Extrajudicial Reprisals

"It would have been impossible to carry out this hygienic purging, especially under wartime conditions, if they had had to follow outdated legal processes and normal judicial procedures. And so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, and this thankless job was self-sacrificingly assume by the Cheka, The Sentinel of the Revolution, which was the only punitive organ in human history that combined in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict. 

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Fabricated Dreams And Illusions

".... the modern and postmodern self largely lives in a world of its own construction, and it reacts for or against its own human-made ideas. While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world ......" 
~ Richard Rohr

Rules Of Radicals

Insightful about where the rage comes from.  

“One acts decisively only in the conviction that all of the angels are on one side and the devils are on the other.” 

~ Saul Alinsky. Rules For Radicals

".....statement from Rules for Radicals “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition...." ~ David Horowitz

Human Nature Is Our Problem Utopia Can't Exist

"Naturally, the first reaction of conservatives to this advice will be to reject it. Conservatives do not want to behave like leftists, who see politics and government as a means for transforming the world and the people in it. Temperamentally, conservatives are cautious because they know that the problems the world faces are caused by human beings, not by the social institutions that progressives plan to change. Social institutions reflect who we are far more than they shape what we will be. Therefore, all political “solutions” are imperfect; all will fall far short of their goals; all will require constant reforms to fix the additional problems they create........

Conservatives are realists who believe in the constitutional skepticism that guided the Founders. They know that human nature — not society — is the insurmountable obstacle to equality and justice, and that a democracy works only through compromise and respect. Democrats pay lip service to this wisdom but don’t really believe it. There is no compromising utopian goals, and they will accept no lasting modus vivendi with those who oppose these goals."

David Horowitz

National Debt Is Indentured Service Of Our Children

"Massive deficits are not accounting problems; they are a war on the freedom of the individuals — particularly the young — who must work to pay off the government debt instead of working to enhance their lives"  

~ David Horowitz

Libeals Don't Understand Conservative. But Conservatives understand Liberals.

"Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues… sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal’ (i.e., progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. “The results were clear and consistent,” remarks Haidt. “In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals.” Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse… Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives... and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don’t understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don’t understand.

- Jonathan David Haidt (/haɪt/; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business.[1] His academic specialization is the psychology of morality and the moral emotions.

Reacting To Our Own Constructions

".... the modern and postmodern self largely lives in a world of its own construction, and it reacts for or against its own human-made ideas. While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world and, as a result, lost touch with our own souls. I believe we can’t access our full intelligence and wisdom without some real connection to nature!"

~ Richard Rohr 

Clinging To The Past Blocks Participation

"People who cling to the past and resist change have a hard time participating in God’s and their own future."

~ Richard Rohr 

Subservient And Incapable Of Discretion

"The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience."

Henry Steele Cammager. Helped define modern Liberalsim in North America. 

He Knew The Frustration and Irritation

We thank you that Jesus took our human body upon him, so that we can never again dare to despise or neglect or misuse the body, since you made it your dwelling-place. 

We thank you that Jesus did a day's work like any working man, that he knew the problem of living together in the family, that he knew the frustration and irritation of serving the public, that he had to earn a living, and to face all the wearing routine of everyday work and life and living, and so clothed each common task with glory. 

We thank you that he shared in all happy social occasions, that he was at home at weddings and at dinners and at festivals in the homes of simple ordinary people like ourselves. Grant that we may ever remember that in his unseen risen presence he is a guest in every home. 

We thank you that he knew what friendship means, that he had his own circle of men whom he wanted he wanted to be with him, that he knew too what it means to be let down, to suffer from disloyalty and from the failure of love. 

We thank you that he too had to bear unfair criticism, prejudiced opposition, malicious and deliberate misunderstanding. 

We thank you that whatever happens to us he has been there before, and that, because he himself has gone through things, he is able to help those who are going through them. 

Help us never to forget that he knows life, because he lived life, and that he is with us at all times to enable us to to live victoriously. This we ask for your love's sake. Amen
~ William Barclay. Prayers for the Christian year

Come Still Your Hunger

"The church is not an institution forcing us to follow its rules. It is a community of people inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at it's tables."

~ Henri Nouwen Reaching Out

Too Powerful For War

"I was driven by the realization that we can no longer afford conflict - certainly not on the scale of the world conflagrations of the twentieth century. Our technologies of destruction have become too powerful. The potential consequences of war are literally apocalyptic."

~ Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote To Chaos

When Church is Quite Unbearable

“Quite unbearable.”

Written in Bonhoeffer’s diary entry in 1939 in New York where he attended church at Riverside, the church Rockefeller had built for Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick was a great liberal.

"The whole thing was a respectable, self-indulgent, self-satisfied religious celebration. This sort of idolatrous religion stirs up the flesh which is accustomed to being kept in check by the Word of God. Such sermons make for libertinism, egotism, indifference. Do people not know that one can get on as well, even better, without “religion”?.....Perhaps the Anglo-Saxons are really more religious than we are, but they are certainly not more Christian, at least, if they still have sermons like that. I have no doubt at all that one day the storm will blow with full force on this religious hand-out, if God himself is still anywhere on the scene.

~Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

God- Be In My Head

Written in the 13th century in Sarum England.

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing."
~ Sarum Primer

Missing Little - But Losing much

"If you miss me, you miss little.
If you miss our church, you miss much.
If you miss our Christ, you miss everything."

----on  the back of pastor's calling card. Dr. Gary L. Hearon, Antioch Baptist Church, Waynesville, NC

Lord Where There Is Hatred May I Bring Love

Lord make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant
that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand than to be understood;
to love than to be loved;
for it is by forgetting self that one finds;
it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.
~ Malcom Muggeridge. "Something Beautiful In God"

Dropping Baggage

"As you spiritually mature, you can forgive your own—and others’—mistakes. You can let go of everyone who hurt you, your former spouse, the boss who fired you, the church, or even God. You have no interest in carrying around negative baggage."

~Richard Rohr

What Bad Religion Desires

"Bad religion has always favored escape, passivity, irresponsibility."

 Louis Evely. In The Christian Spirit

To Busy To Hear Anything

  How are we to know, or find out what the Will of God is?...... The difficulty comes when there is a conflict of loyalties, or a choice between two apparent gods. At such points many feel unaware of any guidance, unable to discern or understand the signals of God; not because the signals are not given, but because the mind is too troubled, clouded and hurried to receive them.  

“He who is in a hurry,” said St.Vincent de Paul,  “delays the things of God.”  

~ Evelyn Underhill. The Spiritual Life

Robbed Faith

Poor Little-faith! Hast been among the thieves?

Wast robb’d? Remember this, whoso believes,

And gets more faith, shall then a victor be

Over ten thousand, else scarce over three.

Christian, in Pilgrims Progress

The Soul Her Sacred Page

"One Holy Church of God appears
Through every age and race,
Unwasted by the lapse of years,
Unchanged by changing place.
......

The truth is, her prophetic gift,
The soul her sacred page....

....
With bread of life earth's hunger feed;
Redeem the evil time!

----------

~ Samuel Longfellow. Hymn: One Holy Church of God Appears

Commune With Or Exploit

"The future can exist only when we understand the universe as composed of subjects to be communed with, not as objects to be exploited."

—Thomas Berry

You Are Part Of A Universe Story

"The . . . universe is not simply a place but a story—a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong, and out of which we arose."

(Journey of the Universe, philosopher Brian Swimme and historian Mary Evelyn)

A life of Requirements, or Relationship?

Theologian Marcus Borg (1942-2015) wrote:

The gospel of Jesus—the good news of Jesus’ own message—is that there is a way of being that moves beyond both secular and religious conventional wisdom. The path of transformation of which Jesus spoke leads from a life of requirements and measuring up (whether to culture or to God) to a life of relationship with God. It leads from a life of anxiety to a life of peace and trust. It leads from the bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self-forgetfulness. It leads from life centered in culture to life centered in God.

Current Wisdom Killed Jesus

""Bad” people didn’t kill Jesus; conventional wisdom crucified him."

~ Richard Rohr

I Get Too Much Praise

"Luke’s Gospel presents the same message in the opposite form: “Alas for you when the world speaks well of you! This was the way their ancestors treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). Too much praise is probably an indication that it is not the full Gospel. In either case, Jesus himself clearly knew that his teaching would turn conventional values on their head."

~ Richard Rohr

Silence To Hear

...all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard...
Thomas Merton

Censorshiop of Freedom Of Speech

"In a society such as Canada that fetishizes politeness and moderation, Free Speech can be hard to stomach. But that is the price you pay to live in and intellectually vibrant society that is safe for intellectual dissidents and other would-be reformers. We don't need laws to control the more reckless users- or abusers - of free speech. The community itself will naturally marginalize people who are excessively rude or bigoted. Such informal mechanisms - not section 13- (Was in Himan Rights Comission code until it was repealed) explain why it's no longer socially acceptable to be a bigot in polite Canadian Society.

The occasional rough edges that come with freedom of speech are constantly exaggerated by those who would seek to control that speech. But the trade-off they would propose namely, having a government agency so powerful and so omnipresent in our lives as to be able to investigate, prosecute, and punish dissident ideas - is a much more troubling danger than the odd vicious comment or reactionary sermon. If the choice is between individuals using their freedom of speech hurtfully and an all-Seeing Big Brother watching our words and thoughts, I know which society I'd rather live in. You can always ignore a racist. You can't escape from the government."

(Ezra Levant. Shakedown)

Convincing Us We Are Not Beautiful

"we are all born so beautiful the greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not."
----Canadian poet Rupi Kaur

The Cross of Abandoned Power

“The Way of the Cross Leads Home.”

The cross does not define God in terms of power, but in terms of love."

Leonard Sweet

Discrediting Goodness

"To live joyfully amid misunderstanding and slander points beyond “my kingdom” to the Kingdom of God. Goodness can never be attacked directly; the messengers or the motivation must be discredited."
~ Richard Rohr

Mannerly Behavior & Wasted Words

"Torn between his hatred of wasted words and his deep respect for mannerly behavior, he was the very definition of unsettled."

~ Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Why Do We Get To Decide Who Lives?

"If you are truly a peacemaker, your very means have to be nonviolent and you have to be consistently pro-life—from womb to tomb. One of the most distressing qualities of many Christians today is that they retain the right to decide when, where, and with whom they will be pro-life peacemakers. If the other can be determined to be wrong, guilty, unworthy, or sinful, the death penalty is somehow supposed to serve justice. That entirely misses the ethical point Jesus makes: We are never the sole arbiters of life or death, because life is created by God and carries the divine image."

~ Richard Rohr

Nuclear Giants And Ethical Infants

"..... Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."

~ General Omar Bradley. Armistice Day Address in Boston on November 10, 1948.

A Beginners Mind

"“Poor in spirit” (Mat 5:3) means an inner emptiness and humility, a beginner’s mind." 

RichardRohr  

Ten Thousand Surrenders to Mercy

"The mystery of forgiveness is God’s ultimate entry into powerlessness. Withholding forgiveness is a form of power over another person, a way to manipulate, shame, control, and diminish another. God in Jesus refuses all such power....

We do not attain anything by our own holiness but by ten thousand surrenders to mercy. A lifetime of received forgiveness allows us to become mercy....."

Richard Rohr

Be Peace Ourselves Is How To Make Peace

War is a means of seeking control, not a means of seeking peace....
How can we be peacemakers? It begins by being peace ourselves, by connecting with the source of peace within. It means standing up in nonviolent resistance to systems of injustice. It involves learning the skills of nonviolent communication and conflict resolution....
We do not attain anything by our own holiness but by ten thousand surrenders to mercy. A lifetime of received forgiveness allows us to become mercy..."~ Richard Rohr

Precious Time in War-time

"This inactivity, or rather activity in unimportant things, is quite intolerable when one thinks of the brethren and of how precious time is."
~ Bonhoeffer. 1939 while in America worrying about church in Germany as war swallowed up everyone

Suffer With The People

"I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."

~Bonhoeffer, 1939

Non-violent Persistence

"While [it] may take a long time, our nonviolent persistence and truth-telling will eventually win out and bear the good fruit of justice.
Richard Rohr

Truth-telling Wins Eventually

"While [it] may take a long time, our nonviolent persistence and truth-telling will eventually win out and bear the good fruit of justice.
Richard Rohr

Holding Defense Power

"The price of both holding power and speaking truth to power can be very great. You ricochet between being offensive and being defensive, neither of which is a contemplative or solid position.
Further, you are forced to either defend and maintain the status quo to protect yourself and the group or to waste time reacting against it."

Richard Rohr

The Bent Ones

How blessed (or “happy”) are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs. —Matthew 5:3

“Poor in spirit” means an inner emptiness and humility, a beginner’s mind, and to live without a need for personal righteousness or reputation. It is the “powerlessness” of Alcoholics Anonymous’ First Step. The Greek word Matthew uses for “poor” is ptochoi, which literally means, “the very empty ones, those who are crouching.” They are the bent-over beggars, the little nobodies of this world who have nothing left, who aren’t self-preoccupied or full of themselves in any way. Jesus is saying: “Happy are you, you’re the freest of all.”

Headless Church

How can you “love Jesus but hate church?” Church is the body of Christ and bride of Christ. I do sometimes hate what we’ve made of the church, our body modifications, plastic surgeries, and all our attempts to go headless.

— Leonard Sweet

Twisting Love?

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image."

— Thomas Merton

First Prayer

In order to be effective, prayer has to be the first thing we do, not the last.

— Eugene Peterson

Marriage Vows Like No Other

"A marriage vow is saying, "I know that you're trouble! Me too! So we won't leave, no matter what happens. Well that's one hell of a vow. But that's why it's a vow. That's why you take it infront of a bunch of people. That's why it's supposed to be a sacred act. What's the alternative? What's the alternative?
Everything is mutable and changable at any moment. Go ahead and live your life like that and see what you're like when you are fifty. Jesus, it's dismal. Two or three divorces. You're family us fragmented. You've got no continuity of narrative. And it's  not good for the kids, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a form if voluntary slavery i suppose.
It's also the equilivant to the adoption of a responsibility. And there is more too it than that. If you can't (won't) run away, you can solve your problems.
Because, it might be, I'm stuck with you, so how about we fix things. Because the alternative is that we are going to be in a boxing match for the next forty years. That's your alternative.

So, and you think you're going to fix your problems without something like that hanging over your head? There isn't a chance. You'll just avoid them
That is what people do. It's really hard to solve problems, especially in a relationship.

.... do you think you will do that (sort it out) unless there is a good reason?

No! We better sort this out because we are going to be carrying it around for the next forty years. That, maybe, is enough motivation so that you actually try hard to solve a problem.

It's a lot easier to say, " Ha, we're not going there." But then, good, you'll have it every day, every goddam day for the rest of your life."
Jordan Peterson

Life is Joy With Tears Just Behind

Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness . . . But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.

- Henri Nouwen

Human Rights Authoritarian Failure

"Despite my considerable involvement in pressuring the Ontario government, many years ago, to create Canada's first Human Rights Commission, I regret the attempt to use the law in this way.......
There should be no question of the right to publish the cartoons in question Religious prophets no less than political leaders or even deities may be legally permissible targets of satire or even scoring. This is the essence of free speech in a democracy. No ideology political, religious, or philosophical can be immune. It will be wise, therefore, to remove those provisions in the human rights act....."

Alan Borovoy

If We Lose Our Freedom

"If we lose our freedoms in this country, the job will be done to us not by malevolent autocrats seeking do bad but by parochial bureaucrats seeking to do good "

~ Alan Borovoy