When we consider how much our educational, political, religious, and even social lives are geared to finding answers to questions born of fear, it is not hard to understand why a message of love has little chance of being heard.
Fearful questions never lead to love-filled answers.
“In a word, the end of our civilized society is quite literally up to us and our immediate descendants, if any. It is up to us to decide whether we are going to give in to hatred, terror and blind love of power for its own sake, and thus plunge the world into the abyss, or whether, restraining our savagery, we can patiently, and humanely work together for interests which transcend the limits of any national or ideological community.”—Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post-Christian Era, p. 25
“They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.”—Rebecca Solnit
Too many religious people make faith their aim. They thing “the greatest of these” is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.” — Credo, p. 25
There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country. — William Sloane Coffin
Verse of the day
But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.
– Luke 6:27-28
Voice of the day
If we love just those who love us, where’s the giving? Where’s the grace?
– Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, “A Hymn for Loving Those Who Hate Us”
Prayer of the day
God of love, teach us to love beyond what is easy, extending grace to those who oppose us, and reflecting your radical love in a world that desperately needs it.
“To be compassionate, one need first to have empathy.”—Fr. Harry Bury
To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make [them] an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving. — Credo, p. 23
It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. — William Sloane Coffin
Dear Lord,
Speak gently in my silence.
When the loud outer noises of my
surroundings and the loud inner noises of my
fears keep pulling me away from you, help me
to trust that you are still there even when I am
unable to hear you. Give me ears to listen to
your small, soft voice saying: “Come to me,
you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest ….. for I am gentle and humble of heart.”
Let that loving voice be my guide.
Amen.
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