“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, and every minute a chance to change the world.”
—Dolores Huerta, labor organizer and cofounder of the United Farm Workers Union
Verse of the day
Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
– Matthew 11:28
Voice of the day
Be subversive. Embrace radical love that is outside the confines of tradition. Be suspicious of everything they taught you. Carry a research notebook. Be curious. Resist. Rest.
– Tricia Hersey, “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto” (2022)
Prayer of the day
God, amid the weights we carry as we brave this world, may we find rest in you unlike any other refuge.
“We need more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them.”—Jackson Katz
I have participated in Christine’s yearly online offering “Give Me a Word” through the Abbey of the Arts for a number of years now. Some years it is “easy” and other years it takes a while for a Word to reveal itself to me. In her latest book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year, Christine invites people to participate in the process of seeking your Word using all of their senses. She invites the reader to slow down, be still, and savor the moment as she guides them through the ancient practice of seeking a Word that will guide them throughout the year.
This particular passage spoke to my heart during my own pilgrimage as I spent time with my ancestors in Nova Scotia, Canada. It also encapsulates her invitation to you. The invitation to pray with our lives is not about reaffirming what we already know about ourselves but entering into prayer in an openhearted way to receive the grace and new vision offered to us. We pray with our lives as sacred texts to reveal new places of freedom, invitations to new ways of understanding ourselves, and the way God is moving through our stories. (p. 24)
It doesn’t matter when you begin your journey, her invitation truly is timeless and such a blessing, especially in challenging times.
“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Verse of the day
Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?
– Malachi 2:10
Voice of the day
In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, “The Fifth Book of Peace” (2003)
Prayer of the day
Our parent, maker of all things, attune us to the ways we can help create life-giving spaces in remembrance of you, for the sake of others and for ourselves.
“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war.”—Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post-Christian Era
Verse of the day
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
– Hebrews 13:8
Voice of the day
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
– Flannery O’Connor
Prayer of the day
Unchanging and eternal God, help us to embrace your unwavering truth even when it challenges us beyond our comfort.
“Tyranny is an endless, boundless malevolence which for a long time has cast its grim shadow over millions of displaced human beings. Tyranny turns life into death, blessing into lament, and comfort into torment. Tyranny oppresses humanity, free will, and human dignity. Tyranny is the other side of the coin of war. The intensity of both is devastating; one directly, with its destructive flames of visible devastation, the other insidiously and deceitfully, tearing apart humanity.”—Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Prize Lecture 2023
“Active nonviolence begins with the truth that all life is sacred, that we are all equal sisters and brothers, all children of the God of peace, already reconciled, all one, all already united, and so we could never hurt or kill another human being, much less remain silent while wars rage, people die in poverty, and nuclear weapons and environmental destruction threaten us all.”
Pastor Michael Moore's Blog 