|
| |
Contents:
June 28, 2009
Changes
“Just as when the waves Lash at the
shore, The rocks suffer no damage But are sculpted And eroded Into
beautiful shapes,
So our characters can be molded And
our rough edges Worn smooth By changes.”
by Sogyal
Rinpoche
For A New Beginning
“In out-of-the-way places of the
heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has
been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your
desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you
willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the
seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you
always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage
kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again
with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet
clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself
into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home
in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”
by John O’Donohue
top of page
This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ jus’ died out of
it. I don’t know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter
much. He was alive, an’ that’s what matters.
An’ now he’s dead, an’ that don’t matter. Heard a fella
tell a poem one time, an’ he says, “All that lives is holy.” Got to
thinkin’, an’ purty soon it means more than the words says. An’ I
wouldn’ pray for a ol’ fella that’s dead. He’s awright. He got a job
to do, but it’s all laid out for ’im an’ there’s on’y one way to do it.
But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousan’ ways, an’
we don’ know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray, it’d be for the
folks that don’ know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy
straight. An’ now cover ‘im up and let ‘im get to his work.
● Preacher Casy, “Burial of Grampa Joad,”
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
They sat
in the coal-black cave of vines. Ma said, “How’m I gonna know ‘bout
you?” They might kill ya an’ I wouldn’ know. They might hurt ya.
How’m I gonna know?” Tom laughed uneasily, “Well,
maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but o’ny a
piece of a big one – an’ then –“
“Then
what, Tom?” “Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the
dark. I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight
so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’
up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys
yell when they’re mad an’ – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re
hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff
they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there.
See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much.
Seems like I can see him sometimes.”
● Tom
Joad, “Good-by● e to Ma Joad,” John Steinbeck, The Grapes
of Wrath
When I / die / I’m sure / I will have a / Big Funeral . . .
/ Curiosity seekers . . . / Coming to see / if I / am really / Dead . .
. / or just / trying to make / Trouble . . .
● Mari
Evans, “The Rebel”
She went in the direction they were coming, that tiny
baby’s mother did. And she put him in the arms of the enemy. They held
him and then they gave him back to his mother and they left her. In
peace. Isn’t that a story?
● Jeanmarie Simpson, “A Single Woman”
top of page
Jesus’
authority manifests itself throughout the first major section of Mark.
Mark
2:15-27 tells stories of controversies that leave his followers and his
questioners marveling at a paradox: Jesus seems to defy traditions about
the authority of God, yet acts with the authority of God.
New
ways of disclosing the world have always aroused the resistance of those
who wanted to stay securely with the familiar. . . . It is the fate of
every unfamiliar way of looking at the world.
● Paul Tillich
Open our
minds and hearts to the meaning and the cost of a changing day.
●
George
E. MacLeod
We
should not be surprised at the unexpected quality of the way God counts
and measures, for what little the Bible reveals to us of the mystery of
God’s action indicates that the “new order” means “new math.” In the
biblical accounts the liberating dynamic of God’s action often stands
out as a paradox in the midst of the expectations and social situations
of the old order.
● Letty M Russell
Harvest
is a commonplace liturgical metaphor that can draw us, not only to our
own full dinner table, but in two other directions as well. One is to
the triune God, the Bread who is God, the firstfruit who is the
resurrected Christ, the fields of mown grain that is the Spirit in the
community. The second direction is toward all those who suffer from
lack of the harvest we tend to take for granted. We do well to add a
second couplet to the traditional table prayer:
Come,
Lord Jesus, be our guest,
and
let these gifts to us be blest.
Blest
be God, who is our Bread.
May
all the world be clothed and fed.
The
harvest is one of the lectionary’s most communal images, suggesting
large fields, cooperative labor and community feasting, and for this
reason is particularly important for a society that tends too often to
focus on the individual. Harvest is communal, the image extensive, as
is our shared life in the church.
● Gail Ramshaw, Treasures Old and
New: Images in the Lectionary
top of page
God is far off,
unapproachable, / mysterious, uncontrollable;
and yet,
amazingly, / this same unapproachable / and mysterious God
draws near and /
touches us. . . . These two, / the beyondness and
the nearness, are
always / held together in tension.
● Edmund Steimle
In mystery and
grandeur / we see the face of God
in earthiness
and the ordinary / we know the love of Christ.
In heights and
depths / and life and death:
the spirit of
God / is moving among us.
Let us praise
God.
I will light a
light / in the name of God
who lit the
world / and breathed the breath of life into me.
I will light a
light / in the name of the Son
who saved the
world / and stretched out his hand to me.
I will light a
light / in the name of the Spirit
who
encompasses the world / and blesses my soul with yearning.
We will light
three lights / for the trinity of love:
God above us,
/ God beside us, / God beneath us:
the beginning,
the end, the everlasting one.
● In Spirit and in
Truth
That’s
a good motto for all of us – find someone to be successful for. Rise to
their hopes and their needs. As you look in the mirror tonight, you may
see somebody with no idea what to do with their life. But a troubled
child might look at you and see a mentor. A homebound senior citizen
might see a lifeline. The folks at your local homeless shelter might
see a friend. None of them care how much money is in your bank account,
or whether you’re important at work, or famous around town – they just
know that you’re someone who cares, someone who make a difference in
their lives.
● President Obama,
Arizona State University, 23 May 2009
top of page
May 31, 2009
Through
the work of the Holy Spirit – the continuing presence of Christ on earth
– the church is instituted to be the community of the new covenant.
Within this community, baptism is by water and the Spirit (John 3:5,
Acts 2:38). In God’s work of salvation, the mystery of Christ’s death
and resurrection is inseparably linked with the gift of the Holy Spirit
given on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Likewise, participation in
Christ’s death and resurrection is inseparably linked with receiving the
Spirit (Romans 6:1-11, 8”9-14). The Holy Spirit who is the power of
creation (Genesis 1:2) is also the giver of new life. Working in the
lives of people before, during, and after their baptisms, the Spirit is
the effective agent of salvation. God bestows upon baptized persons the
presence of the Holy Spirit, marks them with an identifying seal as
God’s own, and implants in their hearts the first installment of their
inheritance as sons and daughters of God (2 Corinthians 1:21-22). It is
through the Spirit that the life of faith is nourished until the final
deliverance when they will enter into the fullness of salvation
(Ephesians 1:13-14).
New
birth into life in Christ, which is signified by baptism, is the
beginning of that process of growth in grace and holiness through which
God brings us into closer relationship with Jesus Christ, and shapes our
lives increasingly into conformity with his divine will. Sanctification
is a gift of the gracious presence of the Holy Spirit, a yielding to the
Spirit’s power, a deepening of our love for God and neighbor. Holiness
of heart and life, in the Wesleyan tradition, always involved both
personal and social holiness.
Confirmation is a dynamic action of the Holy Spirit that can be
repeated. In confirmation the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is invoked
to provide the on being confirmed with the power to live in the faith
that he or she has professed. The basic meaning of confirmation is
strengthening and making firm in Christian faith and life. The ritual
action in confirmation is the laying on of hands as the sign of God’s
continuing gift of the grace of Pentecost.
The
life of faith which baptized persons live is like a pilgrimage or
journey. On this lifelong journey there are many challenges, changes,
and chances. We engage life’s experiences on our journey of faith as
part of the redeeming and sanctifying Body of Christ. Ongoing Christian
nurture teaches, shapes, and strengthens us to live ever more faithfully
as we are open to he Spirit’s revealing more and more of the way and the
will of God. . . . Reaffirmation of faith is a human response to God’s
grace and therefore may be repeated at many points in our faith journey.
-- from “By Water & the Spirit: A United Methodist
Understanding of Baptism”
top of page
“stones and bones,” Lucille
Clifton
here is a country
where old men / gather in the capital and
speak their
language filled with / stone / their syllables are chips of bone
they speak of
lifting up a creed / while cold and still there under
their tongue is
somebody else’s child / or mine / bones and stones
our ears bleed /
red and white and blue
“Memorial Day,” William Marr
At Arlington, someone / Unknown goes down
The thousands, the
thousands / Who have gone down in faraway fields
But who won’t die in
the heart-- / How do we bury / The thousands
Jane Hirshfield, “The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead”
The dead do not
want us dead; / such petty errors are left for the living.
Nor do they want
our mourning. / No gift to them—not rage, not weeping.
Return one of
them, any one of them, to the earth,
and look: such
foolish skipping, / such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!
Even a cucumber,
even a single anise seed: feasting.
Gail Wronsky, “O Alive Who Are Dead”
They’re fighting
in deserts and caves:
we must conquer /
in ourselves / what causes war.
Patience,
patience, patience:
we must conquer in
ourselves what / causes war.
In snow, some on
crags, some in / quicksand. Some whom we love, / whom we know—
and woundbearings
and bloodshed. / Nothing can be so defeating
as inwardly doing
nothing.
All poems from Sam Hamill, editor, Poets Against
the War
top of page
The
first injury inflicted by oppression and poverty is upon the soul. When
injured as such, the longing for justice is deeper than the longing for
shelter; the longing for love is deeper than the longing for food. What
hurts most is not the hunger, but the abandonment, the estrangement, the
isolation from those who would be your neighbors. The lovelessness
hurts the most.
There are several types of utopians. For a short time while I was young
I imagined and worked for a saved world, one delivered from the chronic
excesses of greed, avarice, indifference, self-destruction. A
saved world is a fantasy. It’s true that fantasy is an important aspect
of imagination – in that it lends to our yearnings. We need it. As a
young African-Japanese American child of poverty I fantasized about
material security, about a world without racism – though at the time I
had little power to affect the changes that would bring these things
into fruition. Because daily reality was so harsh, I needed that
fantasy. I fantasized a world rid of the racism that had so belittled
my father in the auto industry and incarcerated my mother in the Arizona
desert. It was the subjective aspect of what would evolve into vision
as I matured, created, and grew as a citizen, educator, activist, and
parent.
During
that time I was a messianic utopian. The flaw of this kind
of utopianism is that one can become fastened to the fantasy itself, the
fixed idea or vision of such a utopia. The fantasy administers a rush,
a momentary or continuous high, perhaps because its images are so much
more pleasing than daily social reality. But once one is in this
addictive zone one can fall into dangerous territory: the potential
roots of dogma, orthodoxy, conservatism, zealotry. Also, there’s
something unsettling about the idea of a saved world. Something
problematic about wanting things completely cleansed.
I
no longer imagine a saved world. . . .
Today I believe I have a more critical and enlightened sense of history
and possibility. Elders have taught me about time, patience, and the
deliberate nature of change. Everyday people have taught me that they
can and will transform themselves and the world. I now share with
others a hopeful vision of the present and future. The difference
between vision and fantasy is that vision is rooted in real culture and
real history. Vision is a fusion of things understood, transformed, and
celebrated in the present – and projected into the accessible future.
● Michael James, from “An Essay
Disguised As A Calendar,” 1995
top of page
For
thousands of years, women have had responsibility without power
–while men have had power without responsibility. We offer those
men who risk being brothers a balance, a future, a hand. But with
or without them, we will go on.
For we
are the Old Ones, the New Bread, the Natives who came first but
lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the
girlchild in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in El
Salvador and Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are whale-song and
rainforest, the depth-wave rising huge to shatter glass power on the
shore, the lost and despised who, weeping, stagger into the light.
All
this we are. We are intensity, energy, the people speaking – who no
longer will wait and who cannot be stopped.
We are
poised on the edge of the millennium-ruin behind us, no map before
us, the taste of fear sharp on our tongues.
Yet we
will leap.
The
exercise of imagining is an act of creation.
The
act of creation is an exercise of will.
All
this is political. And possible.
Bread. A clean sky. Active peace. A woman’s voice singing
somewhere, melody drifting like smoke from the cookfires. The army
disbanded, the harvest abundant. The wounded healed, the child
wanted, the prisoner freed, the body’s integrity honored, the lover
returned. Te magical skill that reads marks into meaning. The
labor equal, fair, and valued. Delight in the challenge for
consensus to solve problems. No hand raised in any gesture but
greeting. Secure interiors – of heart, home, land – so firm as to
make secure borders irrelevant at last. And everywhere laughter,
care, celebration, dancing, contentment. A humble, early paradise,
in the now.
We
will make it real, make it our own, make policy, history, peace,
make it available, make mischief, a difference, love, the
connections, the miracle, ready.
Believe it.
We are
the women who will transform the world.
● Robin Morgan & Others, Women’s
Environment & Development Organization 1994
top of page
May 3, 2009
The meaning of the cross, of
redemptive suffering, also appears in a different light for those who suffer
and are killed as part of the struggle for justice. Too often Christians
have treated the suffering Christ as some kind of legal transaction with God
to pay for the sins of humanity, as though anyone’s sufferings and death
could actually “pay for” others’ sins! Christ’s cross is used to inculcate
a sense of masochistic guilt, unworthiness and passivity in Christians. . .
.
Thus to accept and endure evil
is regarded as redemptive. . . . Solidarity with the poor and with those who
suffer does mean justifying these evils, but struggling to overcome them.
As one struggles against evil, one also risks suffering and becomes
vulnerable to retaliation and violence to those who are intent upon keeping
the present system intact. . . . But risking suffering and even death on
behalf of a new society, we also awaken hope.
● Rosemary Radford Ruether
If I were a
bird and able to fly afar,
I would like
to be a white dove to guide the people to freedom.
If I were a
grain of sand, I would throw myself down
to make a path
for the people.
If I were the
cloud in the sky, I would shelter and bring rains to the rice field.
I would
sacrifice my life for the suffering people. I would sacrifice my self
no matter how
many times I would have to die.
● Anna May Say Pa, Burma, “For the People”
I have often been threatened
with death. Nevertheless, as a Christian, I do not believe in death without
resurrection. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. I
say so without meaning to boast, with the greatest humility. . . .
Martyrdom is grace of God that I
do not believe I deserve. But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, let
my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality.
Let my death, if it is accepted by God, be for the liberation of my people
and as a witness of hope in the future.
You may say, if they succeed in
killing me, that I pardon and bless those who do it. Would that thus they
might be convinced that they will waste their time. A bishop will die, but
the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.
● Archbishop Oscar Romero, El Salvador, two
weeks before his murder.
top of page
As the risen
Jesus appeared to them, “in their joy they were disbelieving.”
It is as if they
were saying exuberantly, “We just can’t believe it
We just can’t
believe it.” But finally they did believe, and
Jesus entrusted
them with the task of witnessing to him.
● Paul Hammer
God has been
met and known, even in a human life that was once
a helpless
infant. In a human life the limits of finitude have been broken,
including the
ultimate barrier of death, that is the story we have to tell. . . .
But we do not
capture Christ. Our minds do not embrace Christ.
Our words
point to Christ. Our images interact with Christ. . . .
Who is Christ
for our day? What images can we employ that
will enable us
to be the body of Christ with integrity while
remaining
women and men of relevance in our generation?
● John Shelby Spong
Firmly I believe,
Lord, that your prodigious mind created the whole earth.
To your artist’s
hand beauty owed its birth: the stars and the moon,
the cottages, the
lakes, little boats bobbing down river to the sea,
vast coffee
plantations, white cotton fields and the forests felled by the criminal axe.
In you I believe,
maker of thought and music,
maker of the
wind, maker of peace and love.
Christ the
worker, I believe in you, light of light, God’s true
only begotten
son, that to save the world you in Mary’s humble womb
grew and became
human. I believe that you were beaten,
treated with
scorn, martyred on the cross, under Pilate’s command.
I believe in you,
friend, human Christ, Christ the worker,
death you’ve
overcome. Your fearful suffering brought
the new human
being born for freedom. You still rise again
each time we
raise an arm to defend the people from profiting dominion,
because you’re
alive on the farm, in the factory, and in school.
I believe your
fight goes on, I believe in your Resurrection.
● Creed from Nicaraguan Mass
top of page
April 19,
2009
What if a
miner coughed every time I switched on a light?
Or three
drops of coal ash sludge oozed out of the electrical
socket every
time I turned on my computer?
What if I
lost one increment of hearing every time I judged
“those
people” as uneducated because of the accent in their voice?
Then I might
begin to know the cost of living in my world.
Or would I
learn that a cough is the sound of a light switching on,
and I learn
to live with poison and cancer?
Would I
simply adjust to hearing no voice but my own?
The cloth was
started before we were born.
The future is
woven before we can see the pattern.
God is
somehow embroidered here and there,
and the
answer to our prayers is the touch of thread across thread.
● Wade Meyer, Untitled (Kentucky and
California, 2009)
If
the Earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a
field somewhere, people would come from everywhere to marvel at it.
People would walk around it, marveling at its big pools of water, its
little pools and the water flowing between the pools. People would
marvel at the deep rich soil on it, and they would marvel at the very
thin layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in the gas.
The people would marvel at the creatures walking around the surface of
the ball, and at the creatures in the water. The people would declare
it as sacred because it was the only one and they would protect it so it
would not be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and
people would come to pray to it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to
know beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love it, and
defend it with their lives because they would somehow know that their
lives, there own roundness, could be nothing without it. If the Earth
were only a few feet in diameter.
● Miriam Therese MacGillis, Genesis Farm,
New Jersey
Perhaps the
earth can teach us
as when
everything seems dead
and later
proves to be alive.
● Pablo Neruda
top of page
When we are all despairing; when the world
is full of grief;
When we see no way ahead, and hope has gone
away . . . .
Although we fear change; although we are
not ready;
Although we’d rather weep and run away . .
. .
Because we’re coming with the women;
because we hope where hope is vain;
Because you call us from the grave and
show the way . . . .
ROLL BACK THE STONE!
● Janet Morley
God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that
knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant
only love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us
incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
● Annie
Dillard
But Mark, the harshest, the sparest of the gospel
writers, gives us an unhopeful Easter. Many scholars believe that the
manuscript actually ended with a failure of nerve. The women, seeing
the angel at the empty tomb, are terrified. The angel tells them to
bring the message of Christ’s resurrection to the disciples, but they
don’t. It is believed that the original manuscript ended with this
verse: “Then they went out and ran away from the tomb, beside themselves
with terror. They said nothing to anybody but they were afraid.”
● Mary Gordon
When I am the sky a glittering bird
slashes at me with the knives of song.
When I am the sea fiery clouds plunge
into my mirrors,
fracture my smooth breath with crimson
sobbing.
When I am the earth I feel my flesh of
rock wearing down;
pebbles, grit, finest dust, nothing.
When I am a woman – O, when I am a
woman, my wells of salt
brim and brim, poems force the lock of
my throat.
●
Denise Levertov, “Cancion”
God of terror and joy, you arise to shake the earth.
open our graves and give us back the past;
so that all that has been buried may be freed and forgiven,
and our lives may return to you through the risen Christ.
Amen.
● Janet
Morley top of page
ECHOES: WOMEN PROPHETS
The fullness
of joy is to behold God in everything.
● Julian of Norwich
Place your
mind before the mirror of eternity.
Place your
soul in the brilliance of glory!
Place your
heart in the figure of divine substance!
And
transform your whole being into the image
of the
Godhead Itself through contemplation.
● St. Claire of Assisi
I never pray
for anything temporal . . . but when each morning comes,
I kneel down
before the Rising Sun, and only say,
“Behold the
handmaid of the Lord -- give me this day my work to do –
no, not my
work, but thine.”
● Florence Nightingale
“. . .
quite vividly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture,
Christ in
them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of
them,
living in
them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them –
but because
He was in them, and because they were here,
the whole
world was here too, here in the underground train . . . .
I came out
into the street and walked for a long time in the crowds.
It was the
same here, on every side, in every passerby, everywhere – Christ.”
●
vision of mystic and author Caryll Houselander
while standing in a crowded train during rush hour
Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me.
I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed,
the leper . . . .
But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done
in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? . . .
Where were the saints to try to change the social order,
not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with the slavery.
● Dorothy Day
top of page
ECHOES: WOMEN PROPHETS
Several times I have decided to leave – I almost could except for
the children,
the
poor bruised victims of adult lunacy. Who would care for them?
Whose
heart would be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing
in a
sea of tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.
● Jean Donovan,
lay Maryknoll missionary
murdered with three other women religious by the military
for
defending the poor in El Salvador
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon
and
left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
●
Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prize
recipient,
suffragette and founder of Hull House
Nothing great was ever done without much enduring.
● St. Catherine of Sienna
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their
reputation
and
social standing, never can bring about a reform.
Those who are really in earnest must be willing to do anything or
nothing
in
the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and
out,
avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their
advocates,
and
bear the consequences.
● Susan B. Anthony
Let
nothing disturb thee / Let nothing frighten thee
All
things are changing / God alone is changeless
Patience attains the goal / One who has God lacks nothing
God
alone fills all our needs
●
Saint Teresa of Avila
top of page
ECHOES: WOMEN PROPHETS
If you love
the justice of Jesus Christ more than you fear human
judgment then you will seek to do compassion. Compassion
means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I
shall help both equally. Justice demands that we seek and
find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner, and comfort
them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion
of God.
●
Mechthild of Magdeburg
Wherever
Jesus went, he created abundance.
● Jose Hobday
The only
thing we can offer God of value is to give our love to
people as unworthy of it as we are of God’s love.
● St. Catherine of
Sienna
You say
you don’t want anything to happen to me. I’d prefer it that
way myself – but I don’t see that we have control over the
forces of madness, and if you choose to enter into other
people’s suffering, or love others, you at least have to
consent in some way to the possible consequences.
● Ita Ford (Maryknoll
Sister murdered in El Salvador)
Of the 1.3
billion people living in absolute poverty around the globe,
70 percent are women and girls. Women work two-thirds of
the world’s working hours, yet earn only 10 percent of the
income. Women produce half the world’s food, yet own only 1
percent of its land. Women make up two-thirds of the
estimated 876 million adults worldwide who cannot read or
write; and girls make up two-thirds of 77 million children
not attending school.
● Benetvision
top of page
ECHOES: WOMEN PROPHETS
When
I am hungry and I eat a good meal for the glory of God, it
is a work of mercy. . . . It is all the more a work of mercy
when I grow, reap, peel, cook, or serve a square meal for my
family or wash the dishes afterwards, or sweep the kitchen,
or take out the garbage. It is all the more a work of mercy
when I do it for strangers and still more so when I do it
for my enemies.
●
Ade Bethune
When
everyone was terrorized we didn’t stay at home crying -- we
went to the streets to confront them directly. We were mad,
but it was the only way to stay sane.
●
Mothers of the Disappeared who confronted the
brutal military rule in Argentina (1976-83) with
a weekly, silent public vigil on behalf of
family members who “were disappeared.”
I
know what I want. I have a goal, an opinion. I have a
religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am
satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward
strength and plenty of courage. If God lets me live . . . I
shall not remain insignificant. I shall work in the world
and for humankind! And now I know that first and foremost I
shall require courage and cheerfulness.
●
Anne Frank
When
I first found out I had cancer, I didn’t know what to pray
for. I didn’t know if I should pray for healing or life or
death. Then I found peace in praying for what my folks call
“God’s perfect will.” As it evolved, my prayer has become,
“Lord, let me live until I die.” By that I mean I want to
live, love, and serve fully until death comes. If that
prayer is answered . . . how long really doesn’t matter.
Whether it’s just a few months or a few years is really
immaterial.
●
Thea Bowman
top of page
“Human lives are the best interpretation
of the spirit of the period…Bio-graphy presents ideas
directly, concretely, dramatically; it gives an opportunity
to study the development of character, and the reasons for
success or failure; it serves as a nucleus for the larger
history of the time in which a [person] lived.”
● Henry
K. Rowe, historian
The Vision of
the Trail
“Across the desert, parched and hot, the
brown trails wind away
To where – remote- the ranges tower, and purple shadows
play,
And by each one of all these trails wait Death, and Thirst,
and Pain;
For many men will go, and go; though few come home again.
…………………………………………..
And yet the long brown
trails remain, nor ever fade away;
Year after year, by boot
and hoof, ground deeply there to stay.
And in the heat-glare
hanging over their windings through the sand
Fair Visions rise – and
fade- and rise, and lure the beckoning hand.
And so men follow, year by
year, these Visions of the Trail
With hearts as steadfast as
was his who sought the Holy Grail;
And year by year, they pay
the price; yet staunchly hold their way
To find the Dream that
hides beyond where purple shadows play.”
● Elwyn
Irving Hoffman
(from Nevada Historical Papers, 1913-1916
top of page
February 22, 2009
We of the
Taize community look upon the transfiguration above all as the
celebration of that presence of Christ which takes charge of
everything in us and transfigures even that which disturbs us
about ourselves. God penetrates those hardened, incredulous,
even disquieting regions within us, about which we really do not
know what to do. God penetrates them with the life of the
Spirit and acts upon those regions and gives them God’s own
face.
● Kathryn
Spink
Suddenly they saw him the way he was, the
way he really was all the time, although they had never seen it
before, the glory which blinds the everyday eye and so becomes
invisible. This is how he was, radiant, brilliant, carrying joy
like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was – is – from the
beginning, and we cannot bear it. So he manned himself, came
manifest to us; and there on the mountain they saw him, really
saw him, saw his light. We all know that if we really see him we
die. But isn’t that what is required of us? Then, perhaps, we
will see each other, too.
●
Madeleine L’Engle
She broke
the silence once more to tell Jesus how glad she was that he had
come and how she never expected to see him down here in person.
Jesus gave her one of his beautiful smiles and they walked on.
She did not know where they were going; someplace wonderful, she
suspected. The ground was like the clouds under their feet, and
she felt she could walk forever without becoming the least bit
tired. She even began to sing out loud some of the old
spirituals she loved, but she didn’t want to annoy Jesus, who
looked sop thoughtful, so she quieted down. They walked on,
looking straight over the treetops into the sky, and the smiles
that played over her dry wind-cracked face were first clean
ripples across a stagnant pond. On they walked without
stopping.
● Alice
Walker, “The Welcome Table”
top of page
February 15, 2009
The psalmist has changed the garment of
penitence, worn round the body like sackcloth with a rope
girdle, and been given a festive dress, in order to take
part in a merry festal dance and this change of dress is the
outward manifestation of the change that took place in the
poet’s soul when his prayer was granted.
● Artur
Weiser
For the world and time are the dance of
the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the
music of the wedding feast. The more we persist in
misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze
them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our
own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and
despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of
ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of
the cosmic dance which is always there.
● Thomas
Merton
When the day comes on which our victory
will shine like a torch in the night, it will be like a
dream. We will laugh and sing for joy. Then the other
nations will say about us, “The Lord did great things for
them.” Indeed, God is doing great things for us; that is
why we are happy in our suffering.
Lord, break the chains of humiliation and
death, just as you did that glorious morning when you were
raised. Let those who weep as they sow the seed of justice
and freedom gather the harvest of peace and reconciliation.
Those who weep as they go out as instruments of your love
will come back singing for joy, as they witness the
disappearance of hate and the manifestation of love in your
world.
● “Psalm
26,” Zephania Kameeta, Namibia
top of page
Avengers without love are
not prophets. At the same time, lovers without a sense of
accountability are not prophets either. The prophetic
figure brings to a situation full of despair the face of
feeling and the face of hope, the one who suffers because of
us and believes in us at the same time. The prophet drags
us by the hair of the head, if necessary, to the heights of
our capacity and against our own worst will. The prophet
comes with a father’s zeal and a mother’s love – breathing
the word of God and saying “I love you” at the same time.
There is a major
difference between a critic and a prophet. Critics stand
outside the system and mock it. Prophets remain clear-eyed
and conscientious inside a sinful system and love it anyway.
. . . It is prophetic to love both church and country enough
to want them to be everything they claim to be – just,
honest, free, equal – and then to stay with them in their
faltering attempts to do so even if it is you yourself
against whom both church and state turn in their attempts to
evade the prophetic truth of the time. . . . The horrible
truth is that prophecy is not a harsh and heartless thing at
all. Prophecy is unrequited love gone mad with hope.
● Joan
Chittister, “The Cry of the Prophet”
A free bird leaps / on the
back of the wind
and floats downstream / till
the current ends
and dips its wings into the
orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
● Maya
Angelou, from “Caged Bird”
You are to me, O God, what
wings are to the bird.
● Hindu Prayer
top of page
Whether historical fact or symbol, Jesus’
miracles are an essential part of his teaching (there are 17
miracles in the first 8 chapters of Mark, the earliest
Gospel), and they are one of the ways he teaches; his
miracles, in a sense, are like the parables manifested in
the physical world. His audience was accustomed to the
concept, for they were raised in a long tradition of
miracles, many of them inextricably tied to the central
teachings of Judaism.
● Dan Wakefield
My battles are fought out inside with my
own demons.
●
Etty Hillesum
The image of Jesus as exorcist is someone
who has experienced their own demons (Mark 1:12-13). The
temptation stories point to the image of a wounded healer,
to an image of one who by his own experience understands
vulnerability and internalized oppression. In having
recovered their own hearts, healers have some understanding
of the suffering of others. Naming the demons means knowing
the demons. The Gospels imply that anyone who exorcises
cannot be a stranger to demons. To have faced our demons is
never to forget their power to hurt and never to forget the
power to heal that lies in touching brokenheartedness. Jesus
hears, below the demon noises, an anguished cry for
deliverance. Through mutual touching, community is
cocreated as a continuing, liberating, redemptive reality.
●
Rita Nakashima Brock
Where a protest against human suffering
takes place through a revelation of the sacred, the
elimination of that suffering is not just desirable; it is
not less than an obligation. . . . This is the first
implication of the miracle stories: they will rather deny
the validity of all the previous experiences than the right
of human suffering to be eliminated.
●
Gerd Theissen
top of page
Out of my distress I called you, O Lord,
but you did not answer me. I refused to preach repentance to
the Ninevites, but you forced me. When I sailed away in the
opposite direction, you hurled a violent wind at me. Your
monster swallowed me and returned me to your path.
Repentance I would not preach in Nineveh, rather I cursed
them, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” But
you did not listen to me. You listened to the people of
Nineveh as they sat in ashes covered with sackcloth.
I am angry because you are a gracious and merciful God, slow
to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish.
If you will not destroy Nineveh then give me death.
It is better for me to die than to see my enemy live.
● Thomas Reese, “The Prayer of
Jonah (or: the futility of hatred)”
The cycle of crime and punishment can be halted before it is
completed. Evil can be aborted, diverted, vanquished.
Better yet, it can be transformed; it can undergo countless
mutations – by choosing repentance.
● Elie Wiesel
If I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and
sit for a while; Because I was swallowed one time deep in
the dark And came out alive after all.
● Carl Sandburg, “Losers”
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a
temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can
save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
● W. H. Auden, from “The Time
Being”
top of page
The
mud of human evil is very deep, it stinks forcefully,
is
full of dangerous gases, and there was Jesus, in front of John,
asking to be allowed to bend down in that mud.
And
John, no wonder, hesitated. But he, Jesus, he went down, and
when he came up, the mud was still streaming …
HEAVEN OPENED, and a voice was heard … and a new Spirit
a
new life and a new heart were announced, glory, glory,
alleluia. He was bathed in light … drowned in God’s voice …
full of spirit; but what about the mud, was he going to forget
it? … No because once he got the spirit that Spirit drove him …
to do his work in this world, to struggle with evil in us, … in
this world, I order to overcome it.
● Joseph Donders,
“Stepping in the Mud”
Warning! When I am Old I will
wear Purple!
When I am an old woman, I shall
wear purple –
with a red hat which doesn’t
go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and
summer gloves and satin sandals, And say we’ve mo money for
butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m
tired and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and
run with my stick along public railings, and make up for the
sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick flowers in other people’s gardens and learn to spit!
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go, or only bread and
pickles for a week, and hoard pens and pencils and beermats and
things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
and pay our rent and not swear in the street, and set a good
example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and
read the papers. But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprises when
suddenly I am old, And start
to wear purple!
● Jenny Joseph, “When I
Am Old I Will Wear Purple”
top of page
Home Page
|
