A Life-Line:

[In Martin Buber’s idea that “In the beginning was the relationship,] God is not spoken of as the supreme object, but as the mutual, significant, actively experienced relationship to life. God is not found as a precious stone or as blue flowers, as Novalis pictured, but God happens. God spent this Tuesday afternoon with me — that is a meaningful statement, an attempt to identify the experience, the encounter, which puts us in relationship. The search is then subsequently often understood as a wrong road. Our everyday life, our real, inconspicuous relationships, were all too hazy to us. What takes place in the encounter with God is that the searching ends not with finding, but with being found. God was always already standing behind me, even when I was rushing in the other direction.

~ Dorothee Soelle (1929-2003)

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann said, “Dorothee Soelle was the best prophetic voice in post-war Germany and then world-wide.”

Theologian Sallie McFague wrote, “Dorothee Soelle’s theology . . . brings together personal and social change in a way reminiscent of the lives of saints. Soelle cannot imagine spirituality that does not issue in works of justice or an ethic not grounded in God. Her life and work are profound exaqmples of Christian discipleship for the 21st century.”