A few thoughts from the Groff book:

"A person who claims to know the mind or will of God is pathological." -- Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

"Maps of previous generations can still be helpful, but they are more like the geographers' maps showing things before the great continental rifting took place--when Africa, humanity's birthplace, was still connected to the Americas and other continents." (Groff 5)

On doubt and its role in transforming faith: "Like the emperor moth struggling to emerge from a chrysalis that once kept it safe but now constricts it, the gift is in the struggle. (6, author's emphasis)

This last is rather like one of my comments to CAC in an earlier posting: that eva xianity was like an ill-fitting suit that was worn of habit and necessity rather than informed choice.

And Jones' statement electrified me. It gets at the meat of the matter as quickly and as ruthlessly as any other critique I've read. It's also paralleled by the story that Abraham Lincoln would not pray that God would be on our side, but that we as a nation would be on his side. Prayer is about the most direct way of expressing yearning toward something that lies beyond our purview and control. That's one of Groff's next topics: prayer as an action that we each express in different modes.

Interestingly, Groff compares our various paths to prayer with Howard Gardner's work on multiple intelligences: how we as individuals have distinct but classifiable modes of understanding truth and knowledge. Interesting stuff!