Today's Quotes: On Love

"Dear friends, let us continually love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God. The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ...If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. ... God is love, and the person who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."
'The Bible' - 1 John 4:7-8, 12 & 16


“Let us speak then of love. What does it mean to “love” something? If a man asks a woman... “do you love me?” and if, after a long and awkward pause and considerable deliberation, she replies with a wrinkled brow, “well, up to a certain point, under certain conditions, to a certain extent,” then we can be sure that whatever she feels for this poor fellow it is not love and this relationship is not going to work out. For if love is the measure, the only measure of love is love without measure... One of the ideas behind “love” is that it represents a giving without holding back, an “unconditional” commitment, which marks love with a certain excess. Physicians counsel us to eat and exercise in measured moderation and not to overdo either. But there is no merit in loving moderately, up to a certain point, just so far, all the while watching out for number one (which is, alas, what we are often advised by a decadent “New Age” psychology)... Love is not a bargain, but unconditional giving; it is not an investment, but a commitment come what may. Lovers are people who exceed their duty, who look around for ways to do more than is required of them. If you love your job, you don’t just do the minimum that is required; you do more. If you love your children, what would you not do for them? If a wife asks a husband to do her a favor, and he declines on the grounds that he is really not duty bound by the strict terms of the marriage contract to do it, that marriage is all over except for the paperwork. Rather than rigorously defending their rights, lovers readily put themselves in the wrong and take the blame for the sake of preserving their love. Love, St.Paul said in his stunning hymn to love, is patient, kind, not puffed up or boastful; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (I Cor. 13). A world without love is a world governed by rigid contracts and inexorable duties, a world in which – God forbid! – the lawyers run everything. The mark of really loving someone or something is unconditionality and excess, engagement and commitment, fire and passion. Its opposite is a mediocre fellow, neither hot nor cold, moderate to the point of mediocrity. Not worth saving. No salt."

From 'On Religion' by John Caputo

Today's Quotes

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

-Paulo Freire, author of 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed'


"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Peace Prize winner and champion of human rights against apartied.



Here is a link to an interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu which we watched earlier this week on CNN's Talk Asia. It was quite good.

Today's Quotes: The meaning of goodness expressed in life

[W]hen it comes to goodness, nothing can take the place of practice. Goodness is like playing a violin. All the musical theory, inspiration and sensitivity to local musical tastes in the world cannot make you into a musician. You have to practice.

...George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis reveal again and again in their fiction how people are formed by thousands of small, 'insignificant' acts. ...We are all moving - one day at a time - toward light or darkness, toward good or evil."


"Learning goodness from praxis means taking small, concrete steps to act out our stated beliefs. By action we gradually transfer what we believe is desirable into what we actually desire...

...A common error in Western-influenced thinking is to separate theory from practice and preparation from life. Not only what is learned but also how it is learned forms a person... All of our life is preparation for something else. And all of our life is also the thing for which we prepare. Living the goal cannot begin after preparation. Nor can it wait for adequate understanding. ... Now we must live the goal to the utmost extent that we know it. In such praxis the meaning of our faith is revealed to ourselves and those around us."

-from 'Strange Virtues' by Bernard Adeney

Today's Quotes: Action

"It is our actions that count. Thoughts, however good in themselves, are like false pearls unless they are translated into action"
-M. K. Ghandi

"The antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action. And action is finally born out of hope... The key is to beleive that the world can be changed, because it is only that belief that ever changes the world. And if not us, who will believe? If not you, who?"
-Jim Wallis

"If you want to see change, you have to be the change you want to see"
-M. K. Gandhi

"The greatest mistake is his who does nothing because he can do little."
-An unknown Zoroastrian

"No longer accept the unacceptable. Change what is believed to be possible. And always make the choice for hope."
-Jim Wallis

Today's Quote: Butt Prints In The Sand

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?"
Those prints are large and round and neat,
"But Lord they are too big for feet."

"My child," He said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait."

"You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know.
So I got tired, I got fed up,
and there I dropped you on your butt."

"Because in life, there comes a time,
when one must fight, and one must climb.
When one must rise and take a stand,
or leave their butt prints in the sand."

-Author Unknown

An Eye Opening Perspective

Read This Powerful Article by Martin Accad, accademic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary.
He wrote this while stranded in the US because of Israel's invasion of his home: Lebanon.

----------------------------------------------------

"If we have the courage to honestly look at ourselves through the eyes of others who are strange and foreign to us or who have been injured and ignored by us, then I believe our hearts will open and the whispering of God’s still, small voice will begin to ring loud and clear in our ears."

-How Does God Speak in a Pluralistic Society?

Wage Peace!

Jesus Said:

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also..."

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."


Why is it that we don't take these words seriously?

It is impossible to overcome evil with more evil, violence with violence, Hatred with Hatred.

What is happening now in the 'War on Terror', the War in Iraq, and most recently in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, these are examples of the social law of Reciprocity on a massive scale. That is: What you did to me, I am obligated to repay. If you bless me, I bless you. If you curse me, I curse you.

Terror must be confronted. Evil must be resisted. What was done on September 11th (among thousands of other terror attacks) was evil and cannot be justified.
But the problem is that by striking back, by attacking with military might, we are only drawing ourselves into a cycle of Hatred, violence, and bloodshed. More and more people, by the social law of Reciprocity, are obligated to hate, to strike back, and to even give their own lives to kill others.

Jesus calls us to a higher way. He asks us not to step into that cycle of violence and death. He calls us to act in the opposite spirit, to expose injustice and evil for what it is and let the Truth prevail.

We must send this message to our political leaders. The United States will NEVER prevail in the ‘War on Terror’ as long as we continue to use violence to fight it. It is not cowardly to step away from a fight which benefits no one. But this does not mean abandoning the people which we aim to help.

There is another way: Quit the War. It is far to costly with little benefit to anyone. Take the money which is now spent for military purposes (destruction and death), and give those billions towards rebuilding Iraq, Afghanistan and other war torn countries, as well as towards debt relief and to build infrastructure across the Third World where daily people die of hunger and diseases - all easily treatable given access to food, hospitals, and medicine.

Not only will this have the direct effect of rebuilding and saving lives, but it will also cut away the platform of hatred on which Terror organizations thrive, robbing them of their support and their reasons for vengance.

Send this message: ‘We seek to rebuild and to save, not to kill and destroy. We seek your good just as if it’s our own, because it is.’


Watch this short but powerful film: Wage Peace


"An Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
-Gandhi

"Almost three thousand people died needlessly and tragically at the World Trade Center on September 11; Ten Thousand Africans die needlessly and tragically every single day - and have died every single day since Sept. 11 - of AIDS, TB, and malaria. We need to keep Sept. 11 in perspective, especially because the ten thousand deaths daily are preventable"

-Jeffrey Sachs, excerpted from his excelent book: 'The End Of Poverty'