hotels.com

Author: joelwitwer

Excerpts from William P. Young’s “The Shack”

I recently finished The Shack by William P. Young. It was evidently controversial when it first came out, but when don’t USAmerican Christians jump at the chance to be offended by something? That, though, is another story, for another time.
Overall, I enjoyed The Shack and here are some of my favourite lines:

In a world of talkers, Mack was a thinker and a doer.
– p. 9

(W)hen he does talk, it isn’t that they stop liking him – rather, they are not quite so satisfied with themselves.
– p.9

I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing.
– p.11

(G)race rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
– p.11

Something in the heart of most humans 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.
– p.59

Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself – to serve. Humans often do this – in touching the infirm and sick, in serving the ones whose minds have left to wander, in relationship to the poor, in loving the very old and the very young, or even in caring for the other who has assumed a position of power over them.
– p.106

When you choose independence over relationship, you become a danger to each other. Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness. Authority, as you think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.
– p.123

(Religion, politics, and economics) are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn’t any. It’s all false! Systems cannot provide you security, only (God) can!
– p.179

Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
– p.203

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver.
– p.225

“In art, you don’t get to learn something- you get to feel something. That’s why we listen to music. We don’t listen to music to learn that there are people in the world that don’t know who their daddy is. We already know that. But when Freddy Cole sings ‘I Wonder Who My Daddy Is’, you get to feel it. You get to feel what he feels.”

 – S**t My Photography Professor Says

The road between Aus and Sousesvlei in Namibia is a veritable fairytale of a drive. You start out in desert, drive through scraggy plains, through rolling hills, and in between rocky croppings before arriving to towering sand dunes. You are on dirt roads the entire time, but they are some of the smoothest dirt roads I have traveled on – and smoother than many of our tarred roads in Zambia. The experience makes up for any loss of time you may ‘suffer’.

Kolmanskop, Namibia

Kolmanskop is an abandoned diamond boom town in southern Namibia. It was founded in the early 1900s when diamonds were found just laying in the sand. The town had a hospital, ballroom, ice factory, school, theater, and sports hall. They even had the southern hemisphere’s first x-ray machine although it was for scanning people to make sure they weren’t smuggling out diamonds. Despite all they did have, thousands of gallons of water had to be imported each week as the desert provided no such amenity. After World War II, the rate at which diamonds were being found tied with new, highly profitable diamond areas being found close by led to the decline of the town and it’s eventual abandonment in 1954. Ever since, the desert has slowly been taking it’s land back.