Arpin Quotes

I have it on good authority-from the roads department chief, Mr. Arpin-that it will not snow after the fifteenth of March. ~ Jean Drapeau

The level of 'acceptable' dishonesty we Christians allow to avoid facing uncomfortable truths betrays our ideals as shallowly held. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

When circumstances demand that we do something that is not natural to our temperament or talents, we must sometimes intentionally choose by discipline what we inherently lack by nature. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Do we honestly believe that the best witness we can have as Christians before a watching world is to show moral perfection? While that might convince some, our odds of pulling it off seem less than slim. In truth, the most compelling witness to our faith can be a willingness to humbly accept responsibility for our failings and seek to restore relationships at any cost. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Above all is the centrality of love at the heart of vulnerable faith. Vulnerability will thrive only where love abounds - a love that is generous, gracious, patient, compassionate, humble, curious, joyful, and full of hope. In the absence of fear and the bondage it inflicts on us, love will put down roots, grow, and extend its reach far beyond our expectations or natural capacity. Love we once reserved only for those closest to us can be offered even to those who would persecute us. Enemies are transformed into sisters and brothers and friends. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

This emphasis is directed primarily at the here and now, as Christ-embodying communities of active love in the midst of the world. All of creation is caught up in the restorative work. The mission of God's people is not simply directed at saving people's souls from a bad life-after-death into a good life-after-death, but it addresses and hopefully touches the injustice and violence around us - poverty, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, war, environmental destruction - where salvation, justice, and peace can merge. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

It is critical to note that our biases against the other are empowered less by our assumptions of their otherness and more by our assumptions about our own normality. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Forgiveness and consequences are not mutually exclusive. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Agreeing to disagree' isn't license to hold hateful and condemning beliefs about me as though it doesn't negatively impact our relationship. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

In most of the Western world, where Christianity still enjoys a significant amount of privilege, especially when practiced by middle-class, white Christians, Jesus is seen as the heroic figure, the ultimate example of godliness, holiness, mercy, compassion, and justice - as well he should! He is God-made-flesh, after all. However, given that, when we identify with Jesus in the act of foot washing where we take the role of Jesus, all too often we are unconsciously (though sometimes all too consciously) assuming those characteristics onto ourselves. In trying to be Jesus to others, we can assume a posture of spiritual superiority and/or paternalism. The recipients of our service, "the least of these", are then seen as the needy recipients of our goodness. Again, while affirming the value in such acts of humble service, too often miss how such posturing fails to recognize the radical presence of Christ as "the least of these". ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

It's important to take life very seriously. That is why we must laugh at every opportunity. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Rather than elevating poverty to a form of righteousness, Jesus is instead calling for a revolution of imagination around the nature of what we consider true blessing. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

God is less interested in you performing well and more interested in seeing you flourish. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

There is more hope in honest brokenness than in the pretense of false wholeness. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

We celebrate the differences among us, even that which we cannot reconcile, not in denial of the absolute, but in the gift of humility that those differences require of us. Without denying our differences, we no longer allow them to categorize or divide us. It is in the diversity that the image of God is most fully reflected in and through us. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The practices and disciplines of building and sustaining community could fill volumes (and has). From mystics to anthropologists, we learn how critical the quality of a community is to the health and well-being of people. Yet, community remains one of the most elusive goals to so many of the Christians and churches in our individualistic Western societies. When we encounter true community, we are not encountering mere healthy relationships of equality and moral uprightness, but we are witnessing, and being invited to participate in, the divine nature of God. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The weaponization of belonging is one of the most "anti-christ" dynamics I have ever encountered. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

All too often, when faced with the sadness and suffering of others, we rush to offer comfort in order to ease our own discomfort. While we are no doubt motivated by good intentions, too often we hope to relieve the awkwardness and rawness of the other's suffering. We want to give advice, to solve the problem, to fix what is broken as much to relieve our own discomfort as to genuinely help the other's hurt. Instead, Jesus invites us to come alongside, identify with those suffering and join them in their mourning. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

As a pastor, I do not speak for my community. I speak from it. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

If our social justice is guided by retribution, we will simply perpetuate the use and abuse of power to inflict violence. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

When I realized that I was an introvert and what that meant, I actually became more outgoing, more confident in social situations, and began to enjoy scenarios I used to find unbearable. Why? Because, in understanding what I needed with respect to replenishing my energy, I was able to set limits and boundaries that freed me to be more engaged. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

One of the deadliest tools of powerful systems is narrow definitions of what is "normal" and the reduction of difference to deviance. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Disgust is a learned behaviour that finds fertile soil in ignorance, yielding a bountiful harvest of alienation, oppression, and hate. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

You see, my son," continues Kolbe softly, "the saints are not so different than you or me. Their stories reveal them to be very much human. However, this frailty does not weaken their witness or holiness, but rather extends to us the invitation to the same life amid our own frailty. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Incarnation is good news not because it offers us a way out of the mess of this world, but because it shows us what God's love looks like here and now. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

When you assume the goodness in one group is an exception but believe the goodness in your group is the norm, you're probably being prejudiced. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The excesses of identity politics pale in comparison to the monolithic normative realities that dominate our culture. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

By making God more monstrous than us, we circumvent the need for redemption. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Here is a COVID-19 Commandment:

Great love has no one than this, to lay on one's couch without friends. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

If your orthodoxy doesn't fully affirm compassion- if it is not, itself, deeply compassionate- then it is no orthodoxy at all. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

An unattended grief all too easily becomes poisonous guilt and shame. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not colonize it. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The seeds of liberation are planted across the common table as we break bread together. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Tolerance is a poor substitute for embrace. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

You spoke of the saints a moment ago. You spoke of them as though they were men and women of exceptional, inhuman holiness, so far above us mere mortal men that they could only be revered from afar. Never could they be looked to as examples - never role models for us to emulate. I understand your feelings. It pains me to admit that we, the church, have too often failed you by perpetuating this inaccurate image of the saints. In truth, they are very much human, very much like you and me. They lived in the world with the same fears, temptations, and failings that everyone must. So you see, what made them saints was not the absence of fear or failure, but instead their willing surrender to the grace of God, a grace available to all who come to the Cross. Yes, that does mean suffering and perhaps death, but for Jesus Christ they were prepared to suffer still more. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

It is entirely possible to work for justice without thirsting for blood. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

If you think it is more important to be moral than loving, you probably don't understand what either word really means. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

When Mary asserts explicitly that God is on the side of the poor, we can understand it within the tension of what it means to be blessed as the poor in spirit. Rather than elevating poverty to a form of righteousness, Jesus is instead calling for a revolution of imagination around the nature of what we consider true blessing. Jesus is here declaring that the humble and repentant heart is the fertile soil of his kingdom. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Tolerance is a poor substitute for hospitality. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Deviant' is the weapon of the normative to discredit and demonize the Other. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

When you're accustomed to being considered 'normal', difference feels like a perversion. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

It is in the face of this radical revisioning of ourselves as the community of Christ that our relationship to "the least of these" is formed. They don't represent a threat to our lives, both physically (in their demands on our resources, in the loss of safety) and existentially (in how they expose our pretense, our privilege), but they actually can be seen as Christ Himself. Not in some romantic, shallow way in which we take in the homeless beggar only to have him later throw off his rags to reveal himself as Jesus, rewarding us for our righteousness. No, we encounter Christ in them because the process we have gone through has demonstrated to us that in the other - in those most different from us - our own inadequacy is exposed, offering us the opportunity to embrace the gift of the transforming cross. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The healthy introvert understands that their personality is not a deterministic, fixed reality that they are powerless against. Being an introvert is never an excuse to shirk responsibility or to justify bad habits. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The problem is not that people are called to die to their sin, but rather that too many Christians are lined up with hammer and nails ready to help. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci