Pray with your windows open

The Talmud reads, "Never pray in a room without windows." Never pray without the world in mind, in other words. The purpose of the spiritual life is not to save us from reality. It is to enable us to go on co-creating it.
- Joan Chittister

“Without justice, what are kingdoms (and corporations) but bands of robbers?”

"In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies made 24 times a worker's pay -- by 2004, CEOs earned 431 times the pay of an average worker. From 1995 to 2005, average CEO pay increased five times faster than that of average workers. While CEO pay continues to increase at rates far exceeding inflation, wages for the vast majority of American workers have failed to keep up with rising prices. In fact, real wages for the 90% of Americans who earn under $92,000 a year have actually fallen since 2001."




from
 sojourners  and God's Politics Blog by Jim Wallis and friends


“Without justice, what are kingdoms but bands of robbers?” St. Augustine

LETTER TO THE BANK

Dear Sirs,

One of my checks was returned marked "insufficient funds." In view of current developments in the banking industry, does that refer to me or to you?

Sincerely,
Your customer

how will you speak up?

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.

- Elie Wiesel,
Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate

Judas Asparagus and the New Evangelism

A child was asked to write a book report on the entire Bible.  

This is the New Testament through new eyes.



After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, 'Close the door! Were you born in a barn?' It would be nice to say, 'As a matter of fact, I was.')
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.
Jesus also had twelve opossums.
The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn't stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again.
He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.

Staying Alive

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

This has more theological implications than a 10,000 word treatise

Mother Goose And Grimm
by MIKE PETERS

03/06/09



someday I'll have to sit down and think those implications through and then perhaps I will share them with you


in the mean time simply enjoy the experience of genius at work in cartoon form

an experience of incomparable value

There remains an experience of incomparable value ... to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled -- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer ... to look with new eyes on matters great and small.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Letters and Papers from Prison