"Such as the eternal and universal aspect of war; the more grief it accumulates at one of its poles, the more joy it generates at the other."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
"Keep safe and don't let the wackadoodles get to you. They got to me and I suspect I will never be the same again." (Friend,AB) "The farsighted tend to get blindsided by the near sighted." Barry Kolb
"When you begin to think outside the box, you often become some other "leaders" lousy follower. That usually costs something" (Andy Rayner)
"Our guardian angels are bored." (Mike Foster)
It's where I feel I'm at these days. “In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition” (Falling Upward. Richard Rohr.120).
"Such as the eternal and universal aspect of war; the more grief it accumulates at one of its poles, the more joy it generates at the other."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
"They began to Converse in a whisper, and we tried not to listen. But it was quite impossible not to overhear the newcomers whisper. It was so loud, so disquieting, so tense, and so close to a sub, that we realized it was no ordinary grief that had entered our cell. The newcomer was asking whether many were shot."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
"He had grown up differently from those others too, and he worked differently. His father had plowed the earth in the most literal sense."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
"Soon after Fastenko returned to the Motherland, he was followed by a Canadian acquaintance, a former sailor on the battleship Polemkin, one of the mutineers, in fact, who had escaped to Canada and become a well—to-do farmer there. This former Potemkin sailor sold everything he owned. his farm and cattle, and returned to his native region with his money and his new tractor to help build sacred socialism. He enlisted in one of the first agricultural communes and donated his tractor to it. The tractor was driven any which way by whoever happened along and was quickly ruined. And the former Potemkin sailor saw things turning out very differently from the way he had pictured them for twenty years. Those in charge were incompetents, issuing orders that any sensible farmer could see were wild nonsense. In addition, he became skinnier and skinnier, and his clothes wore out, and nothing was left of the Canadian dollars he had exchanged for paper rubles. He begged to be allowed to leave with his family, and he crossed the border as poor as when he fled from the Poremkin. He crossed the ocean, just as he had done then. working his way as a sailor, because he had no money for passages, and back in Canada he began life all over again as a hired hand on a farm."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL1.
"The old fella with the lively eyebrows - and at sixty-three he i no way bote himself like an old man - was Abatoky Ilyich Fastenko. He was a big asset to our Lubyanka cell - both as a keeper of the old Russian prison traditions and as a living history of Russian revolutions. Thanks to all that he remembered, he somehow managed to put in perspective everything that had taken place in the past and everything that was taking place in the present. Such people are valuable not only in a Cell. We badly need them in our society as a whole. "
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
These people were particularly helpless in their personal lives; they could neither bend with the wind, nor pretend, nor get by; every word declared an opinion, a passion, a protest. And it was just such people the mowing machine cut down, just such people the chaff-cutter shredded."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
Right there in our cell we read Fastenko's name in a book about the 1905 Revolution. He had been a Social Democrat for such a long, long time that in the end, it seemed, he had ceased to be one."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
"In January 1941 Bonhoeffer traveled to Munich to see Justus Perels, the head lawyer for the Confessing Church. Perels was working hard to lobby the Reich government on its treatment of Confessing Church pastors; so many of them were being drafted and sent into battle that the Confessing Church was being decimated. This was intentional on the part of the Nazis."
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
"I have not written about my many, many companions on the Way, but today, the day before I arrive in Santiago, I wanted you to meet Victor.
Victor and his wife walked the Camino in 2013, just after she started her treatment for Ovarian Cancer.
Six months ago, Victor’s wife Elsa, lost her fight… and Victor lost Elsa.
Tomorrow he will arrive at the Cathedral in Santiago after walking for and with Elsa, surrounded by his memories of her.
Over the hour or so that we walked Victor talked and talked about his many weeks on the Camino and all the people he had been able to share with about his devout God-loving wife and how SHE had blessed so very many people (he was always careful to clarify that it was SHE who was blessing people and he was just the vessel.)
When it came time for us to part, I looked at Victor and I blessed his trip and then right before I turned to walk away, I said, “Victor, you blessed all those people also. You. God is using you, as well as Elsa, to bless people.”
At these words, this strong, former law enforcement officer started to get very emotional, his eyes welling with tears.
My friend Connor has taught me to not be afraid to lean into people when they get emotional, so, before I knew what I was doing, I looked Victor square in the eyes and said, “There is an old poem that goes like this:
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which HE looks compassion on the world
Yours are the feet on which he walks to do good
Yours are the hands with which HE blesses all the world."
- Tony Kriz. http://tonykriz.com/yours-are-the-hands-for-victor/.
"I am getting to visit beautiful churches all along the Way:They are gorgeous. And inspiring. And yes, I feel the sacredness when I stand inside of them, look up into those vaulted ceilings and listen to the Mass.
But here is the question I am asking myself: Are these ancient monuments to worship fundamentally different than say… my dining room back home? Are they?
Both have walls that are soaked with stories. Both have floors that are soaked with tears… and hopes. Both are filled with symbolism. Both are arranged around a table where “families” and friends gather. Both are the place where divine work takes place.
You see, the problem with me is not that I need to go out into the world and find more sacred places. The problem with me is that I am too often blind to the sacredness and divine narratives that saturate every facet of my life…
… if I am only awake enough to see it."
- Tony Kriz. Blog
"Ah, you boys! You children, little sucking-pigs, to my thinking… I never thought a woman ugly in my life- that’s been my rule! Can you understand that? How could you understand it? You’ve milk in your veins, not blood. You’re not out of your shells yet. My rule has been that you can always find something devilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn’t find in any other. "
- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov
By going the second mile you are putting the soldier in the place of being accused of oversteping his authoriry.
He is humbled and humiliated and now you are in a position of equality, or more - the law may now permit you to punish him.
Even I have human right too. See we are both equal humans. You could be charged for resisiting to carry thr bag, to prove human dignity. The better is not resist and show the truth of it in a non violent and messy way.
"Going the second mile was a response to Roman military rules. A soldier could demand that a member of the local populace carry the soldiers heavy pack. But the Romans were relatively enlightened occupiers. To prevent undo hardship on any one person impressed into service, the rule banned the soldier from coercing more than one mile out of any commoner. In that context, Jesus suggested that when commandeered to carry a pack, the commoner should carry it a second mile. Once into that second mile, the commoner has put the soldier into the awkward position of breaking his own regulations and eventually may bring him to beg the commoner not to carry the pack. All three of these commands (turn cheek, give undergatement alao) from Jesus or suggestions by which a person in the disadvantage position could turn the tables and gain the upper hand against a supposed social Superior, yet without using violence."
- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist
Expose injustice. You don't have to get violent and refuse to give up your coat and suffer arrest. There are nonviolent ways to expose injustice.
Jesus' form of non-resistance does nit mean you have to be a doormat.
Your repressive sytem and excessive tarrifs and demands are causing my nakedness. You want the very cloths off my back. Take them all, tale my undergarment too so that people can see how much of a strangle hold you have on me. You take my coat everyday, truth is you are taking all I have anyway. So give him the undergarment as well. Walk naked so people will know you are naked becuuse of your dealings qith this man.
It will bring shame on him.
"The cloak-and-coat comes from debtors court, in a situation where wealthy landowners held unjust, usurious liens against poor tenant farmers, who were perpetually in debt. The poor debtor had only the coat on his back to give as security for his loan. He must appear in court each day the debt is not paid and surrender the coat for security, but he may retrieve it again in the evening to ward off the cold or in the night. In that Culture, the shame of nakedness fell not on the naked man, but on the one who caused the nakedness. Jesus's counsel was that the next time the debtor went to court, he should strip off his undergarment along with the coat that he surrendered for security, and walk around naked all day to give witness to the unjust system that caused his nakedness."
- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist
Jesus's injunction to not resist an evildooer... means to not resist VIOLENTLY. There are other effective ways to resist and get your nessage across than violent ones.
Jesus's teaching of non retaliation are not saying we should put up with inhuman and unjusy treatment. There is a way to resist that exposes evil and injustice in the one perpetuating it. You can be nonviolent, and perfectly expose agression on their part and expose their view of their Supperiority over you.
Now treat me as an equal.
Non-resistance does not mean you permit others to use you as a doormat. There are ways to demand human respec without retaliation.
"To hit the right cheek, as specified in Matthew 5:39, and aggressor has to use a backhand. In the mores of that time, the left hand was considered unclean and would not be used in public. The right-handed, backhanded slap was an insult directed at a supposed inferior.... retaliation by the one being struck would give legal justification for punishment. Jesus suggested that instead of retaliating, the one struck should turn the other cheek. Turning the left cheek was not only a refusal to cower under the insult; it also denied the power to insult. It left the aggressor with a target that could not be reached by another backhand; the turned left cheek can be hit only by the closed right fist. But striking the inferior with a closed fist makes him or her the equal of the aggressor, which denies the point of the insult. "In that world of honor and shaming (the aggressor) has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a subordinate." Following Jesus's injunction not to retaliate in kind would thus lead to the socially inferior person gaining the upper hand."
- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist
"... I compared the Camino to a Prayer Labyrinth and the Santiago Cathedral as the center of the Labyrinth. The journey to the center is a process of dying, of letting go, of repenting, of releasing lost dreams, of laying down past rejections, failures and hurts. Sitting here in a cafe in Santiago, that sentiment feels more true now then when I wrote it, closer to the beginning of the Way.
So many of my friends (and maybe me too) are losing the ability to trust God. They are losing faith because God doesn’t show up. God is not fulfilling the promises of so many pastors and worship songs.
I have to keep reminding myself that Mother Teresa struggled to believe and said that God had never spoken to her. I need to remember that the vast majority of Bible characters did not get their hopes fulfilled or have tangible spiritual experiences.
I am in good company.
Instead of God living up to my expectations, I am going to meditate these next days on what it might look like to lean into God’s expectations.
- Tony Kriz (Blog May 29, 2018)
God, Guard these your children who, for love of your Name, make a pilgrimage.
Be their companion on the way,
their guide at the crossroads,
their strength in weariness,
their defense in dangers,
their shelter on the path,
their shade in the heat,
their light in the darkness,
their comfort in discouragement,
and the firmness of their intentions; that through your guidance, they may arrive safely at the end of their journey.
- Pilgrims Prayer
"God didn't trust me with with complicated theological systems."
-Tony Kriz. Aloof
- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov
- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov
"Anyone moving out of their passport country has a dream."
- William Jackson. Grieving An Unfulfilled Dream. Aug 23, 2018
- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism
Pulling out the chair
Beneath your mind
And watching you fall upon God -
There is nothing else for Hafiz to do
That is any fun in this world."
- Shams-ud-din Mohammed Hafiz. Muslim Mystic (1320-1389)
- Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer.
.... he was taken bound and gagged, to Innsbruck and placed in the Kräuterturm. His torture included flogging; immersion in ice water until nearly frozen followed by thawing in a hot room before being beaten; cutting, with the wounds filled with Brandy and then burn. The outcome of his trial was a foregone conclusion. His death was by public burning in the Market Square of Innsbruck... Hutter remain defiant to the end, challenging his tormentors to test their faith with him in the fire....
Katherine, Hunter's wife, was arrested with him but escaped from prison.... She learned about anabaptism while working as a maid in a household that associated with Anabaptists. In this way she met and was baptized by Hunter.... She was likely in her early twenties, and the significantly younger than her husband when they married. After escaping in 1536, she remained in Tyrol and was arrested two years later in Schöneck. This time she was executed. In six years as an Anabaptist, she was imprisoned four times. "
- J.Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism.
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure.
"We boast that we were "agents of change"; we were not; we were agents of order."
- Moritz Thomsen.The Saddest Pleasure.
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure
- Tristin Hopper. "The Germans considered it a victory, too: Rare images showing everything you didn’t know about Vimy Ridge."
"Oh Jesus, that something so tragical ever happens. You know, hermano, for years you have been talking this bulshit about the nobility of poverty, and now for the first time you got a chance to get a little taste of what it's like. But no, a day without eggs and you begin to panic; a day without bread and you collapse. Bread and eggs, food for the Ricos, food poor people don't even eat. Why don't you think about sharing the experience of the poor man who is under the tension of wanting to smoke a cigarette without the two cents to buy one?"
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
Once you accept ongoing change as a central program for yourself, you tend to continue growing throughout all all your life.
Jesus knows that self-critical, yet not negative, people will always keep growing and engaging with the world around them, with themselves, and with God."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
"Transformed people transform people."
- Richard Rohr
The world gives itself up to incessant activity merely because it knows of nothing Better.
The Inspired man Works among it's whirrring wheels also, but he knows whither the wheels are going. For he has found the center where all is stillness
- Paul Brunton Taken from "Celtic Daily Prayers."
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are. Take that as nearly certain."
-Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
The individual Christian is told to love unconditionally, but the God who commands this is depicted as having a very conditional and quite exclusive love himself .... ! The believer is told to love his enemies, but "God" clearly does not; in fact, God punishes them for all eternity. This stifles and paralyzes many Believers at the conscious or unconscious level, and it should.....
My intention is not to be unfair or negative in stating this so straightforwardly, but we must start being honest about the way what we called "good news" has ended up being bad news for many sincere human beings who really want to believe. Often, these are people of real inner Integrity or spiritual intelligence, who refused to deny, repress, or pretend. I have met them too often."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
"When the temple priesthood started making God distant and elite, John just went down to the riverside and poured natural water over shamed bodies."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now
"....Because Lies today are no fewer, they merely look different."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Maybe everyone's talent Now lies in prophecy; maybe the man who merely says, "Bread no longer taste like bread; tomatoes no longer have flavor" is prophesying terrible things about our plastic future. Jesus, can't you see the end of the world in a slice of Wonderbread?"
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.
"And just as in vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard and threadbare cloak, and transfer their training to the mind, and are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in their intercourse with everybody else...."
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.
It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL. #1
"Someday our descendants will describe our several generations as generations of dribbling do-nothings. First we submissively allowed them to massacre us by the millions, and then we devoted concern we attended the murderers in their prosperous old age."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1
But in a quarter-century we have not track down anyone. We have not brought anyone to trial.....
Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not?
In the German trials an astonishing phenomenon takes place from time to time. The defendant clasps his head in his hands, refuses to make any defense, and from then on asks no concessions from the court. He says that the presentation of his crimes, revived and once again confronting him, has filled him with revulsion and he no longer wants to live. That is the ultimate height a trial can attain: when evil is so utterly condemned that even the criminal is revolted by it.....
Someday our descendants will describe our several generations as generations of dribbling do-nothings. First we submissively allowed them to massacre us by the millions, and then we devoted concern we attended the murderers in their prosperous old age."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1
I remember being trained in the Baltimore Catechism as a little catholic boy. One of the first questions (#16) was "Where is God?" The correct answer is "God is everywhere." And then the whole rest of the book proceeds to teach that such ambiguity is not really true! God was really only with Catholics, in our churches, in fact, really only in the tabernacle, and then only if the priest said a valid Mass, and then only available to "good" people who followed the rules. We have been much better at binding up" God than "loosening" divine availability, even though Jesus gave us both powers (Matthew 16:19). For some reason, we really do not want God to be everywhere, just here, and we of course end up losing God even for ourselves."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
-Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
"Instead, he worked on translating Galatians from Greek to English during the race riots in Baltimore in 1968. (Eugene) Peterson says ordinary citizens arm themselves with guns and weapons, but Peterson said that while people were worried about what was happening in the city, he was worried about what was happening in people."
-Carey Nieuwhof
- Eugene Peterson
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now
"Jesus humbles much of organized religions capacity to control the God-human relationship, because in effect, Jesus is saying that God is both now and always, here and there, and be on any attempt to be controlled, to be bought and sold in any Temple. He is protecting the utter freedom of God to be where God wants and when God wants and who God wants. Good theology always protects God's total freedom, and does not demand that God follow our rules."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
Then Jesus makes the identical point about place. When they ask, "Where should we look for the day of the coming?" He says don't look here and don't look there (Luke 17 23). Once you over localize God's action in one place, church service, Sacrament, or any other kind of event, we can easily conclude that it is not in another place - or even worse, that it is not available everywhere and all of the time.
In revitalizing both time and space, Jesus is doing something similar to Eckhart Tolle is doing for many today with his "power of now." He makes us look for the absolute in a different way than by "certain ideas." Any good spiritual teacher has to overcome both space and time, or they have no ability to give you a sense of the Eternal and the Really Real. I would in fact say this is essential. Poor spiritual teaching is always saying only here and only there, such as "only in my church". Good spiritual teaching is saying "always" and "everywhere."
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now
- Bonhoeffer
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
"God always required something deeper than religious legalism."
- Eric Metaxas
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.