"You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government’s responsibility. It is not your school’s or your social club’s or your church’s or your neighbor’s or your fellow citizen’s. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours."  --August Wilson

"We must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood [and sisterhood]."  —Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Working in conflict mediation for years, I heard it often: two groups in conflict would be brought together, and someone would say something like, “Well, we all know why we’re here” — and immediately the fracture would deepen, because some people were there because of something that happened last week, whereas others were there because of something systemic. 

Or somebody, in an attempt to create common ground, would say “All our lives have been impacted by this conflict.” As a mediator, I could see some people checking out of the process, because the “our” wasn’t brave enough in that sentence. Many rooms are filled with hurting people, yes, but hurting people whose hurt has been disproportionate to each other. Acknowledging that won’t break us, it might even make us. 

--Pádraig Ó Tuama

"Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master, --David Foster Wallace

“You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness … has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.”  --David Foster Wallace

 Nothing is sweet or easy about community. Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to each other as a gesture of hope.

In community we say: “Life is full of gains and losses, joys and sorrows, ups and downs—but we do not have to live it alone. We want to drink our cup together and thus celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care.”

Community is like a large mosaic. Each little piece seems so insignificant. One piece is bright red, another cold blue or dull green, another warm purple, another sharp yellow, another shining gold. Some look precious, others ordinary. Some look valuable, others worthless. Some look gaudy, others delicate. We can do little with them as individual stones except compare them and judge their beauty and value. When, however, all these little stones are brought together in one big mosaic, portraying the face of Christ, who would ever question the importance of any one of them? If one of them, even the least spectacular one, is missing, the face is incomplete. Together in the one mosaic, each little stone is indispensable and makes a unique contribution to the glory of God. That’s community, a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world.

--Henri Nouwen

"Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."  --Paulo Freire

"Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us when we are together that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other. Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment—that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life."  --Henri Nouwen

"It is not enough for us to possess human nature, we have to act as humans, we have to exercise all the deepest capacities of our nature. More than this, we have to act as persons—freely! As soon as we come into existence we begin to obey the Law of Love."  —Thomas Merton

“It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.”  --Mark Strand

The End

THE END

by Mark Strand

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

"The concept of setting aside one day for giving thanks doesn’t fit. We [the Ho-Chunk Nation] think of every day as Thanksgiving."  --Anne Thundercloud of the Ho-Chunk Nation

"Nonviolent struggle is a technique for conducting conflicts by social, psychological, economic, and political methods of protest, noncooperation, and disruptive intervention. It is a technique built on the social, economic, and political application of basic human stubbornness—the determination and ability to dissent, to refuse to cooperate, to defy, and to disrupt. In other words, people may refuse to do things they are asked to do, and may do what they are forbidden to do. All governments rely on cooperation and obedience for their very existence. When people choose to withhold or withdraw that cooperation, governments are left without any pillars to support their weight."  --Gene Sharp

"It is not "forgive and forget" as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future."  -- Alan Paton

Silence and Speaking Belong Together

"To know ourselves truly and acknowledge fully our own unique journey, we need to be known and acknowledged by others for who we are. We cannot live a spiritual life in secrecy. We cannot find our way to true freedom in isolation. Silence without speaking is as dangerous as solitude without community. They belong together."  --Henri Nouwen

 If you know something hurtful and not true, don't say it.

If you know something hurtful and true, don't say it.

If you know something helpful but not true, don't say it.

If you know something helpful and true, find the right time to say it.

- anonymous (sometimes attributed to Buddha) 

"When unity is evolved out of diversity, then there is a real and abiding national progress."  --Manhar-ul-Haque

Holy Silence

At first silence might only frighten us. In silence we start hearing voices of darkness: our jealousy and anger, our resentment and desire for revenge, our lust and greed, and our pain over losses, abuses, and rejections. These voices are often noisy and boisterous. They may even deafen us. Our most spontaneous reaction is to run away from them and return to our entertainment.

But if we have the discipline to stay put and not let these dark voices intimidate us, they will gradually lose their strength and recede into the background, creating space for the softer, gentler voices of the light.

These voices speak of peace, kindness, gentleness, goodness, joy, hope, forgiveness, and most of all, love. They might at first seem small and insignificant, and we may have a hard time trusting them. However, they are very persistent and they will be stronger if we keep listening. They come from a very deep place and from very far. They have been speaking to us since before we were born, and they reveal to us that there is no darkness in the One who sent us into the world, only light. They are part of God’s voice calling us from all eternity: “My beloved child, my favorite one, my joy.”

--Henri Nouwen

"Change to me has nothing to do with a momentary event. Change has to do with consistency."  --Aldis Hodge

“However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.”  --Muriel Rukeyser

“Whatever has happened, whatever is going to happen in the world, it is the living moment that contains the sum of the excitement, this moment in which we touch life and all the energy of the past and future. Here is all the developing greatness of the dream of the world, the pure flash of momentary imagination, the vision of life lived outside of triumph or defeat, in continual triumph and defeat, in the present, alive. All the crafts of subtlety, all the effort, all the loneliness and death, the thin and blazing threads of reason, the spill of blessing, the passion behind these silences — all the invention turns to one end: the fertilizing of the moment, so that there may be more life.”   --Muriel Rukeyser

"When one breaks the law to resist the probability of nuclear war, one is not just breaking the law . . . one is upholding the one law from which all decent and just law derives: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’"  —Philip Berrigan

Fools for Christ

Sometimes we have to dare to be fools for Christ. That means that sometimes we have to be willing to give food to people who don’t really need or deserve it. And sometimes we have to be willing to work with some people who might even exploit us. Maybe this is as close as we can come to an experience of self-empyting. It is the experience of being useless in the presence of the Lord.

Understand me well, I am not trying to praise impracticality, nor am I trying to suggest that you should not stop doing the things you are doing when they prove to be counterproductive, but I am saying if you come in touch with the experience of being used or the experience of being useless, you might in fact be close to a true Christian experience, or closer than you sought.

--Henri Nouwen

“Life Goes On”

Dur­ing these tur­bu­lent times we must remind our­selves repeat­ed­ly that life goes on.

This we are apt to forget.

The wis­dom of life tran­scends our wisdoms;

the pur­pose of life out­lasts our purposes;

the process of life cush­ions our processes.

The mass attack of dis­il­lu­sion and despair,

dis­tilled out of the col­lapse of hope,

has so invad­ed our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unre­al and ephemeral.

There seems to be lit­tle ener­gy left for aught but futility.

This is the great deception.

By it whole peo­ples have gone down to oblivion 

with­out the will to affirm the great and per­ma­nent strength of the clean and the commonplace.

Let us not be deceived.

It is just as impor­tant as ever to attend to the lit­tle graces

by which the dig­ni­ty of our lives is main­tained and sustained.

Birds still sing;

the stars con­tin­ue to cast their gen­tle gleam over the des­o­la­tion of the battlefields,

and the heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gra­cious deed.

There is no need to fear evil.

There is every need to under­stand what it does,

how it oper­ates in the world,

what it draws upon to sus­tain itself.

We must not shrink from the knowl­edge of the evil­ness of evil.

Over and over we must know that the real tar­get of evil is not destruc­tion of the body,

the reduc­tion to rub­ble of cities;

the real tar­get of evil is to cor­rupt the spir­it of man 

and to give his soul the con­ta­gion of inner disintegration.

When this happens,

there is noth­ing left,

the very citadel of man is cap­tured and laid waste.

There­fore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from with­out to within.

This would be to be over­come by evil.

To drink in the beau­ty that is with­in reach,

to clothe one’s life with sim­ple deeds of kindness,

to keep alive a sen­si­tive­ness to the move­ment of the spir­it of God

in the quiet­ness of the human heart and in the work­ings of the human mind—

this is as always the ulti­mate answer to the great deception.

--Excerpt­ed from Med­i­ta­tions of the Heart by Howard Thur­man, pub­lished by Bea­con Press.

"To heal our society, our psyches must heal as well. The military, social, and environmental dangers that threaten us do not come from sources outside the human heart; they are reflections of it, mirroring the fears, greeds, and hostility that separate us from ourselves and each other."  —Joanna Macy 

Waste Some Time with God

"In our utilitarian culture, where we suffer from a collective compulsion to do something practical, helpful, or useful, and where we feel compelled to make a contribution that can give us a sense of worth, contemplative prayer is a form of radical criticism. It is not useful or practical. It is simply to waste time for and with God. It cuts a hole in our busyness and reminds us and others that it is God and not we who creates and sustains the world."  --Henri Nouwen

"Central to the advancement of human civilization is the spirit of open enquiry. We must learn not only to tolerate our differences. We must welcome them as the richness and diversity which can lead to true intelligence."  —Albert Einstein 

"Now we can no longer just give answers and explanations, we have to become the answer, and our own transformation is the only credible explanation. It seems we must tame and integrate the demon of violence within ourselves before we have anything to say to anybody else."  --Richard Rohr

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased. "  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why Pray?

Why should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read, and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment?

The answer is: because God is greater than my mind and my heart and what is really happening in the house of prayer is not measurable in terms of human success and failure.

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."  --Jonas Salk

"I am deeply convinced that we can only work for the liberation of the people if we love them deeply. And we can only love them deeply when we recognize their gift to us. I am deeply convinced of the importance of social change and of the necessity to work hard to bring about a just and peaceful society. But I also feel that this task can only be done in a spirit of gratitude and joy. That is why I am more and more convinced of the importance to live in the Spirit of the Risen Christ. Christ is the God who entered into solidarity with our struggles and became truly a God-with-us. It was this solidarity that led him to the cross by which he overcame death and evil. Believing in the Risen Lord means believing that in and through Christ the evil one has been overcome and that death no longer is the final word. Working for social change, to me, means to make visible in time and place that which has already been accomplished in principle by God himself. This makes it possible to struggle for a better world not out of frustration, resentment, anger, or self-righteousness, but out of care, love, forgiveness, and gratitude."  

--Henri Nouwen

Acting in God’s Name

The first questions are not “How much do we do?” or “How many people do we help out?” but “Are we interiorly at peace?” . . . Jesus’ actions flowed from his interior communion with God. His presence was healing, and it changed the world. In a sense he didn’t do anything! “Everyone who touched him was healed” (Mark 6:56). . . .

When we love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, we cannot do other than love our neighbor, and our very selves. It is in being fully rooted in the heart of God that we are creatively connected with our neighbor as well as with our deepest self. In the heart of God we can see that the other human beings who live on this earth with us are also God’s sons and daughters, and belong to the same family we do. There, too, I can recognize and claim my own belovedness, and celebrate with my neighbors.

Our society thinks economically: “How much love do I give to God, how much to my neighbor, and how much to myself?” But God says, “Give all your love to me, and I will give to you, your neighbor, and yourself.”

We are not talking here about moral obligations or ethical imperatives. We are talking about the mystical life. It is the intimate communion with God that reveals to us how to live in the world and act in God’s Name.

--Henri Nouwen

"I was raised to believe that my faith should never be a sword to strike down another community. It should always be a shield to protect."  --Stacey Abrams

 "A condition of friendship is the abdication of power over another, indeed the abdication even of the wish for power over one another. And one is drawn to it not by need but by choice. If love is about the bliss of primal unfreedom, friendship is about the complicated enjoyment of human autonomy. As soon as a friend attempts to control a friend, the friendship ceases to exist. But until a lover seeks to possess his beloved, the love has hardly begun. Where love is all about the juggling of the power to hurt, friendship is about creating a space where power ceases to exist. There is a cost to this, of course. Friends will never provide what lovers provide: the ultimate resort, that safe space of repose, that relaxation of the bedsheets. But they provide something more reliable, and certainly less painful. They provide an acknowledgement not of the child within but of the adult without; they allow for an honesty which doesn’t threaten pain and criticism which doesn’t imply rejection. They promise not the bliss of the womb but the bracing adventure of the world. They do not solve loneliness, yet they mitigate it."  --Andrew Sullivan

 "This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."  --Walt Whitman

Rune of Hospitality

I saw a stranger today.

I put food for him

in the eating-place

And drink

in the drinking-place

And music

in the listening-place.

In the Holy name

of the Trinity

He blessed myself

and my family.

And the lark said in her warble

Often, often, often

Goes Christ

in the stranger’s guise.

O, oft and oft and oft,

Goes Christ

in the stranger’s guise.

--Traditional

"Public must be convinced three times: That there is a problem; to oppose current conditions and policies; to want, no longer fear, alternatives."  --Bill Moyer

"A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess."  --A. Philip Randolph

"Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on. "  --Thurgood Marshall

Cup of Sorrow, Cup of Joy

"When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. The sorrow overwhelms us, makes us throw ourselves on the ground, facedown, and sweat drops of blood. Then we need to be reminded that our cup of sorrow is also our cup of joy and that one day we will be able to taste the joy as fully as we now taste the sorrow."  --Henri Nouwen

"The unity we desire doesn’t erase those on the margins or those who are different but instead holds every member as essential, like we strive for in the church."  --Revs. Laurel and Colin Matthewson

"To choose hope is to step firmly into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass."  -- Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

"We’re not here to be safe, those texts tell us, but to risk everything. We didn’t come here for the purpose which contemporary Western society seems to want us to believe we’re here for: to aspire to accumulating sufficient wealth so that we can ‘retire’ at the age of 60 or thereabouts, to a nice house in a nice safe neighborhood, to stop work and play golf or go on round-the-world cruises, to stop being useful and wait to die. It’s not that we shouldn’t hope for safety and pleasure in our lives—but these things shouldn’t be our primary motivation. We’re here to risk everything to fulfil our calling, to walk wholeheartedly along the path which leads us there, even if that path sometimes is dangerous, or hard."  —Sharon Blackie

The Blessing Hidden in Grief

"What to do with our losses? . . . We must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply. To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth of our brokenness. Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything is constantly shifting and changing. . . . But in the midst of all this pain, there is a strange, shocking, yet very surprising voice. It is the voice of the One who says: “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.” That’s the unexpected news: there is a blessing hidden in our grief. Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn! Somehow, in the midst of our tears, a gift is hidden. Somehow, in the midst of our mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. Somehow, the cries that well up from our losses belong to our songs of gratitude."  --Henri Nouwen

"Part of understanding the notion of Justice is to recognize the disproportions among which we live. . . . It takes an awful lot of living with the powerless to really understand what it is like to be powerless, to have your voice, thoughts, ideas and concerns count for very little. We, who have been given much, whose voices can be heard, have a great duty and responsibility to make our voices heard with absolute integrity for those who are powerless."  —John O'Donohue

"When you change your perception of an event or a person, at that moment the perceived also changes. Subject and object are joined by perception. This account of a world resting on consciousness seems far flung only if we hold onto the notion of a separate self."  --Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D

"If you are willing to look at another person's behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all."  --Yogi Bhajan

The Fellowship of the Weak

"Fear, shame, and guilt often make us stay in our isolation and prevent us from realizing that our handicap, whatever it is, can always become the way to an intimate and healing fellowship in which we come to know one another as humans. After all, everyone shares the handicap of mortality. Our individual, physical, emotional, and spiritual failures are but symptoms of this disease. Only when we use these symptoms of mortality to form a fellowship of the weak can hope emerge. It is in the confession of our brokenness that the real strength of new and everlasting life can be affirmed and made visible."  --Henri Nouwen

"Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty, and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics."  --Vandana Shiva

Claiming the Light

"People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. They discover that there are people who heal each other’s wounds, forgive each other’s offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory."  --Henri Nouwen

"When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide."  —John Lewis

Saintly Counselors

 

"In the past, the saints had very much moved to the background of my consciousness. During the last few months, they re-entered my awareness as powerful guides on the way to God.

"I read the lives of many saints and great spiritual men and women, and it seems that they have become real members of my spiritual family, always present to offer suggestions, ideas, advice, consolation, courage, and strength. It is very hard to keep your heart and mind directed toward God when there are no examples to help you in your struggle. Without saints you easily settle for less-inspiring people and quickly follow the ways of others who for a while seem exciting but who are not able to offer lasting support. I am happy to have been able to restore my relationship with many great saintly men and women in history who, by their lives and works, can be real counselors to me."  --Henri Nouwen