I actually think one of most profoundly and deep pastoral moments between a pastor and his church is what happens between them before God in the context of preaching.
It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R. R. ] Tolkien and so on.
The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isn't.
The great appeal of baseball, among the great appeals, it's a game without time. It is a pastoral game that is separated from time.
I spent the first 18 years of my life in the pastoral town of Vernal, Utah, in the shadows of the Book Cliffs and the Uinta Mountains.
To awaken a new longing for holiness: this is the great pastoral challenge that we have before us, if we want to be faithful to God's plan and also to respond to the yearnings and hopes of the peoples of America and of all peoples on earth.
Pope Francis has helped me to focus once again on the joy in my pastoral ministry. He has challenged me genuinely to believe that the Gospel is and should be the source of the church's joy. His own approachable, cheerful, and hopeful style in exercising the papacy reminds me that shepherds must exude joy or they will fail to lead anyone else to discover it.
We see that there are two different kinds of. . . societies: (a) parasitic societies and (b) producing societies. The former are those which live from hunting, fishing, or merely gleaning. By their economic activities they do not increase, but rather decrease, the amount of wealth in the world. The second kind of societies, producing societies, live by agricultural and pastoral activities. By these activities they seek to increase the amount of wealth in the world.
In every human society of which we know - prehistoric, ancient or modern, whether hunter-gatherer, pastoral, agricultural or industrial - at least some form of art is displayed, and not only displayed, but highly regarded and willingly engaged in.
If you live in a dirty big city, it means that you surely need a pastoral life to make yourself clean!
