Nonviolence

What does it mean to be nonviolent? Coming from the Hindu/Sanskrit word ahimsa, nonviolence was defined long ago as “causing no harm, no injury, no violence to any living creature.” But Mohandas Gandhi insisted that it means much more than that. He said nonviolence was the active, unconditional love toward others, the persistent pursuit of truth, the radical forgiveness toward those who hurt us, the steadfast resistance to every form of evil, and even the loving willingness to accept suffering in the struggle for justice without the desire for retaliation. . . .

Another way to understand nonviolence is to set it within the context of our identity. Practicing nonviolence means claiming our fundamental identity as the beloved [children] of the God of peace. . . . This is what Jesus taught: “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the sons and daughters of God [Matthew 5:9]. . . . Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, then you shall be sons and daughters of the God who makes [the] sun rise on the good and the bad, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” [Matthew 5:44-45]. In the context of his visionary nonviolence—radical peacemaking and love for enemies—Jesus speaks of being who we already are. He talks about our true identities as if they propel us to be people of loving nonviolence. . . .

Living nonviolence requires daily meditation, contemplation, study, concentration, and mindfulness. Just as mindlessness leads to violence, steady mindfulness and conscious awareness of our true identities lead to nonviolence and peace. . . . The social, economic, and political implications of this practice are astounding: if we are [children] of a loving Creator, then every human being is our [sibling], and we can never hurt anyone on earth ever again, much less be silent in the face of war, starvation, racism, sexism, nuclear weapons, systemic injustice and environmental destruction. . . .

Gandhi said Jesus practiced perfect nonviolence. If that’s true, then how . . . did he embody creative nonviolence so well? The answer can be found at the beginning of his story, at his baptism. . . . Jesus hears a voice say, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” Unlike most of us, Jesus accepts this announcement of God’s love for him. He claims his true identity as the beloved son of the God of peace. From then on, he knows who he is. He’s faithful to this identity until the moment he dies. From the desert to the cross, he is faithful to who he is. He becomes who he is, and lives up to who he is, and so he acts publicly like God’s beloved.

-- John Dear

Visual: Layers of Life

Visual - "Layers of Life"

Bozeman, MT

Social Reconstruction

Single cases of unhappiness are inevitable in our frail human life; but when there are millions of them, all running along well-defined grooves, reducible to certain laws, then this misery is not individual, but a social matter, due to causes in the structure of our society and curable only by social reconstruction.

-- Walter Rauchenbusch

Look up when Rouchenbusch lived AND the context about which he was speaking.


The psalms remind us that the way we judge each other, with harsh words and acts of vengeance, constitutes injustice, and they remind us that it is the powerless in society who are overwhelmed when injustice becomes institutionalized. . . .

In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first.

-- Kathleen Norris

Where To Start

It is helpful to start with questions, especially the ones being asked.

So Little Empathy

We have so little empathy for what we haven’t experienced in bodily form, not to mention those who have.

Sometimes

I've noticed...sometimes I feel the rare, yet raw surge of life pulsing through me—everything is bright and alive.  I feel hyper-aware of the brilliance, power, and danger of being (and, I suppose, of being too much, if that is possible).  Is it chemical?  Biological?  Spiritual?  Whatever the cause, I feel quite alive.

At other times, everything seems laboriously slow, seems to hurt, feels devoid of meaning, without any legitimate prospect of hope—I feel dead.

Oddly, sometimes these rather contrasting times are not too far apart.  Other times these feel more like seasons, which will only end because they theoretically do.

Sometimes I wonder what this means.

Sometimes I don't.

Is this just me?  Are we dead and alive at the same time?

YHWH's Image

'Poem for the week' -- “YHWH's Image”:

And YHWH sat in the dust, bone weary after
days of strenuous making, during which He,
now and again, would pause to consider the
way things were shaping up.  Time also would
pause upon these strange durations; it would
lean back on its haunches, close its marble
eyes, appear to doze.

But then YHWH Himself finally sat on the
dewy lawn—the first stage of his work all but
finished—He took in a great breath laced with
all lush odors of creation.  It made him almost
 giddy.

As He exhaled, a sigh and sweet mist spread out
from him, settling over the earth.  In that
obscurity, YHWH sat for an appalling interval,
so extreme that even Time opened its eyes, and
once, despite itself, let its tail twitch.  Then
YHWH lay back, running His hands over the
damp grasses, and in deep contemplation
reached into the soil, lifting great handsful of
trembling clay to His lips, which parted to
avail another breath.

With this clay He began to coat His shins,
cover His thighs, His chest.  He continued this
layering, and, when He had been wholly
interred, He parted the clay at His side, and
retreated from it, leaving the image of Himself
to wander in what remained of that early
morning mist.

-- Scott Cairns, Recovered Body: Poems

God is in us.

% of Total US Stockmarket

...something we knew we didn't know.  What do we value?

Knowing vs Belief

I really shouldn't even frame it like this—knowing vs belief—because many parts of each concept overlap each other.

But, there are some unique things to each.

It seems to me, the difference between belief and knowing is participation.

I can claim to believe something.  But, if I don't actually participate with it, I don't really know it that well.  I mostly just know about it.

For example, regarding my relationship with my wife, I don't say, I believe she loves me.  Why not?  Because I know she loves me.

How do I know?

Three things stand out to me that embody the idea of love:

• Mercy
• Firmness (Integrity, or Strength)
• Forgiveness

It is my participation in these elements of love with Tami that have led me to know she loves me.

Perspective

Patience provides perspective.

-- Simon Sinek

Influence Us

Instagram: bobgoff

It will be people with the greatest love, not the most information, who will influence us to change.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Power & Relationships

You can tell where a leader is as a person—give them some power (or authority) and see what happens, particularly in their relationships.

Do they protect the people they serve or the institutions they represent?

Details

I've noticed...certain things about details.

Some don't tend to stick to me.  Unless there's a reason for them to adhere (like pain), it seems timing details for me tend to fall into a big pot somewhere.  They're there, they're around; but, they tend to melt into something rather indistinguishable.

On the other hand, there are also some details that seem to fasten themselves to me for years—these are often related to how something or someone made me feel.  Or, ones that make me wonder how I made someone else feel.

Self-Hatred

Self-hatred is also the hatred of God, because God and ourselves are united.

-- Thomas Keating


Just remember, on the practical level, the Christian Church was much more influenced by Plato than it was by Jesus.

-- Fr. Larry Landini

Besides, there is something (God?) about the beauty of things, like the wonder of this morning's good rain, that calls out to us not to (hate ourselves).

Till It's Gone

Visual: Pop

Visual - "Pop"

Torrey Pines State National Reserve, CA

How Bold

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

-- Sigmund Freud


All actual life is encounter.

-- Martin Buber

Perhaps we can not recognize the depth of either of these observations without awareness of their interdependence.

Grip

We can learn how to hold things with a firm, but also loose, grip.  An inability to do so often leads to damaging people and what they need.

Best Teachers

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

-- Alexandra Trenfor

I love how my wife does this with her students—what wisdom, courage, strength!

Deep Recognition

Ever noticed...that deep growth usually only comes after deep recognition?

Can Make Him A Saint

Dismiss all anger and look into yourself a little. Remember that he of whom you are speaking is your brother, and as he is in the way of salvation, God can make him a saint, in spite of his present weakness.

-- St. Thomas of Villanova


Hope is openness to surprise.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Childhood Neighbors Celebrate 7 Decades Of Love

On the lighter side—what do you hear?

A Certain Contempt

This seems fitting in light of this week's posts, especially in the context of the recent mass-shootings, because religion is often used to help bring and maintain sway to such things:

To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail. The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.

It is not a singular thing to hear a sermon that defines what should be the attitude of the Christian toward people who are less fortunate than himself. Again and again our missionary appeal is on the basis of the Christian responsibility to the needy, the ignorant, and the so-called backward peoples of the earth. There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another’s need out of one’s fullness and plenty. . . . It is certainly to the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one is the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative. But there is a lurking danger in this very emphasis. It is exceedingly difficult to hold oneself free from a certain contempt for those whose predicament makes moral appeal for defense and succor. It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other.

That is one reason why, again and again, there is no basic relationship between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of our faith. It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. I say this without rancor, because it is not an issue in which vicious human beings are involved. But it is one of the subtle perils of a religion which calls attention—to the point of overemphasis, sometimes—to one’s obligation to administer to human need.

-- Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

The Means

The means justify the ends, not the other way around.

Rejecting ideas too often also means rejecting people.

Drug Of Choice

I think our drug of choice these days is knowing who we're better than.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

The answer is not more opinions and more talk; in the end, opinions and talk are not the same thing as action.  It’s the question that needs to change.  The question can’t remain, what do they (other people—congress, the communities of the people directly impacted, etc.) need to do about this?  

That IS the problem (drug?).  

This is not somebody else's issue—it's OUR issue.  The answer can only come from me questioning myself.  It needs to start with me—what do I need to do about this?

LT: Won't Take Responsibility

When leaders won’t take responsibility (i.e., jump into the problems surrounding their people), it is rare that the people they serve will either.

Impatience

I'm wondering...is impatience a function of being insecure?

Never Been Separate

I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind. 

-- Richard Rohr

Visual: Forces of Nature

Visual - "Forces of Nature"

Yosemite National Park, CA

Little Use

You’re of little use to someone else (especially, but not limited to times of need), if you haven’t been taking care of your own self.

Health, of any kind, is often the result of one choice at a time (just as in unhealth).

Courage To Lose Sight

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan.  And, guess what they have planned for you?  Not much.

-- Jim Rohn


You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

-- André Gide