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.”
“Wisdom and love help us to discern between what is life-giving and what is destructive and call us to infuse our ethical and moral living with the vision of divine love and beauty, to know these actions in the world not as dry and rote ways of being good for the sake of avoiding punishment, but ways of cooperating with wisdom and love to bring life more fully to the earth and to our communities.”
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Creative Flourishing with St. Hildegard of Bingen: A Self-Study Online Retreat (Use code HILDEGARD20 to take off 20% through September 30th)
How might your actions in the world change if you began to see right living as life-giving, as expressions of Divine Wisdom and Love?
“We worked daily confronting warlords, meeting with dictators and refusing to be silenced in the face of AK 47 and RPGs. We walked when we had no transportation, we fasted when water was unaffordable, we held hands in the face of danger, we spoke truth to power when everyone else was being diplomatic, we stood under the rain and the sun with our children to tell the world the stories of the other side of the conflict. Our educational backgrounds, travel experiences, faiths, and social classes did not matter. We had a common agenda: Peace for Liberia Now.”
We are living in a culture that measures the value of the human person by degrees of success and productivity. What is your title? How much money do you make? How many friends do you have? What are your accomplishments? How busy are you? What do your children do? But it is important for us to remember that as we grow older our ability to succeed in this way gradually diminishes. We lose our titles, our friends, our accomplishments, and our ability to do many things, because we begin to feel weaker, more vulnerable, and more dependent. If we continue to look at ourselves from the point of view of success, our condition is not a good one! Because of our strong cultural vision, it is a huge challenge to look at vulnerability not as a negative thing but as a positive thing. Do we dare to look at weakness as an opportunity to become fruitful? Fruitfulness in the spiritual life is about love, and this fruitfulness is very different from success or productivity.
Verse of the day
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
– Romans 1:25
Voice of the day
How we worship reveals what we prioritize.
– Soong-Chan Rah, “The American Church’s Absence of Lament”
Prayer of the day
Help us to worship you alone, the true Creator, so that our priorities reflect your truth and not the lies of the world.
“Everything is possible when we are in a community with each other. Community is where burdens find shoulders, and dreams rise on the wings of many. It is the soil where justice grows, the fire that kindles courage, the light that guides us forward.”—Black Lives Matter
Pastor Michael Moore's Blog 