“I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up, and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.”—Rosa Parks
Verse of the day
O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell and the place where your glory abides.
– Psalm 26:8
Voice of the day
paradise is a world where everything / is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.
– Danez Smith, “summer, somewhere”
Prayer of the day
Jesus, our Prince of Peace, violence has no place in your sanctuary. Help us to lay down each weapon we’ve made and build pieces of paradise instead.
“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To start seeing that the many events of our day, week, or year are not in the way of our search for a full life but are rather the way to it is a real experience of conversion. We discover that cleaning and cooking, writing letters and doing professional work, visiting people and caring for others, are not a series of random events that prevent us from realizing our deepest self. These natural, daily activities contain within them some transforming power that changes how we live. We make hidden passage from time lived as chronos to time lived as kairos. Kairos is a Greek word meaning “the opportunity.” It is the right time, the real moment, the chance of our lives. When our time becomes kairos, it frees us and opens us to endless new possibilities. Living kairos offers us an opportunity for a profound change of heart.
I have always been very conscious of my clock-time. Often I asked myself: “Can I still double my years?” When I was thirty I said: “I can easily live another thirty!” When I was forty, I mused, “Maybe I am only halfway!” Today I can no longer say that, and my question has become: “How am I going to use the few years left to me?” All these concerns about our clock-time come from below. They are based on the presupposition that our chronology is all we have to live. But looked upon from above, from God’s perspective, our clock-time is embedded in the timeless embrace of God. Looked upon from above, our years on earth are not simply chronos, but kairos—another Greek word for time—which is the opportunity to claim for ourselves the love that God offers us from eternity to eternity.
“Don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing.”—Frans de Waal
“Peace. It is not merely the absence of war; it is the presence of justice and the absence of fear.”—Ursula Franklin
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and reflecting on this Fourth of July holiday. Even thought it is sunny right now, we’ve had rain showers off and on all day with the accompanying thunder and lightning. I experienced something similar to those weather patterns as I read various articles on Substack and in the Christian Century and America magazines. Some of the readings have been hopeful and others revealed various shades of pessimism and even despair.
After reading all of that and doing some sermon preparation, I decided to pick up a book that I have had for quite some time but haven’t read (Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton by John Howard Griffin). A couple of years ago I read another one of Griffin’s books which is a combination of Merton’s photography and reflections on his conversations with Merton (A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton).
Denise and my visit to Merton’s hermitage with a group of emerging Merton scholars and others was two weeks ago and the sense of wonder from that visit is still very strong and I began wondering what a conversation with Merton would be like on this particular day. Griffin shared the following in his prologue to Follow the Ecstasy.
Tom was a man of enlightened pessimism about the world. Many of our meetings left us with the feeling that this country was moving closer toward ever increasing sacrifice of the freedoms we professed to uphold. But even with such a depressing prognosis, his natural buoyancy, his robust humor and his grasp of the absurd made the most pessimistic meetings happy ones… So meetings with him had a kind of joy that remained untainted no matter what else might be happening around us. (p. 3)
Fr. Louis (Merton’s monastic name), how I would love to be with you on the front porch of your hermitage. While I crave the opportunity to talk at length about what is going on today in this nation and world, what I would really like to experience is your robust humor and laughter. We wouldn’t solve all of the problems in this nation and world, but your presence would be a blessing to this weary Padre. Even in the midst of the insanity that I see all around this nation and world today, which is eerily similar to what you experienced in the 60’s, I believe that you would share your pithy insights along with a healthy dose of laughter and joy.
But I am not sitting on the front porch of your hermitage today. However, I do feel your presence close by me, and as I reflect and ponder, I can see you joining me on our back porch here in Mobile, Alabama enjoying a beer, laughing, sharing in the silence, and smelling the wonderful curry that Denise is preparing for dinner. Thank you, Fr. Louis for your presence and encouragement in my own life as I seek to serve our Lord in this crazy world.
Sitting outside a Starbucks with my wife one day I struck up a conversation with two brothers who, it turns out, were Palestinians from Gaza, one with his 6-year-old son. “I’m so sorry for what’s happening there,” I said. “Do you have family still there? Are they all right?”
“My family is there,” said one of the men. “By now, most are dead.”
— Read on www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/07/03/war-gaza-drones-peace-veterans-248278
Verse of the day
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
– Isaiah 58:12
Voice of the day
Loving your neighbor is not an act of philanthropic charity but is a struggle to rebuild the world so there can be new ways of relating to each other beyond the strictures of racial capitalism.
– Adam Joyce, “You Can’t Relationship Your Way Out of Racial Capitalism”
Prayer of the day
You have called us to be repairers and restorers, God. May we restore the world to your holy image, instead of another unjust system.
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