Our heart might desire to help others: to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners and offer a shelter to travelers; but meanwhile, we have surrounded ourselves with a wall of fear and hostile feelings, instinctively avoiding people and places where we might be reminded of our good intentions. — Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
If there is any concept worth restoring to its original depth and vocative potential, it is the concept of hospitality. It is one of the richest biblical terms that can deepen and broaden our insight in our relationships to our fellow human beings. Old and New Testament stories not only show how serious our obligation is to welcome the stranger in our home, but they also tell us that guests are carrying precious gifts with them, which they are eager to reveal to a receptive host. — From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
As I read the quote below from Thomas Merton’s book Seeds of Destruction, I noted how his thoughts from the 1960’s fit in with what is happening today in the world of mass media.
…in the moral climate of mass opinion, engineered by publicists, “truth” tends to mean a sensational revelation of some new iniquity on the part of the enemy. And the misfortune is that on both sides there is enough real iniquity around to make the concoction of sensational news items quite easy. Justice, in this climate, operates on a double standard: one for one’s own side and another for the enemy, so that what in him is criminal is, in us, simple “realism.” — Seeds of Destruction (location 1067, Kindle Edition)
We as a nation must wake up before the totality of the nightmare of George Orwell’s book 1984 becomes this nation’s reality. Do we really want this to be our reality?
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. — 1984
In the solitude of the heart we can truly listen to the pains of the world because there we can recognize them not as strange and unfamiliar pains, but as pains that are indeed our own. There we can see that what is most universal is most personal and that indeed nothing human is strange to us. There we can feel that the cruel reality of history is indeed the reality of the human heart, our own included, and that to protest asks, first of all, for a confession of our own participation in the human condition. There we can indeed respond. — Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
We need to hear these prophetic words from Thomas Merton today. Once more, his words, written in the mid-1960’s are profoundly relevant as events in the United States continue to reveal the warped views of this administration and the criminal actions of DHS and ICE against both citizens and undocumented residents of this country. This insanity has to stop! Here is Merton’s challenge to us today:
In this most critical moment of history we have a twofold task. It is a task in which the whole race is to some degree involved. But the greatest responsibility of all rests upon the citizens of the great power blocs which hold the fate of other nations in their hands.
On one hand we have to defend and foster the highest human values: the right of man to live freely and develop his life in a way worthy of his moral greatness. On the other hand we have to protect man against the criminal abuse of the enormous destructive power which he has acquired. To the American and Western European, this twofold task seems reducible in practice to a struggle against totalitarian dictatorship and against war. — Seeds of Destruction (location 950ff — Kindle Edition)
Verse of the day
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
– Philippians 4:8
Voice of the day
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.
– Simone de Beauvoir
Prayer of the day
True God, allow us to proclaim honest expressions of reality, no matter what truths we may unearth.
A good friend and colleague in ministry shared a quote by Howard Thurman on her Facebook page. It is found in an article that he wrote in 1946 titled The Fascist Masquerade. In this article he addresses topics such as Christian Nationalism, Americanism, the KKK, fascism in WW2 Europe, and anti-semitism. Thurman wrote the following in a letter to his friend, Ruth Smith, in April of 1946. “I have just completed an essay on the ‘Fascist Masquerade’ which marks my venturing into a brand new field of creative expression,” Thurman wrote his friend, Ruth Smith, in April 1946. “I shall let you know what becomes of it.”
These words are prophetically relevant today as they were when he wrote them They spoke to me of the challenges we face in this country today as I watch the ongoing dismantling of democracy here and is well worth the time to read and study.
It is to the utter condemnation of the Church that large groups of believers all over the United States have stood, and, at present, stand on the side of a theory of inequality among humans that causes the Church to practice in its own body some of the most vicious forms of racial prejudice. It often affirms separateness solely on the basis of race, which separateness it insists upon in worship, in organization and even in its graveyards….
The bitter truth is that the Church has permitted the various hate-inspired groups in our common life to establish squatter’s rights in the minds of believers because there has been no adequate teaching of the meaning of the faith in terms of human dignity and human worth.
“The heart of healing work is transformation—transforming pain, wounds, self-imposed limitations, grief and loss, and discovering within them a gift or grace. The process of healing takes time, a lifetime really. Many of our issues will return again and again. This is where conversion reminds us that we are never done.”
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
What healing work are you presently engaged in as you move towards the next stage of your inner transformation?
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Verse of the day
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
– 1 Timothy 6:12
Voice of the day
In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.
– A. J. Muste
Prayer of the day
Defender of life, fill us with the resolve to fight against unjust laws and practices rather than conforming to or normalizing them.
Verse of the day
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
– Isaiah 55:8-9
Voice of the day
She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How?
– Zora Neale Hurston, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937)
Prayer of the day
Whenever we are buried in the weeds of uncertainty, reassure us that you are at work regardless of how well we perceive your ways.
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