Faith and Politics
As we have in various ways over the years, it is incumbent upon us here at Sojourners/Call to Renewal to remind our readers of the history behind the Mother's Day holiday. For while honoring one's mother is important - see commandment #5 - like most holidays, Mother's Day has been distorted nearly beyond recognition by the greeting-card-candy-and-floral-industrial-complex.
For the [...]
As we have in various ways over the years, it is incumbent upon us here at Sojourners/Call to Renewal to remind our readers of the history behind the Mother's Day holiday. For while honoring one's mother is important - see commandment #5 - like most holidays, Mother's Day has been distorted nearly beyond recognition by the greeting-card-candy-and-floral-industrial-complex.
For the [...]
A certain ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.' " He replied, "I have kept all these since my youth." When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money [...]
Jesus chose to be around small children a number of times in his ministry, often over the objections of his disciples. Sometimes he seems to have done this in order to hold children up as examples of the childlike qualitites that enable God's Realm. But maybe, sometimes, he just wanted to hold them.
- Susan Ross
from Alive Now, July/August 1994
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When the ear heard, it commended me, and when the eye saw, it approved; because I delivered the poor who cried, and the orphan who had no helper. The blessing of the wretched came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.
- Job 29:11-13
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All travelers, somewhere along the way, find it necessary to check their course, to see how they are doing. We wait until we are sick, or shocked into stillness, before we do the commonplace thing of getting our bearings. And yet, we wonder why we are depressed, why we are unhappy, why we lose our friends, why we are ill-tempered. This condition we pass on to our children, our husbands, our wives, our associates, our friends. Cultivate the mood to linger. ... Who knows? God may whisper [...]
Sen. Sam Brownback and I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue or policy, but he's been a faithful ally in our efforts to forge a grand alliance of conservatives and liberals to fight poverty - something he and I agree this country needs. He was also part of our Pentecost conference last year. He just did [...]
Sen. Sam Brownback and I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue or policy, but he's been a faithful ally in our efforts to forge a grand alliance of conservatives and liberals to fight poverty - something he and I agree this country needs. He was also part of our Pentecost conference last year. He just did [...]
Silence, for many people, allows the soul to grow and develop in its spiritual dimension. In fact, the more one finds the reality of silence, the more significant it becomes. While this in itself is a danger, the same is true of anything else we touch which has such real value.
--Morton T. Kelsey
from The Other Side of Silence
When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
- Leviticus 19:33-34
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If our usual response to an annoying situation is a curse, we're likely to meet emergencies with a curse. In the little events of daily living we have the opportunity to condition our reflexes, which are built up out of ordinary things.
- Madeleine L'Engle
from The Irrational Season
If our usual response to an annoying situation is a curse, we're likely to meet emergencies with a curse. In the little events of daily living we have the opportunity to condition our reflexes, which are built up out of ordinary things.
- Madeleine L'Engle
from The Irrational Season
The rhythm of life for a kingdom dweller puts chronos in service of kairos, the cyclical in service of the directional, the calendar in service of the kingdom. ... As we submit our anarchy to a rhythm, in a sort of earthy, mystical way, all of life is lived lucidly, intentionally, and to the glory of God. Every washing becomes a baptism; every eating a Communion. Every sleeping becomes a dying; every rising a resurrection.
- Kenneth Gottman
from Ministry and Mission
Covering the Daily Digest while Duane Shank is taking a much-deserved long weekend, I read this chilling report of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's threats against the Catholic bishops in his country:
Once [the bishops] turn political, we regard them as no longer spiritual and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves.
Covering the Daily Digest while Duane Shank is taking a much-deserved long weekend, I read this chilling report of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's threats against the Catholic bishops in his country:
Once [the bishops] turn political, we regard them as no longer spiritual and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves.
Therefore, somehow, we have to learn to get our satisfaction and our joy in faithfulness and in our intimate relationship with Christ. Then the question of effectiveness and success, in the usual sense of those terms is not the issue. We can transcend that and get energized and nourished by faithfulness knowing we are doing what we must do to live- not what we must do to change the neighborhood. The constant struggle is the deepening of faith that enables us to really trust that somehow the [...]
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-13
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Living God, you want us to have hearts that are completely simple, to the point that the complicated things in life do not bring us to a halt. Through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the Risen Christ, you come to open a way for us, a way that is possible; on it we understand that you love us first, before we loved you.
- Brother Roger of Taize
from Life from Within
Time's Joe Klein makes some interesting observations about Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee ("a political inconvenience, a destroyer of stereotypes"), asking whether or not "compassionate conservatism" is dead, and if poverty has a place on the Republican agenda:
In 2000, George [...]
At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints; for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things.
- Romans 15:25-27