Ed Loring on Swimming/Living

"You can go to school and get a graduate degree in swimming; you can read every book written about swimming and write articles about swimming and get published. But until you get into the pool, you don't know how to swim. And this Bible is about swimming -- well maybe not about swimming but walking on water.

"What is so critical about the kitchen, what is so critical about cooking supper here [at the Open Door Community] and cleaning up, what is so critical about scrubbing the bathrooms, what is so critical about our relationships with each other, is that it is in these things, along with study, that the knowledge of the Word comes. It is a circle. I do my morning prayer, I read my Scripture, I go to Bible study, but I also have to act out this transformation of values, which can be taken from me at any moment. They are fragile."

Ed Loring, "Living the Incarnation of the Word," Hospitality 30 (no. 4): 1.