“We believe that peace is more powerful than violence, that restitution is more healing than retribution, and that mutual respect is the foundation for human holiness.”—Fr. Rusty Smith
“There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. . . and through negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come.”—Peace Pilgrim
“But we should be helping one another — let’s put it in simpler words — to love. We help one another to love more, and you help people to love, not by saying ‘love’ but by loving. That’s the justification of our life: if there is love, it’s justified, and it should a little in-growing love. It should be a love that reaches out to everybody.” — Thomas Merton
From a newly published book edited by David M. Odorisio—Thomas Merton in California: The Redwood Conferences & Letters (p. 52)
“Because men* with hard faces do violent things,
Because fanaticism seizes and shrinks minds,
Is no reason for the rest of us to abandon our songs,
Maybe we need to sing louder.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian-American poet
“It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The joy that Jesus offers his disciples is his own joy, which flows from his intimate communion with the One who sent him. It is a joy that does not separate happy days from sad days, successful moments from moments of failure, experiences of honor from experiences of dishonor, passion from resurrection. This joy is a divine gift that does not leave us during times of illness, poverty, oppression, or persecution. It is present even when the world laughs or tortures, robs or maims, fights or kills. It is truly ecstatic, always moving us away from the house of fear into the house of love, and always proclaiming that death no longer has the final say, though its noise remains loud and its devastation visible. The joy of Jesus lifts up life to be celebrated.
“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he* suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”—Thich Nhat Hanh
As I look at the hatred, born of fear, in this country and world today, my heart breaks. It especially breaks as I look at sectors of the church and society who peddle in the fear of anyone who doesn’t fit their mold. All over this world, the rights of women, BIPOC (black indigenous people of color), and my LGBTQAI+ siblings are being stripped away at the local, state, and national level. I wonder what this has to do with the christian faith they purport to hold. I don’t recognize the Jesus whom they serve.
In his book, Jesus and the Disinherited, the African-American theologian and mystic Howard Thurman reflected on that question in the opening chapter of the book. This reflection can also be found in the book A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life (p. 132)
Many and varied are the interpretations dealing with the teachings and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But few of those interpretations deal with those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall…
Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.
As a cisgender white male, I must first recognize my own privilege. Next I must ask who I am truly following. Finally, I must ask do I model the life Jesus called his disciples to model. How will I love God, my neighbor, and even my enemy? Where will I stand in this moment in history? I believe that I must stand with those who have their backs up against the wall.
“If someone greets me with a nice smile and expresses a genuinely friendly attitude, I appreciate it very much. Though I may not know that person or even understand their language, my heart is instantly gladdened. On the other hand, if kindness is lacking, even in someone from my own culture whom I have known for many years, I feel it. Kindness and love, these are very precious.”—HH The Dalai Lama, How to Be Compassionate
The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. ‘In him was life; and the life was the light of men.’ Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. — Howard Thurman, A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life
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