“Commitment to inclusive community in the heart works to create nonviolence in the whole person. True community takes away the motive for violence because it is the great equalizer.”—Sr. Nancy Schreck
“If we want our actions to add to the building of a new culture even while resolving the issue at hand, we should not hesitate to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, to anyone who will listen. The point is not that they’ll immediately ‘get it’: the point is that this is how paradigms change: through repetition that slowly builds up and becomes the new normal.”—Michael Nagler, The Third Harmony
“Why nonviolence? Because it can invite us into courage and remind us of our humanity. It can help us rise to the challenge of transforming trillions of everyday interactions into a culture that affirms, liberates, supports, and restores the humanity of every human being. It guides us as we create a world where every person is safe and loved, protected and healed. In this world, no one needs a gun, no one wants a weapon. In this world, peace is easier to wage than war—and more it’s more profitable. In this world, a cry for mental help is answered with focus, attention, and skillful care. In this world, we fearlessly go to bowling alleys and bars, movie theaters and shopping malls. In this world, the culture of nonviolence is everywhere.”—Rivera Sun, “I Grew Up Next Door To Lewiston—We Need A Culture of Nonviolence”
Something very deep and mysterious, very holy and sacred, is taking place in our lives right where we are, and the more attentive we become the more we will begin to see and hear it. The more our spiritual sensitivities come to the surface of our daily lives, the more we will discover—uncover—a new presence in our lives.
“Nonviolence, for me, is the art of being human. It’s the celebration of my existence.”—Ali Abu Awwad
Dear God,
As you draw me ever deeper into your heart, I discover that my companions on the journey are women and men loved by you as fully and as intimately as I am. In your compassionate heart, there is a place for all of them. No one is excluded.
Give me a share in your compassion, dear God, so that your unlimited love may become visible in the way I love my brothers and sisters.
Amen.
“If we can teach our children that they have the power to choose a loving thought over an angry thought, we can create a more peaceful world.”—Scarlett Lewis, The Choose Love Movement
Verse of the day
“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”
– Matthew 6:5
Voice of the day
Christianity is always at its best when lived at the margins.
– Matthew D. Taylor, “Jesus Among the Antichrists”
Prayer of the day
God of all, remind us that you are with us at the margins. May we work toward justice in the way you have shown us, not with demanding fanfare, but with quiet discipleship.
“It is every global citizen’s responsibility to speak truth to power, and truth has no political orientation. The resources being poured into war—financial, material, intellectual, and spiritual—must collectively be channeled into the enormously difficult process of making peace.”—Erin Thompson, Co-Director of the MK Gandhi Institute
I really wish you an ever deeper peace. I know that that peace quite often lives underneath the turmoils and anxieties of our heart and doesn’t always mean inner harmony or emotional tranquility. That peace that God gives us quite often is beyond our thoughts and feelings, and we have to really trust that peace is there for us to claim even in the midst of our moments of despair.
