1/5/2003
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another....
 -Zechariah 7:9

1/12/2003
"The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling."
 -Hugh Latimer

1/19/2003
"Awaken my senses to the goodness that can still spring forth in me and in all that has life."
 -Unknown

1/26/2003
"I feel like the 'dimly burning wick' that Isaiah talks about. But he says it won't be quenched, so we can't give up! But my energy wanes, so one thing I can do is to encourage you young and energetic folks to hold fast. We are with you, and we do a lot of praying!"
 -Mary Ellen Meyer

2/2/2003
To "do peace, you must get up off your apathy."
 -Yolanda King

2/9/2003
"Do not depend on the hope of results...concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.
 -Thomas Merton, Catholic Worker

2/16/2003
"Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Victory is ours through him who loves us."
(View Poster)
 -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2/23/2003
"Granted, it takes courage to be 'extension agents' for hope during these days of distrust and fear. It takes courage to hope when the newspaper headlines speak of inevitable violence. It takes courage to hope when tens of thousands of soldiers pack their bags and march off to the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, hope remains a necessary condition for any kind of peacemaking activity because without hope we are left alone and vulnerable to our fears. Especially in this situation, I would rather be vulnerable to the transformative power of God than the hopelessness of
fear."
 -Matthew Bailey-Dick, CPTer on the way to Iraq

3/2/2003
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
 -Hebrews 11:1

3/9/2003
"Hope starts small...but it feeds on outrageous possibilities. It beckons us to step out with the belief that the action we take will not only bear fruit but that in taking it, we have already made difference in the World. God invites us, like Mary, to open to God's radical leading, to step out with sometimes inexplicable faith, trusting that we will find sustenance. 'Hope,' writes W. Paul Jones in 'Trumpet at Full Moon', 'is the simple trust that God has not forgotten the recipe for manna.' The hope of God contains the promise that we will be fed, even if we never see the fruit of our hope-filled actions."
 -Jan L. Richardson "Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas"

3/16/2003
Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.
 -Helen Keller

3/23/2003
Nonviolence, when it becomes active, travels with extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle.
 -Gandhi

3/30/2003
He said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."
 -Luke 13:18-20

4/6/2003
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience...Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring"
 -Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

4/13/2003
"Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have seen and ask yourself if the next step you contemplate is going to be of any use to that person."
 -Mohandas Gandhi

4/20/2003
"The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis"
 -Edmund Burke

4/27/2003
"Miracles are watered by our action."
 -Cliff Kindy, Christian Peacemaker Teams core member

5/4/2003
"Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold."
 -Peace Pilgrim

5/11/2003
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better"
 -Daniel Berrigan

5/18/2003
"We're not made by God to mass kill one another ... and that's backed up by the Gospel. Lying and war are always associated. Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war--if they move their lips they're lying."
 -Phil Berrigan

5/25/2003
"If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor."
 -Desmund Tutu

6/1/2003
"Wars are a poor choice for carving out peaceful tomorrows."
 -Martin Luther King, Jr.

6/8/2003
"A seed in the ground. A flame in the darkness. A hand outstretched. A child in the womb. Hope starts small and overtakes us, stretching the borders of what we have known."
 -Jan L. Richardson "Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas"

6/15/2003
We shall hew out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope.
 -Martin Luther King, Jr.

6/22/2003
And again he said, "To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
 -Luke 13:20-21

6/29/2003
"I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
 -Martin Luther King, Jr.

7/6/2003
"As we work for justice and peace, we plant seeds of hope. Our hope is reflected in our faith. As we plant the seed, we see the whole tree in the seed. We not only see it, we feel it growing. We not only feel it,we taste its fruit."
 -Ricardo Esquivia, JustaPaz, Colombia Mennonite Church

7/13/2003
"We must persist in planting bulbs in the hard, cold soil around us so that someday, when warmer winds begin to blow, we will have blooming flowers to adorn our tables of abundance."
 -Bonnie Klassen, MCC worker in Colombia

7/20/2003
"What is hope? It is a presentiment that imagination is more real and reality less real than it looks. It is a hunch that the overwhelming brutality of acts that oppress and repress is not the last word."
 -Rubem Alves, Brazilian theologian

7/27/2003
Our expanding knowledge does not dim our faith; it only shows the size of God's creation.
 -Mother Teresa

8/3/2003
"Good, the more
Communicated, more abundant grows."

 -John Milton, 1667, Paradise Lost

8/10/2003
"The world is waiting...for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international
order."
 -Henri Nouwen

8/17/2003
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
 -2 Corinthians 4:8-9

8/24/2003
To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration.
 -Thomas Merton

9/21/2003
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another....
 -Zechariah 7:9

9/28/2003
"The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling."
 -Hugh Latimer

10/5/2003
"Awaken my senses to the goodness that can still spring forth in me and in all that has life."
 -Unknown

1/4/2004
Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.
 -Oscar Aria Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner

1/11/2004
The greatest peace, I believe, is the peace which we derive from our faith in God Almighty; from certainty about our relationship with our Creator. Crises might beset us, battles might rage about us--but if we have faith and the certainty it brings, we will enjoy peace--the peace that surpasses all understanding.
 -Frederik W. deKlerk, 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner

1/18/2004
Prayer is the basis of all peacemaking precisely because in prayer we come to the realization that we do not belong to the world in which conflicts and wars take place, but to him who offers us his peace.
 -Henri Nouwen

1/25/2004
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
 -Psalm 46

2/1/2004
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
 -Eleanor Roosevelt

3/28/2004
History was not written by men who predicted failure, who gave up their dreams, who abandoned their principles, who allowed their laziness to put their intelligence to sleep.
 -Oscar Aria Sanchez, Nobel Peace Prize winner

4/4/2004
It all began with the Resurrection. If only he had stayed put.
 -Daniel Berrigan, SJ

4/11/2004
I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.
 -Martin Luther King, Jr

4/18/2004
Time and patience will turn the mulberry leaf into silk.
 -Eastern Proverb

4/25/2004
We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
 -Andre Gide

5/2/2004
And then there is the question of prayer, which consists for the most part in insisting that God do for us what we are unwilling to do for one another. Resolve: Let's do for one another what we would have God do for all. This is known as God-like activity.
 -Daniel Berrigan, SJ

5/9/2004
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
 -Dag Hammarskjold

5/16/2004
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.
 -John Muir

5/23/2004
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
 -Aldo Leopold

5/30/2004
Can I say to my neighbor: I have no solution for this situation, I have no answers, but I want to go with you and look for them with you? Can I allow myself to be evangelized by this opportunity? Am I able to see my own poverty and accept what I learn from others?
 -Ita Ford

6/6/2004
Love comes out of heaven unasked and unsought.
 -Pearl S. Buck

6/13/2004
Hospitality means more than serving a meal, opening a door, or offering a bed. It means opening our hearts to others.
 -Dorothy Day

6/20/2004
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our children to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm! Disarm!"
 -Julia Ward Howe

6/27/2004
The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace.
 -Colman McCarthy

7/4/2004
Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.
 -Psalm 31:24, NIV

7/11/2004
Nonviolence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave.
 -Mohandas K. Gandhi

7/18/2004
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
 -Romans 12;2, NIV

7/25/2004
I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
 -William James

8/1/2004
Focus your energy and being on what you are for (peace, love, community) rather than what you are against (military industrialists, child abusers, organized crime).
 -M. Scott Peck

8/8/2004
In the same way, let your light since before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
 -Matthew 5:16

8/15/2004
Help us to use our science for peace and plenty, not for war and destruction. Show us how to use atomic power to bless our children's children, not to blight them.
 -Thomas Merton

8/22/2004
Prayer is the act in which we willingly live through in our own being the ultimate consequences of nuclear destruction and affirm in the midst of them that God is the God of the living and that no human power will ever be able to "unmake" God. In prayer we anticipate both our individual death and our collective death and proclaim that in God there is no death, but life. In prayer we undo the fear of death, the basis of all human destruction.
 -Henri Nouwen

8/29/2004
The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
 -Erica Jong

9/5/2004
In the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we see God's decisive victory not only over death but over all God's other enemies as well. In that one climactic event, we see the certainty that someday, in the kingdom of God, there will be no more violence, war, jealousy, or death.... These forces are still alive and at work in the world, but because of the victory that God won at Easter, their doom is certain.

 -Stephen T. Davis, in "Risen Indeed"

9/12/2004
"Via Crucis, Via Lucis." Where there's the cross, there's also light. It may not be easy to wear light on a chain around the neck, but then again, as people of the resurrection, we don't need to. I pray that it will be obvious to all who see us that we are people of joy. We walk in illumination. Where we pass, our footprints puddle with light.
 -Rose Marie Berger

9/19/2004
"Let us not be disheartened, as though human realities make impossible the accomplishments of God's plans"
 -Oscar Romero

9/26/2004
God is too good to be unkind, and He is too wise to be mistaken. When we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.
 - Charles Spurgeon

10/3/2004
Unprotected by prayer our social activism runs the danger of becoming self-justifying good works, as our inner resources atrophy, the wells of love run dry, and we are slowly changed into the likeness of the Beast.
 -Walter Wink

1/2/2005
God has chosen the weak things to overcome the strong, foolish things to confound the wise, lowly things to humble the haughty.

That is God's way, and it ought to be a reminder for us when we wish to know where to look for God or to know what God wants us to do in the world.
 -Richard Groves

1/9/2005
Peace Crane, I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.
 -Sadako Sasaki, age 12

1/16/2005
The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole. If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others. Thus the way from Bethlehem leads inevitably to Golgotha, from the crib to the cross. When the blessed virgin brought the child to the temple, Simeon prophesied that her soul would be pierced by a sword, that this child was set for the fall and the resurrection of many, for a sign that would be contradicted. His prophecy announced the passion, the fight between light and darkness that already showed itself before the crib.
 -Edith Stein

1/23/2005
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
 -Luke 1:79

1/30/2005
If you think your actions are too small to make a difference, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.
 -Anonymous

3/6/2005
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
 -Martin Luther King, Jr.

3/13/2005
Don't postpone joy.
 -

3/20/2005
"Let us not become the evil that we deplore."
 -Barbara Lee, House of Representatives 9/14/01

3/27/2005
"Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places."
 -Hannah Senesh

4/3/2005
"...(I)n the final analysis, the future is not prepared by the 'movers and shakers' who occupy the foreground of our TV screens, but rather by the hidden multitudes who work humbly and tirelessly for what they believe in."
 -Brother John of Taize in "One More Missed Opportunity"

4/10/2005
The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order . . . Most people despair that [it] is possible. They cling to old ways and prefer the security of their misery to the insecurity of their joy. But the few who dare to sing a new song of peace are the new St. Francises of our time, offering a glimpse of a new order that is being born out of the ruin of the old.
 -Henri Nouwen

4/17/2005
To be truly Christian, we must make hope possible, not despair convincing.
 -Unknown

4/24/2005
The spiral of responding to violence with violence is like a whirlpool in a river. As the water pours in, it whirls faster and faster.

The only way to stop the whirlpool is to place a solid rock in the middle. Peacemakers are the called to be rocks in the whirlpool of violence.
 -Susan Classen and Vernard Eller

5/1/2005
"Let us not be disheartened, as though human realities made impossible the accomplishments of God's plans"
 -Oscar Romero

5/8/2005
God of the Bible, God in the Gospel,
Hope seen in Jesus, hope yet to come.
You are our center, daylight or darkness,
Freedom or prison, you are our home.
Fresh as the morning, sure as the sunrise,
God always faithful, you do not change.
 -From the upcoming hymnal supplement, "Sing the Journey", to be released at Charlotte 2005

5/15/2005
"The only thing that's flopped more often than non-violence, is violence."
 -Joan Baez (paraphrased)

5/22/2005
"To keep a lamp buring we have to keep putting oil in it."
 -Mother Teresa

5/29/2005
In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . .the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches
3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the 'real' world.
 -Walter Wink

6/5/2005
"There lives a people in the Valley of Virginia, that are not hard to bring to the army. While there they are obedient to their officers. Nor is it difficult to have them take aim, but it is impossible to get them to take
correct aim. I, therefore, think it better to leave them at their homes."
 -Stonewall Jackson's letter about the Shenandoah Valley boys

6/12/2005
"The spiritual life keeps us aware that our true house is not in the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides. Hardly a day passes in our lives without our experiences of inner or outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions and preoccupations. These dark powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among them, but to choose the house of love as our home."
 -Henri Nouwen

6/19/2005
"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."
 -unknown

6/26/2005
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever does."
 -Margaret Mead

8/21/2005
When the hungry can feed themselves, peace happens.
 -Florence Crago

8/28/2005
I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
 -William James

9/4/2005
The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
 -Helen Keller

9/11/2005
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
 -Henry Drummond

9/18/2005
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
 -Howard Zinn

9/25/2005
We could all learn a lot from crayons: Some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names and all are different colors . . . .but they all have to learn to live in the same box.
 -Andy Rooney

10/2/2005
May the children of tomorrow
be as shocked to learn of war
as the children of today
are shocked by slavery.
 -Linda K. Williams

1/8/2006
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
 -Mahatma Gandhi

1/15/2006
When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision--then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
 -Audre Lorde

1/22/2006
When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.
 -Rudolf Bahro

1/29/2006
When I was younger, I acted because I hoped to achieve a certain something. Now I'm path oriented. I act to get in contact with the best part of who I am. I do the work whether we win or lose.
 -87-year-old activist

2/5/2006
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
 -Vaclav Havel

2/12/2006
“Contemplation leads to action and reflection gives birth to revolution and prayer gives way to a shattering power that cannot be grasped but can only be received” (p. 10).
 -Jan Richardson, "In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season"

2/19/2006
Live as children of the light - for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.... Everything that is exposed by the light becomes visible.
 -St. Paul, Ephesians

2/26/2006
. . .if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms . . .
 -Lisel Mueller, "monet refuses the operation"

3/5/2006
"How are we going to get through this craziness?" I asked. There was silence for a moment.

"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said.
 -Anne Lamott, "Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith"

3/12/2006
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
 -grandmother in the film "Strictly Ballroom"

3/19/2006
Prayer is not a substitute for action;
prayer is an action
for which there is no substitute.
 -Jane Edwards

3/26/2006
Hope is the radical refusal to calculate the limits of the possible.
 -WS Coffin

4/2/2006
The story of God becoming man is incomprehensible. Only fools would dare to believe it. And the idea that God loves us enough to die for us? Preposterous. I’m staggered at the thought of the world-whisperer speaking my name, of the almighty breaking into song at the thought of me or coming to earth to die for me. Yet that is the truth, that is the mystery of Jesus.
 -Steven James, from STORY: RECAPTURE THE MYSTERY

4/9/2006
I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood. Those who can attune themselves to these forces - to God's purpose - can become special instruments of his will.

 -Coretta Scott King

4/16/2006
Blessed be the ones who dance in the corridors of death,
Who sing in the hallways of terror,
Who laugh in the prisons of fear,
Who shout across the silencing walls,
Who love beyond the borders of hatred,
Who live to welcome home freedom,
Who die never turning their heads,
Who return as the rising of hope.
 -Jan Richardson, "In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season"

4/23/2006
When I was younger, I acted because I hoped to achieve a certain something. Now I'm path oriented. I act to get in contact with the best part of who I am. I do the work whether we win or lose.
 -87-year-old activist who fought in the Spanish Civil War

4/30/2006
The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing--for the sheer fun and joy of it--to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.
 -journalist I.F. Stone

5/7/2006
When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.
 -East German dissident Rudolf Bahro

5/14/2006
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
 -Vaclav Havel

5/21/2006
Strength without compassion is violence
Compassion without justice is mere sentiment
Justice without love is Marxism
And . . . love without justice is baloney!
 -Cardinal Sin

5/28/2006
The Christian life isn't difficult - it is impossible. If we don't know that, we will try to do things ourselves. Faith is not necessary when we think we can do it ourselves. Faith comes along when we realize that we cannot do it on our own.
 -Joseph Garlingen

6/4/2006
To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and to be ready to obey.
 -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Meditating on the Word"

6/11/2006
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.
 -Paul, Philippians 4:11-12

6/18/2006
According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it... Be importunate, Jesus says - not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door.
 -Frederick Buechner

6/25/2006
Moreover, as wizened and weathered veterans have observed, nearly once every day the Divine struggle for justice should make us laugh – for the juxtaposition of the grandness and glory of the calling with the quality of His recruits is sure evidence of a comic heart within the Sovereign.
 -Gary Haugen, founder and president of International Justice Mission

7/2/2006
God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find Him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God.
 -Ron Hansen

7/9/2006
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."




 -Jesus (Luke 4:18-19)

7/16/2006
We have decided to put our pessimism on hold until things get better.
 -Colombian Mennonite pastor

7/23/2006
It may seem that the forces of evil are now winning--
dragging the whole world with them in a cosmic tug-of-war,
but the Kingdom has already broken through,
the victory already been won.
To pray, "Thy Kingdom come"
is not the expression of a vague wish,
a rather forlorn hope unlikely ever to be fulfilled.
It is to affirm the work of Christ,
to unite ourselves to it in fervent longing
and desire for the comsummation
of that reign of peace and love and truth
which Jesus inaugurated.
 -Margaret Magdalen in "Jesus, Man of Prayer"

7/30/2006
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
 -Jeanette Rankin

8/6/2006
The prophet Isaiah addressed this struggle to have hope when he spoke of God bringing forth springs of water in the thirsty ground of the desert (Isaiah 35: 6-7) and of God being with us as we pass through the rivers and through fire (Isaiah 43:2.) Just like water in dry lands, hope is a precious commodity in war-torn places.

If we base our hope mainly on our ability to stop this horrible violence, we are lost. Only when our faith is rooted in God's ability to work in impossible situations, can we rise above despair and allow hope to strengthen us and lead us to action. That is the hope I pray for and want to walk in.
 -Peggy Gish, CPT Iraq

8/13/2006
To carelessly ditch the cool canteen of joy in the name of a severe urgency is to misunderstand the expedition and to render one’s self useless in the fight against aggressive evil. The grim, sophisticated, self-serious activist finds himself angry and spent and exceedingly bad company. For while it is heartless and lazy to pretend that the pitiless suffering, slaughter and waste of our world is not real and true; it is indulgent and false to believe it is the whole truth in this world or the next – for it is not. To lose this faith is to lose sight of what makes evil evil and our fight worth fighting.
 -Gary Haugen, founder and president of International Justice Mission

8/20/2006
You just keep on marching for peace and justice wherever you go. March out of the bathroom, march into work Monday morning, and keep on waving your peace flag. As you live your life day after day, keep yourself mindful of your goal, and listen to your heart every step of the way. Don't leave the march in Birmingham, or Washington, or wherever . . .take it home with you and keep on marching!
 -Doug Highfield

8/27/2006
We must never underestimate what can happen when people of faith and good will stand together and say: "Not in Our Name."
 -Kent Harrop

9/3/2006
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.
 -François Fénelon

9/10/2006
You've got to love this in a God--consistently assmbling the motleyest people to bring, into the lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community. It's a centuries-long reality show--Moses the stutterer, Rahab the hooker, David the adulterer, Mary the homeless teenager. Not to mention all the mealy-mouthed disciples.
 -Anne Lamott, "Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith"

9/17/2006
We're Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.
 -Barbara Johnson

9/24/2006
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!
 -Fra Giovanni Giocondo

10/1/2006
In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give; life can be rich only with such realization.
 -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Letters and Papers from Prison"

10/8/2006
The victims of injustice in our world do not need our spasm of passion; they need our long obedience in the same direction. They need our legs and lungs of endurance; and we need sturdy stores of joy. We cannot ache and sweat through history’s long arc of justice without clutching life-giving stores of beauty, laughter, goodness, love and light, without snatching delicious naps in the cool grassy spots, and without late night fires with friends who make us flush and ache with laughter.
 -Gary Haugen, founder and president of International Justice

1/7/2007
We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
 -Mother Teresa

1/14/2007
hope
does not grow on
trees
to be plucked when
hunger presses

hope
is found in
crevices of life
waiting to be
remembered
 -Eileen Klassen Hamm

1/21/2007
We're the first to admit that our God isn't logical, our religion isn't reasonable, and our Savior isn't realistic. Here is our message: we're fools for God; come join us under the big top.
 -Steven James, Sailing Between the Stars (Revell Books, 2006)

1/28/2007
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
 -Ephesians 3:18-19

2/4/2007
"Sire the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart I know not how, I can go no longer / Mark my footsteps my good page. Tread now in them boldly. You shall find the winters rage. Freeze your blood less coldly".
 -a verse from the old carol, "Good King Wencaslas"

2/11/2007
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
 -Isaiah 30:18-18

2/18/2007
People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.
 -Walter Brueggemann

2/25/2007
You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment--really live it, not just endure it--because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.
 -Walter J. Burghardt

3/4/2007
Where would we be today if certain women, men, young people, and also children had not arisen at moments when the human family seemed destined for the worst? They did not say: "Let things take their course!" Beyond the confrontations between persons, peoples, and spiritual families, they prepared a way of trusting. Their lives bear witness to the fact that human beings have not been created for hopelessness.
 -Brother Roger of Taize

3/11/2007
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
 -Martin Luther King Jr.

3/18/2007
Whoever is on a journey towards God goes from one beginning to another beginning. Will you be among those who dare to tell themselves: "Begin again! Leave discouragement behind! Let your soul live!"
 -Brother Roger of Taize

3/25/2007
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire from God.
But only she who sees takes off her shoes
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

 -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

4/1/2007
Ultimately, we are reborn to love because in this expanding, gracious space within us, we arrive at the astonishing presence of God at the core of our life. We blunder into the heart of God and find our own.
 --Sue Monk Kidd

4/8/2007
“The strange thing about Christianity was…it transformed the lives of [humans] not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event…Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds; the lives of [humans] are transformed by a piece of news.”
 -– Machen, quoted in THE PEACEMAKING PASTOR by Alfred Poirier (Baker Books, 2006)

4/15/2007
I pray that these things never end: the sand and the sea, the rush of the waters, the crash of the heavens, the prayer of humankind.
 -Hannah Senesh

4/22/2007
...[W]hatever we do counts. If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.
 -Wendell Berry

4/29/2007
Whatever may be the tensions
and the stresses of a particular day,
there is always lurking close at hand
the trailing beauty
of forgotten joy
or unremembered peace.
 -- Howard Thurman

5/6/2007
We can be reconciled to life
in its severest aspects
if we are confident
that the disasters
are not meaningless,
and that the valley
can be made a place of springs.
 -Charles Allen Dinsmore

5/13/2007
Without faith, hope, and love nothing sinful is totally abolished, nor is anything good fully attained.
 -St. Maixmos the Confessor

5/20/2007
God’s life and our lives are bound together, as a vine with branches as a body with members. So corporate are we that no one can give a cup of cold water to the least person in the world without giving it to [God]!
 -Rufus M. Jones

5/27/2007
Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land,. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday morning or a as a frame to surround mealtimes. Praying is living.
 -Henri J.M. Nouwen, from “With Open Hands”

6/3/2007
We can help create the conditions necessary for peace and justice, realizing that the choices of others can only be influenced and responded to, never controlled . . .we can only provide a heritage of persistence, imagination and solidarity . . .all of these movements are holy; all of them are flawed . . .our efforts are partial, yet they are divine in their love and courage.
 -Sharon Welch, “A Feminist Ethic of Risk”

6/10/2007
The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at but the moment when we are capable of seeing.
 -Joseph Wood Krutch

6/17/2007
Therefore, somehow, we have to learn to get our satisfaction and our joy in faithfulness and in our intimate relationship with Christ. Then the question of effectiveness and success, in the usual sense of those terms is not the issue. We can transcend that and get energized and nourished by faithfulness knowing we are doing what we must do to live- not what we must do to change the neighborhood. The constant struggle is the deepening of faith that enables us to really trust that somehow the whole show is going to come off right in God's timing.
 -Gordon Cosby

6/24/2007
Jesus chose to be around small children a number of times in his ministry, often over the objections of his disciples. Sometimes he seems to have done this in order to hold children up as examples of the childlike qualitites that enable God's Realm. But maybe, sometimes, he just wanted to hold them.
 -Susan Ross

7/1/2007
I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
 -Thomas Merton

7/8/2007
A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
 -Albert Einstein

7/15/2007
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
 -Jeanette Rankin, (1880-1973), First woman to enter U.S. House of Representative in 1917, Lost her seat in Congress when she voted against entry in WWI.

7/22/2007
While there is little evidence that human nature has changed for the better over the past two millennia, a few historical events, like Britain's abolition of its extremely profitable slave trade, suggest that human history has also been something more than an endless contest of greed and power.
 -David Brion Davis, a Yale University historian, in a column by Michael Gerson. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the British slave trade, which Gerson calls “history’s strongest counterexample” to the claim that religion in public life only spawns hatred and extremism.

7/29/2007
The message of the good news is of the liberation of human beings from everything and everyone that keeps them enslaved.
 -Elsa Tamez

8/5/2007
Prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If your prayer is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life—and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and "safe"—God will act in us and through us to renew the Church by preparing, in prayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth.
 -Thomas Merton

8/12/2007
At some thoughts one stands perplexed, above all at the sight of human sin, and wonders whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide 'I will combat it by humble love.' If you resolve on that once for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
 -Starets [Elder] Zosima, from "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

8/19/2007
But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong!
 -Micah 3:8-10

8/26/2007
In the beginning, there is struggle and a lot of work for those who come near to God. But after that, there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire: at first it’s smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. Thus we ought to light the divine fire in ourselves with tears and effort.
 -Amma Syncletica

9/9/2007
To be truly Christian, we must make hope possible, not despair convincing.
 -Unknown

9/16/2007
Try not to have hope, because unfulfilled hope leads to despair, and we have no need of a despairing people. Try instead to be faithful.
 -Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador

10/7/2007
For [Jesus] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
 -Ephesians 2:14

1/6/2008
Blessings on our year
Giving us time for the task
Peace for the pathway
Wisdom for the work
Friends for the fireside
Love to the last.
 -FOR card by Judy Richardson

1/27/2008
"Going home" is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity.


 -Jean Vanier

2/24/2008
Our compassionate efforts toward justice guarantee a deepened faith and prayer life. They will lead us to disciplines of the spirit and of the heart. By engaging with suffering, we learn true joy. By touching despair, we discover what it means to embrace hope. By coming to know Christ crucified, we participate in his resurrection. By pouring ourselves out, we gain our lives.
 -Joyce Hollyday

3/23/2008
Though it hardly seems possible now, we cling to the hope that God’s City will be established in the gift of the new heavens and the new earth. Our work is to live by the customs of the new City before it has fully come to be. In this way, the church draws the world to God. We hold forth not a condemning, but a welcoming word. All nations are invited to come to this City. And the quality of our interactions as a community will be a stronger witness than our words. The vibrancy of our worship will be a beacon of light that draws people home from the long darkness they have endured.
 -Gerrit Scott Dawson, "Called by a New Name"

4/6/2008
Living as we do in a world that suffers so much, two opposing possibilities can easily tempt us: either to turn our backs and live oblivious to the pain or to allow the pain to overwhelm us and despair to take up residence in our hearts. The truly faithful option is to face the pain and live joyfully in the midst of it. Those who suffer most remind us of how tragic and arrogant it would be for us to lose hope on behalf of people who have not lost theirs. They are teachers of joy.
 - Joyce Hollyday

5/25/2008
We campesinos are used to planting seeds and waiting to see if the seeds bear fruit. We’re used to working on harsh soil. And when our crops don’t grow, we’re used to planting again and again until they take hold. Like us, you must learn to persist.
 -Elvia Alvarado from "Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart"

6/22/2008
Though it hardly seems possible now, we cling to the hope that God’s City will be established in the gift of the new heavens and the new earth. Our work is to live by the customs of the new City before it has fully come to be. In this way, the church draws the world to God. We hold forth not a condemning, but a welcoming word. All nations are invited to come to this City. And the quality of our interactions as a community will be a stronger witness than our words. The vibrancy of our worship will be a beacon of light that draws people home from the long darkness they have endured.
 -Gerrit Scott Dawson, "Called by a New Name"

7/13/2008
Teach me, Lord, to sing of your mercies. Turn my soul into a garden, where the flowers dance in the gentle breeze, praising you with their beauty. Let my soul be filled with beautiful virutes; let me be inspired by your Holy Spirit; let me praise you always.
 -Teresa of Avila

7/20/2008
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of this innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
 -Thomas Merton

8/3/2008
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
 -Ephesians 2:8-10

8/10/2008
Peace is not for sissies; it is hard work, a dream worth keeping.
 -

8/17/2008
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 -Romans 8:35-39

8/24/2008
Plant the tree of friendship and harvest the fruits of love. Uproot the roots of hatred for it brings forth boundless agony.
 -Hafez, Persian poet

9/7/2008
When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.
 -Charles L. Allen

9/14/2008
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
 -Vaclav Havel

9/21/2008
Hope is the dream of a soul awake.
 -French proverb

9/28/2008
Justice is what love looks like in public.
 -Cornel West

10/5/2008
We are not God. We are simply the image of God and our task is gradually to discover that image and set it free.
 -Michael Quoist