“You and I, as preachers, are dealers in words. Words are all that we have to do any important work. Like some of the psalms of lament, I want both to thank God for speech and to blame God for speech being so difficult. And I want to fall in love with language, over and over again. That’s one reason why I read poetry, and go to plays and movies, and read all that I can, because, as a preacher, it’s all just words. I want to love words and, in what I write and edit, to have fellow preachers and listeners love them with me. A preacher is, among other things, someone who has learned to love words.”
-William Willimon, Preaching Master Class (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), 4.
