn't believe in luck.

I would love to report that what I found in the prosperity gospel was something so foreign and terrible to me that I was warned away, but what I discovered was both familiar and painfully sweet: the promise that I could curate my life, minimize my losses, and stand on my successes. And no matter how many times I rolled my eyes at the creeds outrageous certainties, I craved them just the same. I had my own Prosperity Gospel, a flowering weed grown in with all the rest.

I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible--separation. Brokeness. An end without an ending.

I read an article about how people in grief swear because they feel the English language has reached its limit in a time of inarticulate sorrow. Or at least that is what I tell people when I am casually dropping f-bombs over lunch as I explain the mysteries of Lent.