if You're up there and You can hear me, show me the way

In one of motion pictures' most moving pertayals Jimmy Stewart wasn't really acting; those tears were real.

In this 1977 article that Stewart wrote forGuideposts, the actor recalls that George "is unaware that most of the people in town are arduously praying for him. In this scene, at the lowest point in George Bailey's life, Frank Capra was shooting a long shot of me slumped in despair. In agony I raise my eyes and following the script, plead, 'God...God...dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if You're up there and You can hear me, show me the way, I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God...'

"As I said those words, I felt the loneliness and hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing. This was not planned at all, but the power of that prayer, the realization that our Father in heaven is there to help the hopeless had reduced me to tears."

Damn the Torpedoes

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

- Abraham Lincoln

If we confront injustice only when we can be sure that we will succeed, we will likely never advance the Kingdom.

Of course we can and should count the cost and weigh options to determine what action will most effectively improve the situation but once the course is known we need to 'damn the torpedoes and go full steam ahead'.

The life and death of Jesus and so many of his followers is a lesson in how to change a world of power and abuse to one of love and justice. The desired results have not fully come but like leaven in the loaf the sacrifice will have its effect and the Kingdom will arise.

LH

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Codex Sinaiticus world's oldest bible now online

και αποκριθειϲ ο > 

βαϲιλευϲ ερει αυτοιϲ 

αμην λεγω ϋμιν 

εφ οϲον εποιηϲα

τε ενι τουτων τω 

αδελφων μου τω 

ελαχιϲτων εμοι 

εποιηϲατε 

which being translated means

40 And the King shall answer and say to them: Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.

The care of another--even material, bodily care--is spiritual in essence. Bread for myself is a material question; bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. - Jacques Maritain

the cross brings us to an equality that politics and force never could...........let us exalt every valley and bring low every mountain

If I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the twentieth); if I cannot take the first without making a fuss about my unworthiness, then I know nothing of Calvary love. - Amy Carmichael

Stop the cycle of self and other abuse

Say 'No' to Suffering

What we most frequently see when the mind is focused and clear are the habits of mind that create unnecessary suffering, habits fueled by greed and hatred and delusion. Over and over we struggle with our lives, resenting our experiences, blaming ourselves for not being other than who we are. We are unable to see past the immediate, overwhelming drama of our personal story to find relief—indeed, liberation—in the consoling realization of an astonishingly lawful cosmos. Paying attention to current experience stops the stories that create and recreate suffering.

Text from Commit to Sit: Tools for Cultivating a Meditation Practice 

A worthy goal for any pilgrim

Move Toward Kindness

The practice of seeing clearly is what finally moves us toward kindness. Seeing, again and again, the infinite variety of traps we create for seducing the mind into struggle, seeing the endless rounds of meaningless suffering over lusts and aversions (which, although seemingly urgent, are essentially empty), we feel compassion for ourselves. And then, quite naturally, we feel compassion for everyone else. We know as we have never known before that we are stuck, all of us, with bodies and minds and instincts and impulses, all in a tug-of-war with our basic heart nature that yearns to relax into love. Then we surrender. We love. We laugh. We appreciate.

Text from Commit to Sit: Tools for Cultivating a Meditation Practice 

The Art of Connecting Robin Hood to Rosebud

Become Clear

Like the archer straightening his arrow and perfecting his aim, the practitioner of meditation straightens out the mind while aiming his or her attentional energy at its object. Learning to drop what we're doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it and its flakes settle.

Text from Commit to Sit: Tools for Cultivating a Meditation Practice 

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

- St. Augustine

Hey 'Kid' be a mensch and just shake and make up like a good boy?

It is the acid test of nonviolence that ... there is no rancor left behind, and in the end, the enemies are converted into friends.

- Mohandas Gandhi

speared in the groin

The agony of defeat took on new meaning when I learned that the captain and the heart soul and (testicles) of my team, Nicholas Lidstom, required surgery in the previous round to repair damage caused by a stick to the groin.  I thought he wasn't quite up to his best game in the finals. Now we know why.

May God Bless all the wounded warriors but especially our incredible Captain Nik and his nicked knackers.

it certainly is a good deal for the half-hearted and the corrupt

It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization—it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

- Graham Greene,
The Power and the Glory

we are your bad conscience

Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial [people] have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with [God's] help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil.... We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience.

- Sophie Scholl,
and her co-resisters in The White Rose, a nonviolent student movement against the Nazis.

we must never forget that our choices have consequences

The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner.

The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother's womb. Little Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, knew of Dr Bruner's remarkable 
Surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt Uni v Med Ctr in Nashville , he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed Hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger. Dr Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile. 

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity 

Little Samuel's mother said they 'wept for days' when they saw the picture. 

She said, 'The photo reminds us pregnancy isn't about disability or an illness, it's about a little person. 'Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful. 

Now see the actual picture........ 

We used to call it 'Being Saved to Serve".

God has obviously saved some people to open medical clinics, run homeless shelters, and write books.  All these constitute "good works."  But for most, God has saved us to wipe the nose, prepare the dinner, run an errand for a sick neighbor, hold the Bible for, or even play chess with a lonely friend.  It's all about meeting the basic needs of others, and you can be a passionate person who does that.  from Joni and Friends Newsletter  May 2009 edition. It may be old fashioned but its still seems to me to be the best way to live a happy and meaningfull life.

"The Law of the Garbage Truck."

 

One day a fellow hopped in a taxi and took off for the airport. They were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of them.  

The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches!  The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at them. The taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy.  And I mean, he was really friendly. 

When asked, why did he react so positively, 

The taxi driver merely recited "The Law of the Garbage Truck." 

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks.  They run around full of garbage -- frustration, anger, disappointment.  As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you.  

Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.  

Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. 

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.  Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't.

Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!

humanity hanging on a cross

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

How hard is it to be in our Right Minds when living in a bent World? .....very hard!

"He is mentally not stable, because he had the courage to say in his blog that he is a Christian. Anyone in his right mind in Saudi Arabia wouldn't do that."
Gamal Eid, director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, explaining why Saudi officials released blogger Hamoud Saleh Al-Amri. 

I try to be a Christian

Can anyone ask or do anything more?

"I tried to be a Christian."    

might be an excellent epitaph for honest men's gravestones. 

an enigma wrapped in a paradox....a prince in pauper's clothing. An honest man in search of Diogenes. A man of letters seeking a fitting climax.

In 1982, Merv Griffin asked the director about it during an interview. Welles replied, "I try to be a Christian. [But] I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God." In fact, prayer was almost as uncomfortable subject for Welles as the birds and the bees. He told the French New Wave magazineCahiers du Cinema, "In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God."

If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.

- William Wilberforce,
British abolitionist and social reformer (1759-1833)

make it so

When a person tries to act in accordance with his [or her] conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might....Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

- Vaclav Havel

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."

G.K. Chesterton

Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls 'Mr. Dunne'

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death (or indignity) diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..." 

Work to be 'Dunne'

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear ... Christendom adjusts itself far too easiliy to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. 

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer