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15 October 2015  •  No. 42

¶ Invocation. “I could not move against this wind if I did not pray. / And all that is said of me that is untrue / would make lame my gait if I / could not free myself from / the weight of other's / malice. —Rabia of Basri (c. 717-801), among the most influential female Islamic saints and a central figure in the Sufi tradition

Left: Calligraphy by a.levant (deviant art)

¶ Call to worship—salsified Beethoven. Beethovan’s 5th Symphony, Sinfonia Cinco Salsa arranged by Sverre Indris Joner.

¶ If you open only one link on this page, this should be it. American rapper Prince Ea, “Why I Refuse to Let Technology Control Me” (3+ minutes).

¶ New painting (right) by John August Swanson. “Psalm 67: Our God has blessed the earth, our common home, with a wonderful harvest!” ©John August Swanson

¶ “The award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is, alas, as much a eulogy as an accolade. Certainly the Tunisian coalition of labor unions, business, lawyers and human-rights activists deserves the award for managing to turn their country’s “Jasmine Revolution” away from the brink of civil war and preserving a glimmer of hope for democracy.
        “The Nobel committee has a long tradition of awarding the prize to institutions, individuals or groups for the nobility of what they represent rather than for the efficacy of what they did.” —Editorial Board, New York Times
        The quartet comprises four organizations: the Tunisian General Labor Union; the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts; the Tunisian Human Rights League; and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. The Nobel Committee emphasized that the prize “is awarded to this quartet, not to the four individual organizations as such.”

¶ Hymn of praise. “Country Girl,” Carolina Chocolate Drops

¶ Vermont rabbi selected as “Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope. ”In the lead up to Pope Francis’ visit in September, the US Pontifical Mission Societies invited any and all to donate a joke, using the contest to raise money for three of its mission projects. On 5 October Rabbi Bob Alper was named the winner out of the 4,000+ submissions. —Go here to hear Alper deliver his winning lines. For more background, see Steve Lipman’s “No Joke: A Rabbi Is The Pope’s Official Funny Man.”

¶ When the military self-blesses and Fox News blames atheists for criticism. Sign on the left at the Marine Corps Base in Kaneohe, Hawaii. —“Marine Corps Base Under Fire for ‘God Bless the Military’ Sign”

¶ Good news. “History was made in South Africa today, when the synod of what was once probably the most conservative church on the planet, the Dutch Reformed Church, (NG Kerk/ DRC) in an overwhelming majority, voted in favor of ordaining gay ministers and blessing same sex unions.” —Melanie Nathan blog

¶ Confession. "We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy," former US President Jimmy Carter told Oprah Winfrey in an interview excerpt released 27 September. "I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."

¶ State of our union. “Baby Blues” cartoon dad, speaking to his son:
        “Hammie, as you grow up you have to decide if you’re going to be part of the problem or part of the solution.”
        Hammie: “Oh.” Then continuing: “Which one pays better?”

¶ “In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether ‘we, the people’ is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.” —Bill Moyers, “The Great American Class War: Plutocracy Versus Democracy”

¶ Resource for your church. Each fall the Children’s Defense Fund offers materials (Christian and multifaith versions) to local communities of faith for planning a “Children’s Sabbath” observance. It’s free—you only have to register.

¶ And then there was one. For the past 4 months, the US, Somalia and South Sudan (the globe’s newest country) had one thing in common: Withholding ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose 25th anniversary was last November.
        Then, South Sudan signed on as a signatory in May. Last week, Somalia did the same, becoming the 196th of the 197 UN member states to ratify the treaty.
        The treaty, which promotes a variety children’s human rights, was negotiated during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and signed in 1995. But such treaties require a two-thirds majority vote of the Senate to become law. (Not likely to happen soon.)
        The principal hurdle to US ratification is that some states allow children under 18 to be sentenced to life-without-parole for certain criminal convictions. And, of course, some claim the treaty would permit children to disobey their parents.

¶ Send in the clowns! As of August “Argentina has a new law for treating children in hospitals that requires doctors to literally send in the clowns. The groundbreaking law—the first in the world—for Argentina’s largest province, Buenos Aires, was inspired by the 'laughter therapy' of US physician Hunter 'Patch' Adams.'” (Robin Williams played the lead role in the "Patch Adams" movie.) —Kamilia Lahrichi, “Argentinian law makes laughter, bonding best medicine”

Left: photo byKamilia Lahrichi

¶ Bombs and balm. “Recently declassified documents confirmed what many had long suspected, that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the 1976 assassination of former diplomat Orlando Letelier, along with his colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffit, in Washington, DC. This news is of especially personal significance.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s new blog post, “Bombs and balm: Remembering Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffit”

¶ Chilean poet and musician Victor Jara was one of Pinochet’s victims. His alleged killer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez, a former Chilean army lieutenant, has been living in the US since 2012. In April of this year a US District Court in Florida ruled that Barrientos must stand trial in 2016 on claims of torture and extrajudicial killing. Listen to one of Jara’s songs, “Manifiesto.”

¶ “The Worst Trade Deal You’ve Never Heard Of: The Story of the Transpacific Partnership.” Robert Reich gives a wonderfully concise analysis of economic matters in a way we can understand (2+ minutes).

¶ Words of assurance. “One day we’ll wake to remember how lovely we are.” —Bruce Cockburn, “Wait No More”

¶ This will get you off the couch. The Swiss-based Top Secret Drum Line performs a feast for eyes and ears (6+ minutes).

¶ Intercession. Jewish Cantor Azi Schwartz singing “prayer for the dead” at Ground Zero in New York City, 25 September 2015.

¶ When did “Kumbaya” become such a bad thing? “Writing in The New York Times in 2010, [Columbia University’s Samuel G.] Freedman noted that ‘Kumbaya’ is actually a soulful cry for divine intervention on behalf of oppressed people. ‘The people who were crying, my Lord were blacks suffering under the Jim Crow regime of lynch mobs and sharecropping.'" —for more fascinating background on the song, see Linton Weeks, National Public Radio
        Michael E. Ross, writing in The Root in 2008, observes that "Derision of [Kumbaya] and its emotional foundation has become a required sign of toughness and pragmatism in American politics today, and this is especially true since the September 11 attacks."
        Some recent examples:
        •"If you're looking for somebody that's going to say, 'Hey listen we're not going to make it hard on you, it's all going to work it out, and it's just, you know, Kumbaya, ' I'm not your guy.’" —former presidential candidate Rick Perry
        •“Singing ‘Kumbaya” is not a foreign policy strategy.” —former presidential candidate Herman Cain
        •"I don't think that anybody expects Washington to be a campfire where everybody holds hands together and sings 'Kumbaya.' That's not what the nation's business is about." —former White House press secretary Jay Carney

¶ There are many big-name recordings of “Kumbaya,” given its popularity in the folk music revival of the ‘60s. A less known recording (and arrangement) is by the “Voices of Zimbabwe.”

¶ More language larceny (when faith language gets mangled in popular usage). “I want to apologize for allowing my emotions to control my actions in a negative manner. I also spoke to the cooler, apologized personally, and he’s forgiven me as Christ forgives all.” —Pittsburgh Pirates’ player Sean Rodriguez, on Twitter, for getting ejected in the National League wild-card game against the Cubs and taking his frustration out by using a water cooler as a punching bag. (USA Today)

¶ Just for fun. Rare 1962 video footage of a young Willie Nelson.

¶ Lectionary for Sunday next. “In the book by his name, Job is addressed directly by the Lord God: ‘Gird up you loins, oh human one! I have questions for you. See if you can answer.’” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s litany, "Gird up your loins," inspired by Job 39-42

¶ Preach it. “Hagar’s story [Genesis 16:1-16, 21] is prominently located in the early parts of our text because God wants us to know that in the beginning not only was there the word, not only did God create the world, but in the beginning God saw, heard and looked after people like Hagar. Hagar sees God face to face and doesn’t die. Hagar names God El-Roi, meaning “you are a God who sees.” Hagar is really the first theologian of the Bible. Sarah and Abraham fumble and stumble in God’s midst; Hagar boldly stands in the presence of God.” —Elijah Zehyoue, a pastoral resident at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, DC, “#SayHerName: A shoutout to my sisters in the wilderness”

¶ Call to the table. “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” —C.S. Lewis

¶ Hymn of commitment. “I then shall live as one who’s learned compassion. / I’ve been so loved, that I’ll risk loving too. / I know how fear builds walls instead of bridges; / I’ll dare to see another’s point of view. / And when relationships demand commitment, / Then I’ll be there to care and follow through.” —lyrics by Gloria Gaither, sung to the “Finlandia” tune by Jean Sibelius

¶ Benediction. “Christ have mercy on us” (above). Text of this litany, and a Spanish translation in graphic design, are posted here.

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

•“Gird up your loins,” a litany for worship inspired by Job 39-42

•“Bombs and balm: Remembering Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffit,” a new blog post

•“Christ have mercy on us,” a litany for worship by Nancy Hastings Sehested

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

8 October 2015  •  No. 41

¶ Invocation. “The morning waits / across the pond / where fog meets frost / to mingle and declare / though substance change / and rearrange— / what is loved / cannot be lost.” —Mary Etta Perry

¶ Call to worship. “Shadows” by David LaMotte.

Right: “Blood moon” photo from Kirkjufell Mountain, Iceland, by Suzy Moore

¶ Good news. “The announcement Friday that the United States and China will work together to enact “nearly complete bans” on the import and export of ivory represents the most significant step yet in efforts to shut down an industry that has fueled the illegal hunting of elephants, putting some species at risk..” —Rachael Bale, “US-China Deal to Ban Ivory Trade Is Good News for Elephants”

¶ Bold initiative. “In an effort to curb food waste, which accounts for roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide, France is making it illegal for supermarkets to throw away any food that is considered edible. The European country's parliament voted unanimously for the new law, which will force grocers to either donate the food to charity or make sure that it is used as animal feed. . . . As of July 2016, large supermarkets in France — those approximately 4,300 square feet and larger—will face fines of up to $82,000 for failing to comply.” —Roberto A. Ferdman, “France is making it illegal for supermarkets to throw away edible food”

¶ In memoriam.  Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015), tireless champion of civil rights, labor, feminist movements. For more background, see Kim Bellware’s “Grace Lee Boggs, Legendary Activist, Dies At 100”  And here is a statement issued by President Obama “On the Passing of Grace Lee Boggs.”

¶ Disingenuous news. On Friday, 2 October, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted: “We call on Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian oppo[sition and] civilians.” She also posted a statement from the US warning that civilian casualties “will only fuel more extremism and radicalization.”
        •On Saturday, 3 October, US warplanes bombed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz, killing 22 people.
        •On Thursday, 1 October, a student at Umpqua Community College in Oregon opened fire on classmates, killing 10, injuring another 9. When GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush was asked about the incident during a campaign event, among the first words he spoke were “Look, stuff happens.”
        •On Friday, 2 October, UN Ambassador Power tweeted a response to a Saudi air strike, four days before, on a wedding party in Yemen which killed at least 130: “Terrible news from Yemen of killing of innocent civilians & aid workers. Urgently need pol[itical] solution to crisis.”

¶ Candi Kinney of Rosenburg Gun Shop in Rosenburg, Oregon, site of last week’s mass murder on the Umpqua Community College campus], has just ordered more assault rifles. “Always a rush after a big shooting.”

¶ Spoof news. “Americans who are opposed to being shot, a constituency that has historically failed to find representation in Washington, are making a new effort to make its controversial ideas heard in the nation’s capital. “When you bring up the idea of not wanting to be shot with members of Congress, there’s always been pushback,” Carol Foyler, founder of the lobbying group Americans Opposed to Being Shot, said. “Their reaction has been, basically, ‘Not being shot: who’s going to support something like that?’” —Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

¶ Call to confession. “You have seen me in my sorrow, you have known me in my pain.” —“Holy is Your Name,” by The Many

¶ Sports statistic (another record) you may have missed. September was the first month since July 2009 that no National Football League player was arrested.

¶ Speak out. “A Texas mother spoke out against part of McGraw-Hill’s textbook, ‘World Geography,’ when she noticed that the language erased slavery by calling slaves ‘workers’ and including them in the section ‘Patterns of Immigration.’” —Casey Quinlan, “Texas Mother Outraged Her Son’s Textbook Called Slaves ‘Workers’ and ‘Immigrants’”

¶ Repentant update on the above story. McGraw-Hill has now apologized for its textbook language and has promised changes. —See Kindsay Deutsch’s “Textbook publisher apologies for calling slaves ‘workers’”

¶ Words of assurance. “Now if you feel that you can't go on / Because all of your hope is gone / And your life is filled with much confusion / Until happiness is just an illusion / And your world around is crumbling down, darlin' / Come on girl reach on out for me.” —“Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” The Four Tops

¶ Prayer of intercession. “Some people says the blues is just a sad thing / you know they got it all wrong / cause the blues will pick you up / when you been down so doggone long.” —“When the Blues Come Knockin’,” performed by Little Milton (song by Warren Haynes)

¶ Columbus Day is next Monday in the US. (In Canada, it’s Thanksgiving, and corresponds to harvest festivals in many other countries. In Mexico, it’s the “Day of the Race.”) A bit of background on the US holiday is below.

Right: Photo-University of Wisconsin-Madison.

        • “Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.” —Christopher Columbus
        •Watch this 3+ video surveying the legacy of Christopher Columbus.
        •Three major US cities—Berkeley, Seattle, and Minneapolis—have rechristened Columbus Day as “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Sixteen states, including Alaska, Hawaii and Oregon, don’t recognize Columbus Day as a public holiday. South Dakota has celebrated Native American Day since 1990.
        •“Columbus initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in early February 1494, first sending several dozen enslaved Taínos to Spain. Columbus described those he enslaved as ‘well made and of very good intelligence,’ and recommended to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that taxing slave shipments could help pay for supplies needed in the Indies.” —Bill Bigelow, “Time to Abolish Columbus Day”
        •When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."  —Vine Deloria, Jr.
        •“It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost this fear, they are so artless and so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.” —Christopher Columbus

¶ The story of Hatuey, the indigenous Taíno leader. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest, historian and social reformer, who witnessed, wrote about and protested the atrocities of the conquistadors, tells the story of Hatuey, a resistance leader of the Taíno people, who was captured by the Spanish in what is now Cuba. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake.
        As Hatuey (who would later become the first Cuban national hero) was bound to the stake and surrounded by brush, a Spanish friar attempted to covert the “Indian.” The friar explained to him about conversion and baptism, noting the options of eternity spent either in heaven or hell. When offered the opportunity of baptism (to save his soul, not his skin), Hautey asked for time to think it over.
        Finally, he responded, requesting final clarification: “And the baptized, where do they go after death?”
        “To heaven,” said the friar.”
        “And the Spanish, where do they go?”
        “If baptized,” the friar answered, “to heaven, of course.”
        After weighing his decision, Hautey concluded: “Then I don’t want to go there. Don’t baptize me. I prefer to go to hell.”

¶ Theological rationale for the conquest. Writing 1571 in opposition to Bartolomé de las Casas’ advocacy for indigenous citizens of the Americas, a Spanish church official in Peru penned the following parable as a theological rationale for conquest:
        "God acted . . . as a father who has two daughters: one very white, full of grace and gentility; the other very ugly, bleary-eyed, stupid and bestial. (Continue reading this 16th century theological rationale for the conquest of the Americas.)

¶ If you want to read about a European on Columbus Day, learn about Bartolomé de las Casas. His story is one of unfolding repentance over the course of his life in regard to treatment of the indigenous population of the Spanish conquest of the “New World.” (Continue reading “Witness to villainy,” which contains an excerpt from his eyewitness accounts of Spanish conquistadors’ brutal treatment of indigenous people in the Americas.)

¶ The mention of “papal bulls” would cause many Americans to think about Pamplona and the annual running of the bulls. Not quite. A papal “bull” is essentially a Pope’s official acknowledgement of a land grant. Several in the late 15th century together framed a church “doctrine of discovery” to Spain’s and Portugal’s respective conquests, conveying the Pope’s blessing “to capture, vanquish, and subdue the Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ and put them into perpetual slavery and to take all their possession and their property.” —Vinnie Rotondaro, “Doctrine of Discovery: A scandal in plain sight”

¶ The “Discovery doctrine” was cited by the US Supreme Court as early as 1823 to justify the way colonial powers laid claim to lands belonging to foreign sovereign nations; and it was cited as recently as 2005 in a Supreme Court case regarding a dispute over Native American land rights.

¶ Numerous initiatives, from religious (including Catholic) and secular individuals and organizations, have for years called on the Vatican to repudiate the “doctrine of discovery.”  —See “Mobilized Efforts Working to Revoke the Doctrine of Discovery” and Renee D. Gadoua, “Nuns Blast Catholic Church's 'Doctrine Of Discovery' That Justified Indigenous Oppression”

¶ Many on the receiving end of the modern missionary movement’s history associate its meaning with the “doctrine of discovery” legacy mentioned above. Only more polite.

¶ Preach it. “I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.” —Hafez

¶ “The very first naturalization law in the US, which established in 1790 the oath and other features of today’s ceremony, required an aspiring immigrant to be “a free white person.” For more than a century, as our upstart nation grew slowly into a world power, nativists labored to place the ‘white person’ standard within some scientific hierarchy of races, always with white people on top.” —civil rights historian Taylor Branch,  speaking at a White House naturalization ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. (Thanks, Richard.)

¶ Lectionary for Sunday next. "Worthy, worthy the One who conceived the earth and gave birth to bears and basil and beatitudes alike. / The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work! / At the sound of your Name the trees rejoice, for you are clothed with honor and clad in beauty. / The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!" (Continue reading Ken Sehested's "The earth is satisfied,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104.)

¶ The call to the table sometimes has a Maundy Thursday mood; sometimes, more like Cinco de Mayo. And sometimes it's a slow dance with the Holy Spirit, with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Rivera Paradise” setting the tone and tempo.

¶ Altar call. “There are no secular places. Only sacred places and desecrated places.” —Wendell Berry

¶ Find an hour in the coming days to watch this Bill Moyers video focused on the work of Wendell Berry, on the 35th anniversity of publishing his The Unsettling of America, with friends from near and far gathered to address the topic.

¶ Just for fun. “25 Award-Winning Wedding Photos,” Huffington Post

¶ From the bitter roots of the Columbian conquest has grown the Spirit’s counter witness, including the legacy of Martin de Porres Velázquez, O.P. (December 9, 1579 – November 3, 1639), canonized in 1962 as the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony. (Art by Ade Bethune, ©Ade Bethune Collection, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN.)

¶ Benediction. “It is said that those who walk on flat ground need not hold hands. But we who climb a steep and slippery road must hold onto each other to make our way securely.” —St. Francis de Sales

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

•“The earth is satisfied,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

•“Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

•“Another world is possible,” an introduction to Dan Buttry’s new book, We Are the Socks

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are cherished. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends

1 October 2015  •  No. 40

Special Edition
Quotes from Thomas Merton

Introduction: A special issue of “Signs of the Times” devoted to Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 – 10 December 1968) quotes was already in the works, to mark the centennial of his birth. But when Pope Francis, in his historic address to a joint session of Congress, lifted Merton's name for special recognition (along with three other Americans), it seemed timely to move up the schedule. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s "Introduction." For links to resources listed at bottom, go to this edition of "Signs of the Times.")

§  §  §

§ Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.

§ The flight from the world is nothing else but the flight from self-concern.

§ Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if earthly creatures were rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached form ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.

§ Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

§ To say “God is love” is like saying, “Eat Wheaties”. . . . There’s no difference, except . . . that people know they are supposed to look pious when God is mentioned.

§ Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see everyone and everything in the light of God.

§ I drink beer whenever I can lay my hands on any. I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.

§ The beginning of the fight against hatred . . . is not the commandment to love, what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commitment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.

§ The humble receive praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass. . . . Humility is the surest sign of strength.

§ What is the use of postmarking our mail with exhortations to “pray for peace” and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles. This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls “mocking God”—and mocking God far more effectively than the atheists do.

§ We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them.

§ Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.

§ Few Christians have been able to face the fact that non-violence comes very close to the heart of the Gospel ethic, and is perhaps essential to it. But non-violence is not simply a matter of marching with signs under the eyes of unfriendly police. The partial failure of liberal non-violence has brought out the start reality that our society itself is radically violence and that violence is built into its very structure.

§ Merely to demand support and obedience to an established disorder which is essentially violent through and through will not qualify as “peace-making.”

§ The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

§ Solitude that is just solitude and nothing else (i.e., excludes everything else but solitude) is worthless. True solitude embraces everything, for it is the fullness of love that rejects nothing and no one, that is open to All in All.

§ If war propaganda succeeds it is because people want war, and only need a few good reasons to justify their own desire.

§ Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await divine mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer.

§ Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

§ There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs: activism and over-work.  The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help every one in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

§ It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

§ Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the Jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go over on the far side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before. . . . It has been raining heavily. All the roads were deep in mud. It took me some time to discover the front-wheel drive. I skidded into the ditches and got out again, I went through creeks, I got stuck in the mud, I bumped into trees. . . .
        I drove the Jeep madly into the forest in a happy, rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and I said, "O Mary, I love you," as I went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushing madly into the underbrush and back out again.
        Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stern to stern. Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the Jeep out again.

§ A tree gives glory to God first of all by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be, it is imitating an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.

§ God has the most annoying manner of showing up when we least want; of confronting us in the strangest ways.

§ Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

§ If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God you have found.

§ The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all. To some, peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others, peace means the freedom to rob neighbors without interruption. To still others, it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

§ Where abstract thought and concrete existence enter into conflict, the mark of true contemplatives is that they are on the side of concrete existence.

§ The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.

§ A 1963 letter to French philosopher Jacques Maritain: I am putting into the mail a mimeographed copy of my "unpublishable" book on "Peace in the Post Christian Era." Unpublishable because forbidden by our upright and upstanding Abbot General who does not want to leave Christian civilization without the bomb to crown its history of honor. He says that my defense of peace fausserait le message de la vie contemplative [would falsify the message of the contemplative life]. The fact that a monk should be concerned about this issue is thought—by "good monks"—to be scandalous. A hateful distraction, withdrawing one's mind from Baby Jesus in the Crib. Strange to say, no one seems concerned at the fact that the crib is directly under the bomb.

§ Do not be too quick to assume your enemies are savages just because they are your enemies. Perhaps they are your enemies because they think you are a savage. Or perhaps they are afraid of you because they feel that you are afraid of them. 

§ It seems to me that we have little genuine interest in human liberty and in the human person. What we are interested in, on the contrary, is the unlimited freedom of the corporation. When we call ourselves the “free world” we mean first of all the world in which business is free. . . . It was only when money became involved that the Negro demonstrations finally impressed themselves upon the American mind as being real.

§ [T]he Negro problem is really a White problem.

§ The “death of the old man” [in the history of Christian thought] is not the destruction of personality but the dissipation of an illusion, and the discovery of the new humanity is the realization of what was there all along.

§ Buddhist “mindfulness,” far from being contemptuous of life, is extremely solicitous for all life. It has two aspects: one, the penetration of the meaning and reality of suffering by meditation, and two, the protection of all beings against suffering by nonviolence and compassion.

§ Be still: / There is no longer any need of comment. / It was a lucky wind / That blew away his halo with his cares, / A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

§ I don’t feel that I can in conscience, at a time like this, go on writing just about things like meditation, though that has its point. I cannot just bury my head in a lot of rather tiny and secondary monastic studies either. I think I have to face the big issues, the life-and-death issues: and this is what everyone is afraid of.

§ There has generally been no conception at all that whites had anything to learn from the Negro. And now, the irony is that Negroes are offering us a “message of salvation,” but we are so blinded by our own self-sufficiency and self-conceit that we do not recognize the peril in which we have put ourselves by ignoring the offer. . . . [Negroes] are offering us the occasion to enter with them into a providential reciprocity willed for us by God.

§ Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

§ The word of the Gospel is understood only when it is obeyed. It is known to those who strive to practice it.

§ The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.

§ When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.

§ When all the men of war are killed / And flags have fallen into dust / Your cross and mine will tell men still / He died on each for both of us / That we might become the brothers of God / And learn to know the Christ of burnt men.

§ The Negro spirituals of the last century remain as classic examples of what a living liturgical hymnody out to be, and how it comes into being: not in the study of the research worker or in the monastery library, still less in the halls of curial offices, where human being suffer oppression, where they are deprived of identity, where their lives are robbed of meaning, and where the desire of freedom and the imperative demand of truth forces them to give it meaning.

§ A white detective in Birmingham, watching the children file by the score into paddy wagons, gave expression to the mind of the nation when he said: “If this is religion, I don’t want any part of it.” If this is really what the mind of white America has concluded, we stand judged by our own thought.

§ In the end contemplatives suffer the anguish of realizing that they no longer know what God is . . . because “God is not a what” . . . but a “Who.”

§ At the close of what turned out to be his final talk, at the December 1968 interfaith conference of monastics held in Bangkok, Merton quipped: So I will disappear from view, and we can all go have a Coke or something.

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Have a Merton quote or anecdote or other resource to share? Offer it below in the reader comment section.

RESOURCES

Video resources on the web

• Listen to Kate Campbell's original song, "Prayer of Thomas Merton," using the words to Merton's "My Lord God" prayer in designed format, above.

• “Thomas Merton – PBS Video,” 11 minutes

• CBS “Modern Masters of Religion,” program on Merton (27 minutes)

• “Thomas Merton from ‘Who Cares About the Saints?’ with Ft. James Martin SJ” (11+ minutes)

• “Fr. Matthew remembers Thomas Merton,” recollections of one of Merton’s fellow monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani (15 minutes)

• “Soul Searching,”  three 2+ minutes videos of different periods in Merton’s life

Biography

• There are more than two dozen Merton biographies. Of the ones I’ve read, Jim Forest’s Living With Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton (revised edition, 2008) is far and away the best. (While you’re at it, Forest’s biography of Dorothy Day, All Is Grace, is also my favorite in that collection.)

• For an essay-length overview of Merton’s legacy, see Jim Forest’s “Thomas Merton’s Advice to Peacemaker,” Jim Forest

Also of interest. Bellarmine University in Louisville is home to the Thomas Merton Center. Their site also has a brief biographical sketch along with an extensive Merton bibliography.

Alas, I cut nearly three-fourths of my collection of quotes to maintain the parameter of “Signs of the Times.” That extra material is posted in this “More Merton quotes” file.

Special note on language edits. When alteration of the above quotes for gender inclusivity is relatively simple, I have done so. When such changes would generate awkward sentence construction or the piling up of words, I have left existing language in place. When language ceases to be transparent, calling attention to itself rather than the ideas being expressed, it fails. These are, of course, subjective choices. Unfortunately, there is no unadulterated language. (As Merton might say, this is why the deepest level of prayer goes beyond words—or as the Apostle Paul knew, some things require expression in “sighs too deep for words.” —Romans 8:26)
        Gender inclusive language itself is hardly sufficient, given its reliance on anthropomorphic imagery for God. And Lord knows what else. But that’s a discussion for another time. —Ken Sehested

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