The irony would be delicious if it were not so bitter: earnest theologians have been earnestly persuading Christians for sixteen centuries that their gospel supports violence, while massive outpourings of citizens in one officially atheist country after another [during the peaceful overturning of the Soviet regime and its allies at the end of theCold War] recently have demonstrated the effectiveness of Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence as a means of liberation.

- Walter Wink, from his bookThe Powers That Be

dumping on others

To anyone reading this...I have taken a sabbatical from the blog world but from time to time I will add some of the things that are meaningful to me. They may have no context or explanation for anyone else. They will appear random...perhaps in time I will visit this site with a coherent and sustained effort to communicate something but for now this space is my dumping grounds for things i want to save but have no place to store them.


welcome to my garbage dump/treasure pile.


Happy Rooting.

Not Bah Humbug exactly

I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.

- David Grayson
American author and journalist (1870-1946)

The Origins of Life

The Origins of Life

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the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff

Noble laureate, Professor of Biology, Harvard University, the late George Wald, from

"Life and Mind in the Universe" for the 1984 Quantum Biology Symposium:

"It has occurred to me lately -- I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities – that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality – the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself."

I do not go to Mass to make myself "better." I go because, in the dimmest reaches of my scattered, angst-ridden mind, there is something that wants me to get down on my knees and, in spite of my own suffering and all the suffering around me, give thanks. I go because I am beginning to believe that heaven is not in some other world, but shot through the broken world in which we live.

- Heather King, from her essay "Heaven and Earth"

Reconciliation is the ultimate aim of nonviolence because nonviolence holds not only for the absolute inviolability of the human person, both friend and enemy, but maintains that human beings are ultimately one family, brothers and sisters to each other.

- Niall O'Brien,
Columban priest in the Philippines

The hunger for God can only be satisfied by a love that is face to face, person to person. It is only in the eyes of another that we can find the Icon of Christ. We must make the other person aware we love him. If we do, he will know that God loves him. He will never hunger again.

- Catherine de Hueck Doherty,
Catholic social activist and founder of Madonna House (1896-1985)

Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being. - G.K. Chesterton

success means different things to different people

“I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. - C.S. Lewis

let us work together

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

- Lilla Watson,
Aboriginal elder, educator, and activist

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.