Each human being is at the same time both riddled with divine sparks and in desperate need of repair. Each person is the whole world. And every human action therefore plays a role in the final restitution. Whatever we do is related to this ultimate task: to return all things to their original place in God. Everything a person does affects the process. — Lawrence Kushner
Recent
Public Broadcasting Service story about the history of the Haw River in North Carolina
Obfuscation: When words hide the truth What they said: “The demands of industrialization took a heavy toll on the river.” What they mean: The river got screwed. — Public Broadcasting Service story about the history of the Haw River in North Carolina
Thomas Keating
Sacrifice is absolutely essential for human growth; yet the abiding disposition of sacrifice is rarely established without some experience of suffering. Of course suffering itself does not make one holy and can even lead to despair. Despair is suffering that fails to teach. — Thomas Keating
Jonathan Tran
As Vicki Divoll, a former CIA lawyer who now teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, observed, "People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one." — Jonathan Tran
David Whyte
Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. — David Whyte
Woody Guthrie
Yes, as through this world I've wandered, I've seen lots of funny men. Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. And as through your life your travel, Yes, as through your life your roam, You won't never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home. — Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
I mined in your mines, and I gathered in your corn. I been working, mister, since the day I was born. Now I worry all the time like I never did before, 'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see, This world is such a great and a funny place to be. Oh, the gamblin' man is rich, an' the workin' man is poor, And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. — Woody Guthrie
Stephen E. Fowl
Disciples are called to “live your lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel” [Philippians 1:27]. But this translation doesn’t capture the concreteness of Paul’s admonition.
The Greek word translated as “live your life” is politeuesthe, from polis, and is more accurately translated as “live your lives as citizens,” or better yet, “let your politics be worthy of the Gospel of Christ.” The word’s clear meaning has to do with living as a citizen, or managing civic affairs, or conducting one’s self as pledged to some law of life.
Paul makes it very clear that the interests and aims of the church are different from and largely at variance to the interests and aims of the empire.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
Nicholas Kristof
For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year [2012], about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands. — Nicholas Kristof