Voiceless

"These voters do not tend to have college degrees. They disproportionately work in Industries, such as manufacturing, they are facing ongoing disruption from low-cost competition and new technology. In short, they are in the parts of the Western economy that have fared poorly in the post-Cold War era, the age of globalization. 

And they were feeling voiceless. This is a common finding in different studies of both the Trump election and the Brexit referendum. The concerns of these people have been either largely ignored or, if acknowledged at all, vigorously denounced. There can be no doubt about the extent to which these voters believe that the political establishment does not care about them. They have come to mistrust both the traditional liberal/ center-left and conservative/ center-right options."

- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now: Politics and Leadership In the Age of Disruption. 

Salut Hitler's Sheep

"Meanwhile, Oster and Dohnanyi continued their work under the protection of Admiral Canaris. If ever anyone led a double life, Canaris did. He took morning horseback rides in Berlin’s Tiergarten with Heydrich, the piscine ghoul, and yet was at this very time using his power to undermine Heydrich and the Nazis at every turn. The gangsterism of Hitler sickened him. On a trip to Spain, while riding through the countryside in his open car, he stood and gave the Hitler salute to every herd of sheep he passed. “You never know,” he said, “whether one of the party bigwigs might be in the crowd.”"

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

He Preached For Free And The Price......

"He preached for free, and the price was worth it."

 - Huckleberry Finn 

- Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

No Economic Gods

"I begin by looking at market economics. The market is a powerful Institution for resource allocation and wealth creation. However, conservatives must resist market dogmatism. Policy-making does not occur within a textbook version of reality. It happens in the real world, with trade-offs, imperfect options, and non-economic considerations. Markets are a tool of good economic policy, but they are not an objective in and of themselves.

Groing public concerns about economic dislocation and trade are far from being without merit. However, they require a careful response that resorts neither to protectionism nor state dependency. People want meaningful work, as well as the financial security and personal dignity that comes with it. Conservatives must be champions for paid work and must set out an agenda that creates the conditions for it"

- Stephen Harper 

The Past Way Of Approaching The Future

Reading about populism the last few weeks and I encountered this interesting statement... 

"I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future."

- Ronald Reagan

The Christmas Story Up And Down

The Christmas Story

“In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”

~ C.S. Lewis

The Flip-Flop Incarantion Of Jesus

“Man’s maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;
that the Bread might hunger,
the Fountain thirst,
the Light sleep,
the Way be tired on its journey;
that the Truth might be accused of false witness,
the Teacher be beaten with whips,
the Foundation be suspended on wood;
that Strength might grow weak;
that the Healer might be wounded;
that Life might die.”

~ Augustine

The Great Depression Politics

"It was the Great Depression, and misery, starvation, financial ruin, despair, and suicide were affecting thousands of lives. In response to the raw need of the people around them and their search for social justice, my parents lives and home were infused with a panoramic sense of history and big ideas of economic and social reform, democratic processes, and populist politics. They looked for deliverance from the awful conditions that threatened to destroy their community. Mostly, they refused to accept the prevailing political notion of the traditional political establishment that there was nothing I'm to be done but Riding the Storm."

- Preston Manning. Think Big: Adventures in Life and Democracy. 

Grinding Axe

"As a boy, I would sometimes do my homework in a little anteroom off his office. I would leave the door ajar and listen as he talked with visitors. It was there that I got my first exposure to politics and government. My father had told me that if I listened closely I would hear the sound most familiar to the ears of an elected politician - the sound of the grinding of an axe."

- Preston Manning. Think Big: Adventures in Life and Democracy

Bad Policies.

"I could have concluded what most commentators concluded. They had predicted Trump could not win- that he could never win - because he is a fool and a bigot. Therefore, they surmise, the voters must be fools and bigots as well. 

For many liberals, wedded to the belief that those who disagree with them are fools and bigots by definition, that answer may be good enough. For us conservatives, who fancy ourselves students of human nature and Human Experience, it should not. The ones with the foolish and preconceived notions were those who got it so wrong. It is a time to reexamine our assumptions. 

So here is my re-examination in a nutshell. A large proportion of Americans, including many American conservatives, voted for Trump because they are really not doing very well. They are not doing well in the world that we conservatives created after the Cold War. And they are not doing well, in part, because of some of the policies we conservatives have advocated. 

In short, the world of globalization is not working for many of our own people. We can pretend that this is a false perception, but it is not. We now have a choice. We can keep trying to convince people that they missunderstand their own lives, or we can try to understand what they are saying. Then we can decide what to do about it."

- Stephen Harper. Right Here, Right Now

For Truth You Have To Sit In Jail

"Fastenko, on the other hand, was the most cheerful person in the cell, even though, in view of his age, he was the only one who could not count on surviving and returning to freedom.  

Flinging an arm around my shoulders, he would say:  

 'To stand up for the truth is nothing! 

 For truth you have to sit in jail!  

Or else he taught me to sing this song from Tsarist hard-labor days: 

 'And if we have to perish 

 In mines and prisons wet,

Our cause will ever find renown 

In future Generations yet.' 

 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL1.

Astonished He Could Sob So

"He recalled out loud his wife's tears, hold years of tears: some due to love notes she had found in his trousers, some to some woman's underpants in his overcoat pocket, stuff there hurriedly in his automobile and forgotten. And when he was thus torn by burning self-pity, his armor of evil energy fell away, and before us was a ruined and clearly a good person. I was astonished that he could sob so."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1. 

The Poles of War

"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.

How Many Shot?

"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.

People Work Differently

"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.

Two Time Canadian Migrant

 "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. 

A powerful piece of writing I thought. The last two lines especially. 

"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.

In Need Of Old Peoples Stories

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.

Just Before Societies Fall

"Before societies fall, just such a stratum of wise, thinking people emerges, people who are that and nothing more. And how they were laughed at! How they were mocked! As though they stuck in the crawl of people whose deeds and actions were single minded and narrow-minded. And the only nickname they were christened with was "rot." Because these people were a flower that bloomed too soon and breathed too delicate a fragrance. And so they were mold down. 

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. 

Needing Old Men With Histories Stories

"The old fellow withthe lively eyebrows - and at sixty-three he in no way bore 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. 

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.

Sleep

"At any minute, one of us could have been pulled out for interrogation..... One night of undisturbed sleep was more important than all the fates on Earth!"

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1

War And Dirty Church Decisions

"Even if Bonhoeffer could have explained that he was in fact working against Hitler, many in the Confessing Church would still have been confused, and others would have been outraged. For a pastor to be involved in a plot whose linchpin was the assassination of the head of state during a time of war, when brothers and sons and fathers were giving their lives for their country, was unthinkable. Bonhoeffer had come to a place where he was in many ways very much alone."

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

Intended Church Death

"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. 

He Blesses Thru You Also

"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/.

Unable To See Sacredness

"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

Something Devilishly Interesting In Every Woman

"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 

I'm Begging You To Stop Carrying My Bag

You can show that you have rights and deserve respectable treatment easily enough without fighting to insit on it. You can resist or refuse and suffer arrest. 

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 

You Are Causing My Nakedness

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 

Turn The Left Cheek Means Treat Me As Equal.

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 

No Tangible Experiences of God

"... 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)

A Pilgrims Prayer

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

"God didn't trust me with with complicated theological systems."

-Tony Kriz. Aloof

Moral Back Alleys

"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov 

Much Suffering In Life

"Mitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha’s hand. “My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too. There’s a terrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov

Wiggling Dream

"Anyone moving out of their passport country has a dream."

- William Jackson. Grieving An Unfulfilled Dream. Aug 23, 2018

History With The Oppositions Eyes

Anabaptism lived under the shadow of Münster for a long time. In the public mind throughout Europe, Anabaptism became virtually synonymous with Münster. In spite of the peaceful and passive stance that came to be the norm for Anabaptism, religious and political authorities feared and assumed that Anabaptism's is rejection of the established ecclesiastical authority would inevitably lead to another Münster. Repression of Anabaptists was the result.. Historiography has reflected the presumed identity of Münster and Anabaptism. In a virtually unbroken line of writings from Martin Luther and Heinrich Bullinger to Karl Hall in the 20th century, it was assumed that early Anabaptism began with the revolutionary Thomas Münster and reached its logical conclusion in Münster. I American historiography, not till the twentieth century did scholars such as John Horsch, Harold S. Bender, and Cornelius Krahn successfully challenge that interpretation of Anabaptist origins."

- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism 

Pulling Out The Chair From Under Your Mind?

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)

An Empty Left & Right

"If we are not tasting the fullness of the now we will play the game of power to fill the emptiness. If we're playing the domination game, we can be as trapped on the left as on the right. Our greatest disillusionment with so much of even contemporary Progressive thinking is that it is still playing the power game."

- Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. 

Brandy Wounds And Fire Tested Faith

(Jacob) Hutter set about developing or restoring an Anabaptist network. However, he was arrested in Klausen.....

.... 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.

Convinced You See Perfectly

"The ego must remain unseen and disguised to be effective in protecting itself. Evil always depends on denial and disguise, it seems. The ego as such is not evil, but it can lead us to do evil without realizing it. .... To succeed, evil somehow has to look like virtue. It leaves you blind to your own illusions and convinced that you see perfectly."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Self-Build Monuments

"In Rioverde I had written a book about what happened there, and it did not have a very happy ending. It was my only monument; too bad that so many of us who need monuments end up building them ourselves."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure.

Forcing Change Is Forcing An Order

"We boast that we were "agents of change"; we were not; we were agents of order."

- Moritz Thomsen.The Saddest Pleasure. 

The Life I've Chosen

"I figured I'd put myself into an impregnable position and that no one would threaten to drive me from the life - and the death -  I had chosen. I stood up to the tearful, tragic letters from my mother and the free one one-way airplane tickets to Los Angeles or San Francisco sent to me by friends who couldn't believe that I lived as I did because I wanted to."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure 

Fantasy Life?

"Our lives are controlled by the fantasies we create to explain and justify our inclinations."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure 

Loosing Patriotism

"Roy Henley, was only 14 when he fought at Vimy Ridge. “When you see a man take a whiz-bang (high velocity shell) in the stomach, you lose a lot of patriotism,” Henley said in a 1987 CBC documentary."

- Tristin Hopper. "The Germans considered it a victory, too: Rare images showing everything you didn’t know about Vimy Ridge."

Trying Poverty

""If you want to see a performance of monumental ugliness just leave me over here a day without cigarettes." 

"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 

Poverty Does Not Make Every Pauper Kind

I had spent ten years with poor people, full of Illusions about them and out of pity and rage ready to forgive them almost everything. Their sense of involvement with life, their capacity to endure through endless periods of deprivation and catastrophe were qualities I found heroic. But now for the first time I was plunged into the reality of a poverty that couldn't be disguised by Ramones presents to intervene for my protection or to explain in a softer way certain irrationality and brutalities. I had come over to this further side wondering if I could handle the jungle, never suspecting that it was the people, not the forest, that would fill me with despair. On one side of me lived a group of drunken louts who, if they had had the courage, would have killed me; on the other side, my friends, the ones who came to my house in the late afternoons - to visit me when I was there or to rob me when I was gone."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure 

Unhinged At Pretty Ass

"She was indeed a very special kind of woman, illiterate and absolutely simple but rigid in her honesty, her loyalty, her unforgiving refusal to accept Cantate's concubine. She raised three children with love and sternness, beating them cruelly when they stole ut working ceaselessly to feed and clothe them. For a year I watched her face turn hard and bitter and the big bright smile full of delight and teeth fade from her face. Consumed by a steady rage she grew old before my eyes. I said nothing, trying only to soften her pain by talking in generalities about the fickle and childish nature of Ecuadorian Macho's and ease with which their lies could come on hinges at the wiggle of a pretty ass."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers. 

Loving Out Power Regimes

" In clear and unmistakable language, the Hebrew prophets, Muhammad, and Jesus were talking about people changing. Yet how is it that the groups that formed in their names frequently became bulwarks against change? So often, we have been protectors of the past, lovers of Empire, power, and business as usual  - especially when the present arrangement was to our advantage. In fact, if you ask most people how they view religion, they'll answer that it is supposed to be a protector of the tradition. This is why, for so much of our history, we have made good bedfellows with kings, queens, dictators, and repressive regimes. Just ask the French, the English, the Spanish, the Germans, the Austrians, the Russians, almost all Latin Americans, and Protestant North Americans. We have consistently been on the side of our particular ancien règime instead of the transnational kingdom of God, ever since Constantine invited us into his palaces in A.D. 313."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Life Process of Transformation

Did anyone ever tell you that Jesus' very first message in the Gospels, which is usually translated as "conver," "repent," or "reform" (Matthew 14:17, Mark 1:15) is the "Greek word metanoia, which quite literally means to "change your mind"? Jesus first word to us was "change!" - and mind change at that! ....

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.