“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”—Elie Wiesel
Verse of the day
No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
– Proverbs 28:13
Voice of the day
Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.
– Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate (2007)
Prayer of the day
Lord, remind us that there is forgiveness for our past sins. Open our eyes to where we should seek forgiveness from others.
“I am convinced we are at a critical moment in history. We are going to need people who know how to be peacemakers, because that’s what it will take to choose love instead of the fear swirling around us.”—Shane Claiborne (read further at: CAC blog)
“King did fit the profile of a revolutionary, but not the kind Hoover and the paranoid right imagined. King’s radicalism stemmed from his understanding of Christianity as a moral belief system that called upon people to apply uncompromisingly the egalitarian teachings of Jesus to the world around them.”—Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Dr. King’s Last Campaign
Today Denise was making some business cards for me. This is the first time that I have had business cards that don’t have have the specifics of my current call on them. They simply have the denominational seal (Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.)) along with my contact information on them. However, they also have a quote from Thomas Merton’s book No Man Is an Island (also found in the book, A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 125) at the bottom.
This quote represents my own journey from the military ministry to my call to be a peacemaker. — The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
Dear reader, my prayer for you and for this world is that we can live out the call, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, to be instruments of God’s peace.
“Nonviolence confronts systematic injustice with active love, but refuses to retaliate with further violence under any circumstances. In order to halt the vicious cycles of violence, it requires a willing acceptance of suffering and death rather than inflicting suffering or death on anyone else.”—John Dear, Living Peace: A Spirituality of Contemplation and Action
God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.
—Meister Eckhart, sermon on 1 John 4:9
Something to ponder on this Lord’s day
“Nonviolence is justice without enemies.”—Kathryn Getek Soltis, Director of the Center of Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University
“A nonviolent interaction is a kind of conversation, not a kind of fight. It’s not really, or ideally, a power struggle so much as a demonstration that another kind of power is possible.”—Michael Nagler, The Third Harmony
“Today we see that there’s a lot of interconnectedness, but yet there is a lot of exploitation. And that exploitation needs to be resisted.”—Ela Gandhi
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