The Common Good
God's Politics Blog

Shane Claiborne's 12 Hopes for 2012

by Shane Claiborne 01-04-2012 | 2:24pm
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Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

12.  Do something really nice – that no one knows about.

11. Spend more money on other people than I spend on myself. Love my neighbor as I love myself. And love myself as I love my neighbor.

10. Laugh often… especially at advertisements that try to convince me that I must buy more stuff in order to be happy. 

9. Learn a new life skill – like carpentry, pottery, or canning vegetables. Teach someone else I life skill I know how to do. 

8.  Love a few people well, remembering that what is important is not how much we do but how much love we put into doing it.

7.  Write a letter to someone I need to say thank you to. Write another letter to someone I need to ask to forgive me. 

6.  Track down a critic or someone I disagree with and take them to lunch. Listen to them.

5.  Compliment someone I have a hard time complimenting… and mean it.

4.  Choose life. Do something regularly to interrupt the patterns of injustice – do something to end violence, bullying, war, capital punishment and other mean and ugly things.

3.  Pause before every crisis and ask “will this matter in 5 years?”

2.  Get outside often and marvel at things like fireflies and shooting stars. And regularly get my hands into the garden… so when I type on the computer I can see dirt under my fingernails.

1.  Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.

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