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All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.

The facts of this world seen clearly
Are seen through tears
Why tell me then
there is something wrong with my eyes?

We imitate whom we adore.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy;
I awoke and saw that life was service;
I acted and, behold, service was joy.

I am a violent man learning to be nonviolent.

Why, when God's world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?

That which man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

An elderly man, walking in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, said: “Risk in faith, decide in hope, and suffer the consequences in love.”

When our moral lives are shaped by fear, and safety is worshiped as the highest good, we are tempted to make health and security the primary justification for right action. We thus lead timid lives, fearing the risks of bold gestures.

Instead of being courageous, we are content to be safe. Instead of being hopeful, we make virtues of cynicism and irony which in turn keep us a safe distance from risky commitments. We are more likely to tell our children to “be careful” than to “be good.” The extravagant vision that would change the world gets traded in for the passive maxim “do no harm.” Our moral lives atrophy on this new diet of self-protection.

To avoid revolution means to take the side of the establishment. To say that the church should not meddle with the problem of open housing is to conclude that the house owner and the real estate agent, even if members of the churches, receive no concrete moral guidance from beyond themselves. To say that it is not the business of the church to second-guess the experts on details of political or military strategy, to have judgments on the moral legitimacy of particular laws, is to give one’s blessing to whatever goes on. Those who object to the church’s having something to say about economies, especially if that be critical of the existing capitalistic order, have no qualms about seeing the church on the other side of the economic question, or about economies having a say in the life of the churches.