A Life Lie

"A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life lie. A forty-something client told me his vision, formulated by his younger self. "I see myself retired, sitting on a tropical beach, drinking margaritas in the sunshine." That's not a plan. That's a travel poster. After eight margaritas, you're fit only to await the hangover. After three weeks of margarita-filled days, if you have any sense, you're bored stiff and self-disgusted. In a year, or less, you're pathetic. It's just not a sustainable approach to later life."

- Jordan Peterson. 

Competency

"Socrates teaching was critical of democracy. He illustrated his problems with democracy by an analogy with a ship. On board everyone tries to get control of the ship, but this does not mean that the most competent person in steering that ship will actually get to steer. It is the one who is best at getting control of it, be it due to intrigue a physical might that will actually get to steer and influence the ship. But what is needed in the steering of a ship is someone who knows the tides, can plot a course and so on, and the fight for control does not mean that the one who wins actually got skills in controlling the ship."

- Hazel Clementine

Truth is A Way Of Existing

"Taking the easy way out or telling the truth - those are not mearly two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules For Life. 

Having Meaning Is Best

"To have meaning in your life is better than to have what you want, because you may neither know what you want, nor what you truly need."

- Jordan Peterson -

12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos. 

Lies Made Hell

"And, above all, don't lie. Don't lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell. It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos. 

Self Initiations Price!

"For example, anthropologists who study initiation rites in tribal cultures tell us that in some of those cultures the rights are so severe and demanding that sometimes a young man or woman does not survive the rights, but dies during the initiation. Our present sensibilities are horrified by that. We cannot imagine allowing something like this to happen, Elders subjecting their adults to trials and ordeals that can lead to their deaths. Yet they lose few young people during those initiations, while, in our own cultures, thousands of young people die every year trying to self initiate, trying to find their own way into adulthood. There is a tragic irony here: we are horrified by what seems to us primitive and cruel, even as thousands of our young people died on necessarily in prematurely because they have no one to help them sort out the meaning of their own Energies. But that is the struggle, and none of us is exempt."

-Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

"Accident in history is Rife; unintended consequences and perverse outcomes are the rule."

- Stephen Kotkin. Stalin. Paradoxes Of Power.

Declining Courage

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Accepting The Defects Too?

"The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different and which about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity. Neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this is hardly desirable."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Despising Values

"How short a time ago, relatively, the small, new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered people’s approach to life."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Truth Is A Meddlesome Bitch

"Harvard’s motto is “VERITAS.” Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it’s pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address. June, 1978

Riddles and Suprises For Western Thinking.

"There is the concept of “Third World”: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Any ancient and deeply rooted, autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

The Bible Is A Window.

The Bible is not a painting to be looked at, but a window to be looked through, and through that window we see Jesus.

- Bruxy Cavey

More Than A Life Empty Of Sin

"Jesus’ goal for his followers is never just a life without obvious sin, but a life filled with genuine love." 

 - Bruxy Cavey

They Cannot See The Bird

But beware: No one is stranger than a person who “sees” in a community that is “blind.”

- Leonard Sweet. 

"....Bob Olmstead....one busy afternoon driving on a Reno, Nevada, city street when a small, wounded bird wandered out into the highway. It huddled on the pavement as the cars whizzed past it and over it, tires somehow missing it. I glimpsed the bird just as the tires of my car straddled it. At that moment I made a rash decision. I decided to rescue the bird. I stopped the car, jumped out, and held up my hands to stop traffic. If I could “shoo” the bird over the curb and into the hedge of bushes, it would be safe, at least from traffic. When I approached the bird it scooted away, but it didn’t scoot in a straight line. Whether it was too young to fly, whether its wing was injured, I do not know. But every time I bent down and waved my arms the bird would half hop, half fly in a crazy circle and end up back in the middle of the road. I could not catch it and I could not get it to run into the bushes. By this time I had a considerable amount of traffic backed up. The close drivers were watching me with quizzical or suspicious expressions. Farther back, horns were honking. I kept thinking, “Just another minute and I’ll catch the little bird or it will run off into the bushes.” So I continued running around in the street, stooped over, flapping my arms, chasing that little feathered thing. It was only then that I realized the other drivers could not see the bird!

 Visionaries are like that. Others cannot see what they see."

Praying Violin

"During World War II, Christians in Princeton held a prayer meeting to intercede for Jews in Germany. When Albert Einstein heard about it, he left his house at 112 Mercer Street, walked to the prayer meeting, and asked if he might join them. He had brought his violin with him, and wondered if he might “pray” with his instrument."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Sacred Struggle

Essential Discipleship - the struggle to get our lives together.

Mature Discipleship - the struggle to give our lives away.

- Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

An Actor In Our Own Home

"I know someone who has twice cheated on his wife, whom I don’t know. He told me this over coffee because I was telling him how I thought, perhaps, man was broken; how for man, doing good and moral things was like swimming upstream. He wondered if God had mysteriously told me about his infidelity. He squirmed a bit and then spoke to me as if I were a priest. He confessed everything. I told him I was sorry, that it sounded terrible. And it did sound terrible. His body was convulsed in guilt and self-hatred. He said he would lie down next to his wife at night feeling walls of concrete between their hearts. He had secrets. She tries to love him, but he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He cannot accept her affection because she is loving a man who doesn’t exist. He plays a role. He says he is an actor in his own home."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz 

I Rage At Injustice But My Own Heart Is Selfish

"I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz. 

Where Is The Problem.

"The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz.

Building Churches Of Sound, Not Only Sound Churches.

"If community is that which is created by shared experiences, communities of faith are built from the sound up. Sharing the same mission, eating the same food, and singing the same melodies result in the experience of community. Melodies are the creative scaffoldings that help structure unique church cultures and cohesiveness. Music tells the story of a congregation better than anything else, hence the need for ministers of melody and ministers of poetry."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Free Books

"....Gugel. He had been a publisher. And what intellectual food had he been offering the workers and the peasants? He was "nourishing the broad masses with low-quality literature," not Marx but, instead, books by bourgeois professors with world famous names."

(Taken before a tribunal in early revolution days)

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Bribery

"It may seem strange to us now, but it is a fact that in those thunderous years bribes were given and taken just as tenderly as they had been from time immemorial in Russia and as they will be in the Soviet Union from here to eternity."

- AlexsandrSolzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Innocent Today But Kill Him To Protect The Future?

"That was the way it was in those years: people lived and breathed and then suddenly found out that their existence was in expedient. 

And it must also be kept in mind that it was not what he had done that constituted the defendant's burden, but what he might do if he were not shot now. "We protect ourselves not only against the past but also against the future.""

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Phone Law

"All of this, Krylenko explains, "shows the superiority of our system over the false theory of the separation of powers," that is, the theory of the independence of the judiciary. (True, Sverdlov also said: "It is very good that the legislative and executive power are not divided by a thick wall as they are in the West. All problems can be decided quickly. Especially on the phone.")"

(Concerning sentencing  and convicting people)

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Resisting War As Christians

"If everyone was like you, brother, how good it would be! There would be no war, and no whites and no Reds!"

Arresting police officers after the trial of a "non-resistance" Christian who refused to take up arms and kill other men.

- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

No Cold Guns In War

"In those dramatic years, the sabers of War were not rusting in their scabbards, nor did the executioner's revolvers have time to grow cold in their holsters."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Who Is Your Wosdom Coming From?

by George Brahm

John Cooper, lead singer for the rock band Skillet, responded to the litany of recent apostasies among young Christian leaders. In a Facebook posttitled ‘What in God’s Name is Happening in Christianity?’ put up on Tuesday, August 13, Cooper directly addressed the reasons given by Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson for renouncing his Christian faith, before highlighting the need for Christians to stay grounded in a truth-driven faith over an emotion-driven one. Here is the text of the post in its entirety (not corrected for spelling or punctuation):

“Ok I’m saying it. Because it’s too important not to. What is happening in Christianity? More and more of our outspoken leaders or influencers who were once “faces” of the faith are falling away. And at the same time they are being very vocal and bold about it. Shockingly they still want to influence others (for what purpose?)as they announce that they are leaving the faith. I’ll state my conclusion, then I’ll state some rebuttals to statements I’ve read by some of them. Firstly, I never judge people outside of my faith. Even if they hate religion or Christianity. That is not my place and I have many friends who disagree with my religion and that is 100% fine with me. However, when it comes to people within my faith, there must be a measure of loyalty and friendship and accountability to each other and the Word of God.

“My conclusion for the church (all of us Christians): We must STOP making worship leaders and thought leaders or influencers or cool people or “relevant” people the most influential people in Christendom. (And yes that includes people like me!) I’ve been saying for 20 years(and seemed probably quite judgmental to some of my peers) that we are in a dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church culture that learns who God is from singing modern praise songs rather than from the teachings of the Word. I’m not being rude to my worship leader friends (many who would agree with me) in saying that singers and musicians are good at communicating emotion and feeling. We create a moment and a vehicle for God to speak. However, singers are not always the best people to write solid bible truth and doctrine. Sometimes we are too young, too ignorant of scripture, too unaware, or too unconcerned about the purity of scripture and the holiness of the God we are singing to. Have you ever considered the disrespect of singing songs to God that are untrue of His character?

“I have a few specific thoughts and rebuttals to statements made by recently disavowed church influencers…first of all, I am stunned that the seemingly most important thing for these leaders who have lost their faith is to make such a bold new stance. Basically saying, “I’ve been living and preaching boldly something for 20 years and led generations of people with my teachings and now I no longer believe it..therefore I’m going to boldly and loudly tell people it was all wrong while I boldly and loudly lead people in to my next truth.” I’m perplexed why they aren’t embarrassed? Humbled? Ashamed, fearful, confused? Why be so eager to continue leading people when you clearly don’t know where you are headed?

“My second thought is, why do people act like “being real” covers a multitude of sins? As if someone is courageous simply for sharing virally every thought or dark place. That’s not courageous. It’s cavalier. Have they considered the ramifications? As if they are the harbingers of truth, saying “I used to think one way and practice it and preach it, but now I’ve learned all the new truth and will start practicing and preaching it.” So the influencers become the voice for truth in whatever stage of life and whatever evolution takes place in their thinking.

“Thirdly, there is a common thread running through these leaders/influencers that basically says that “no one else is talking about the REAL stuff.” This is just flatly false. I just read today in a renown worship leader’s statement, “How could a God of love send people to hell? No one talks about it.” As if he is the first person to ask this? Brother, you are not that unique. The church has wrestled with this for 1500 years. Literally. Everybody talks about it. Children talk about it in Sunday school. There’s like a billion books written on the topic. Just because you don’t get the answer you want doesn’t mean that we are unwilling to wrestle with it. We wrestle with scripture until we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

“And lastly, and most shocking imo, as these influencers disavow their faith, they always end their statements with their “new insight/new truth” that is basically a regurgitation of Jesus’s words?! It’s truly bizarre and ironic. They’ll say “I’m disavowing my faith but remember, love people, be generous, forgive others”. Ummm, why? That is actually not human nature. No child is ever born and says “I just want to love others before loving myself. I want to turn the other cheek. I want to give my money away to others in need”. Those are bible principles taught by a prophet/Priest/king of kings who wants us to live by a higher standard which is not an earthly standard, but rather the ‘Kingdom of God’ standard. Therefore if Jesus is not the truth and if the Word of God is not absolute, then by preaching Jesus’s teachings you are endorsing the words of a madman. A lunatic who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” He also said that he was alive before Abraham, and to see him was to see God because he was one with God. So why then would a disavowed christian leader promote that “generosity is good”? How would you know “what is good” without Jesus’s teachings? And will your ideas of what is “good” be different from year to year based on your experience, culture trends, poplular opinion etc and furthermore will you continue year by year to lead others into your idea of goodness even though it is not absolute? I’m amazed that so many Christians want the benefits of the kingdom of God, but with the caveat that they themselves will be the King.

“It is time for the church to rediscover the preeminence of the Word. And to value the teaching of the Word. We need to value truth over feeling. Truth over emotion. And what we are seeing now is the result of the church raising up influencers who did not supremely value truth who have led a generation who also do not believe in the supremacy of truth. And now those disavowed leaders are proudly still leading and influencing boldly AWAY from the truth.

“Is it any wonder that some of our disavowed Christian leaders are letting go of the absolute truth of the Bible and subsequently their lives are falling apart? Further and further they are sinking in the sea all the while shouting “now I’ve found the truth! Follow me!!” Brothers and sisters in the faith all around the world, pastors, teachers, worship leaders, influencers…I implore you, please please in your search for relevancy for the gospel, let us NOT find creative ways to shape Gods word into the image of our culture by stifling inconvenient truths. But rather let us hold on even tighter to the anchor of the living Word of God. For He changes NOT. “The grass withers and the flowers fade away, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8)”

I am glad to see one of these ‘influencers’ come out in defense of the authority of Scripture and the importance of a robust faith that can outlast even the harshest of challenges.

dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth.

We must STOP making worship leaders and thought leaders or influencers or cool people or "relevant" people the most influential people in Christendom. (And yes that includes people like me!) I've been saying for 20 years(and seemed probably quitejudgmental to some of my peers) that we are in a dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church culture that learns who God is from singing modern praise songs ratherthan from the teachings of the Word. I'm not being rude to my worship leader friends (many who would agree with me) in saying that singers and musicians are good at communicating emotion and feeling. We create a moment and a vehicle for God to speak. However, singers are not always the best people to write solid bible truth and doctrine. Sometimes we are too young, too: ignorant of scripture, too unaware, or too unconcerned about the purity of scripture and the holiness of the God we are singing to. Have you ever considered the disrespect of singing songs to God that are untrue of His character?"

- John L. Cooper (2019 when a few prominant singers and authors announced their leaving the faith)

Where Pastors Are Made or Marred

"We regarded the Seminary as the key institution in the church, because it's in the Seminary that the future pastors of the church are either made or marred, either equipped and inspired, or ruined."

- John Stott. Interview 

Tuning Fork Leadership

"Leaders are imperfect tuning forks of the eternal, sounding forth as best we can the vibrations of Jesus the Christ—God’s Perfect Pitch—which beckon all into a relationship with God."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch, 2.0 

An Authority We Must Forever Bow To

"The church is not over the holy scriptures, but under them. In the sense that the process of canonization was not one where by the church conferred Authority on the books, but one we're by the church acknowledge them to possess authority... . And why? The books were recognized as giving the witness of the Apostles to the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the interpretation by the apostles of these events. To that apostolic authority, the church must ever bow."

- Anglican Church's Lamberth Conference Statement. 1958

First We Must Agree How To Agree

Epistomology really is the first question. Always has been. And it isbwhybwe have sensless fights and shalkow conversations. 

"One of the most important questions in every religion is the question of authority. 

By what authority do we believe what we believe, and by what authority do we teach what we teach? 

You cannot agree about anything until we have first agreed how to agree."

- John Stott.  

- 

Music Clears The Dust From The Soul

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday living."

- Leopold Stokowski

We "Hear" A Vision Beore We "See" It?

"For leaders, it is never too often to be reminded of this verse—or to remind others of it: “Faith comes from hearing” (Rom. 10:17). When Jesus said in Matthew 6:22 “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light,” I like to think that the “sound eye” is more than just my play on words. Followers of Jesus have vision that is voice-activated. They hear a vision before they see a vision."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Music Chases The Devil Away

Sent this interesting fact to my ethnomusicologist friend today.

"Not insignificantly, the liturgy of the church is seen as Christianity’s first theology. Martin Luther made a liturgical suggestion that sometimes a hymn or hymns be substituted for various segments of the litany on occasion because “[Music] drives away the Devil and makes people cheerful; one forgets all anger, unchasteness, pride, and other vices. I place music next to theology and give it the highest praise.… I would not change my little knowledge of music for a great deal.…Experience proves that next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0. He sights his source as follows 

(From Martin Luther’s Table Talk. See Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 100; note 153 contains additional source information about this passage. See also a variation of the quote in Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (New York: Abingdon, 1950), 341.)

Ungodliness Precedes Injustice

"The primary human failure is a failure of worship. In Romans 1:18-25, "ungodliness " precedes "injustice": those who worship that which is not God will inevitably produce distortions in the world."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Deeper Than A Sin Problem?

"The Bible, then, offers and an analysis of the human plight different from the one normally imagine. "Sin" is not just bad in itself. It is the Tell-Tale symptom of a deeper problem; and the biblical story addresses that deeper problem; it includes the sin problem but goes much further. The problem is that humans were made for a particular vocation, which they rejected; that this rejection involves a Turning Away From the Living God to worship idols; that this results in giving to the idols - "forces" within the creation - a power over humans and the world that was rightfully that of a genuine humans; and that this leads to a slavery, which is ultimately the rule of death itself, the corruption and destruction of the good world made by the creator."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Buy A Deeper Walk With God?

"You can’t buy a deeper walk with God. But you have to pay for it."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

New Trails

"Do not go where the path may be. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail."

 — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bedridden Christianity

"Our ancestors’ zeal for God has given way to another kind of zeal: a zeal to seek immunity from life’s prosecutions. We are more concerned about the question “what are your securities?” than the question “what are your ministries?” Our pews are occupied by people who want to be moved, but who don’t want to move. It is not just a few people who are bedridden all of their lives—we are becoming a church of, for, and by the bedridden and beached."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Hardened Enemies And Lukewarm Defenders

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who man do well in the new."

 — Machiavelli, 1516

We Didn't Send Any Ships

"Unless you have sent one out, it’s no use to wait for your ship to come in."

— BELGIAN PROVERB

I love Calvin a Little!

“I love Calvin a little; 

Luther more; 

the Moravians, Mr. Law, and Mr. Whitefield far more than either. I have many reasons likewise to esteem and love Mr. Hutton. 

But I love truth more than all.” 

- John Wesley. Wrote these words to Elizabeth Hutton in 1744.

Lord, We Went!

This was poweful... 

"When archaeologists were finally allowed to dig in what some call Christianity’s holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, they were astounded to discover on a wall beneath the church a red and black graffiti of a boat, with the Latin words under it “DOMINE IVIMUS”—“Lord, we went,”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Inviting Google To Church

"The Gutenberg to Google shift, the transition from representation to participation, requires a transition from performance modes to participatory modes of worship. How would this work? The Google world needs to be offered an opportunity to make decisions, choices, and commitments in worship."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

No Confusion About Who Killed Them All

"(Cherifa Khedda), .... on the ground during the darkest years of the dark decade. “The day after the massacres, we went to the places where they happened and people not only described the terrorists, but they knew who was a member of the Islamic Salvation Front. They recognized the terrorist of the neighborhood who was there killing.” Without hesitation, she calls out those who do not have her firsthand experience. “Now if people who were not there want to testify in our place, that is something else. If they meet the affected families, the one whose son was killed by the Islamists will tell you he was taken by the Islamists.” In the small villages where abuses often happened, everyone knows everyone else’s business. She recounts what local people would tell her on the ground in the Triangle of Death after any given atrocity in the 1990s. “When we go to a village and talk to a woman, and ask, ‘How do you know it was the Islamists?’ she will say, ‘The cousin of my husband was with them and the cousin of my husband was a terrorist.’ When, for example, I had friends whose children were taken by the security services, they say, ‘I knew my son was taken by the security forces.’ There is no confusion in the minds of these citizens (Like in western minds). Why is there so much denial elsewhere that fundamentalists killed here?

 Cherifa Kheddar in

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.

Algeria’s Slaughter in The 1990's

"To Cherifa’s dismay, and that of her fellow advocates, there has never been a thorough inventory of the crimes of the 1990s in Algeria. Here in the Triangle of Death, where everyone can tell stories of slaughter, it is easy to see how the international press arrived at a figure of two hundred thousand dead in the conflict.15 But no one really knows how exact it is. I ask Cherifa about this statistic. “It is just a supposition because until now the Algerian state did not give real numbers.” She ponders for a moment. “I think that number is about right. I think about two hundred thousand people were killed by the Islamist armed groups.”

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. 

Why Can't We Get A Fatwa Where We need On

"Cherifa Kheddar, Djazairouna’s president, is one of Algeria’s most important human rights advocates. When I meet her, she wears a gray suit and black pumps. Her hair is chin length and jet-black and she looks tired, having worked a long day before our grueling discussion begins. I receive her in the salon that Fayza’s family has given over to me. It is furnished with backless couches, and low tables with lace covers. In this serene environment, we relive some of Cherifa’s most difficult moments. “My mother went to Mecca on pilgrimage in 1996. She went with a group of Algerians to see the imam of the Grand Mosque and asked for a fatwa against what was happening in Algeria. The imam replied: ‘No, that is politics and we are not involved in politics.’ ” Why can’t you get a fatwa when you actually need one? Forty days later, armed thugs came to the Kheddar house in Blida and shot Cherifa’s mother and niece (who survived) and her sister Leila (who did not), and tortured her brother Mohamed Redha to death."

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. (Algerian)

Is The Womb A Safe Place?

"God commanded Hosea to marry a loose woman. She had three children (but not by Hosea--see 1:2 & 2:4). The second, a daughter, was to be named, "lo ruhama" לֹא רֻחָ֑מָה "no mercy."

The Hebrew term for mercy is rahamim, רַחֲמִים which is from the root word, rehem, רֶ֫חֶם which is the term for "womb."

The emotion of love, the "sensation of love," and mercy itself stem from the Hebrew term, "womb." The womb is a place of mercy. 

How damning it is that there is a vast number of "lo ruhama" today. These are those who are denied mercy in the "rehem" (the womb), the first place of mercy.

In the place where mercy is defined, mercy is denied to millions of unborn children."

- Scott Jacobsen 

The Problem Of Peasant Worker Rebellions In Socalisam.

"And if these scrolls - of both the extrajudicial executions and those by tribunal - are unrolled for us someday, the most surprising thing will be the number of ordinary peasants we find on them. Because there is no end to the number of peasant uprisings and revolts from 1918-1921, even though they did not adorn the colored pages of the offical "History of the Civil War", and even though no one photographed them, and no one filmed motion pictures of those furious crowds attacking machine guns with clubs, pitchforks, and axes and, later, lined up for execution with their arms tied behind their backs - Ten for one!.....

We learn from Latsis the number of peasant rebellions that were suppressed during that same year and a half in twenty provinces - 344. From 1918 on, peasant revolts were already being called "Kulak" revolts, for how could the peasants revolt against the workers' and peasants' power!"

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1, pg 303

The History of Liars

"We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, not merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering. 

I do not know whether this is a trait common to all mankind, but it is certainly a trait of our people, And it is a vexing one. It may have its source in goodness, but it is vexing nonetheless. It makes us an easy prey for liars.

Therfore, if they demand that we forget even in the public trials, we forget them. The proceedings were open and were reported in our newspapers, but they didn't drill a hole in our brains to make us remember - and so we've forgotten them. Only things repeated on the radio day after day drill holes in the brain."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.

When Women Do Not Choose Love

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

- Mother Teresa

- Remembering When Mother Teresa Left Hillary Clinton in Stunned Silence on Abortion.
In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-hold-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of Clinton, her equally pro-abortion husband, then-President Bill Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore.

Unsheltered Spirituality

"Not long ago a priest told me that he canceled his subscription to the New York Times because he felt that the endless stories about war, crime, power games and political manipulation only disturbed his mind and heart and prevented him from meditation and prayer.

That is a sad story because it suggests that only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself with an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live in a spiritual life. A real spiritual life does exactly the opposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response."

- Henri J. M. Nouwen. Reaching Out.

We Are Not In A Game Of Chance

"Take away the sadness from our faces. We are not in a game of chance....

Beyond the crushing of our bones, now has begun the eternal "alleluia!""

- Jesuit, Luis Espinal, assinated March 22, 1980, in La Paz, Bolivia by paramilitary forces, one of his last known writings, 

Bad Relationships Matter

"It seems a tad hyperbolic, but bad human relations do have a way of wrecking everything else."

-Former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now.

Why Is Serving Drugery?

"If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God."

-Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz 

Distracted And Time Wasting

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

- Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz

ONLY Two Kinds Of Sinners

"There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous."

   

... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees

Living As A Man In The World

During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus was man... It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness--taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness... How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

   

... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison