By Leonardo Boff

Is it possible to live in peace and happiness when you know that two-thirds of human beings are suffering, hungry and poor? To be human we have to have compassion. This solidarity is really the defining factor of our humanity and is gradually being lost in a culture of material values. It’s not only the cry of the poor we must listen to but also the cry of the earth. The earth and human beings are both threatened. We must do something to change the situation….

There won’t be a Noah’s Ark to save only some of us. To meet people’s fundamental concerns, change is needed. The world as it is does not offer the majority of humanity life but rather hell. I believe that change is possible, because I cannot accept a God who could remain indifferent to this world, but only one who cares about the poor and the suffering.

Source: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor

By Thomas Merton

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ?consents? so to speak, to God’s creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree…. This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do. Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what God wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by God’s Love and God’s infinite Art.

a thought about silence.... i don't do too well with silence....

By M. Basil Pennington

Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self.

It is a harrowing journey, a death to self—the false self—and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.

By Anonymous

To choose God
is to realize that you are known and loved
in a way surpassing anything one can imagine,
loved before anyone had thought of you
or spoken your name.
…
And so,
don’t talk too much about God
but live
in the certainty that God has written your name
on the palm of his hand.
Live your human task
in the liberating certainty
that nothing in the world can separate you
from God’s love for you.

Context..... is it important? Does it matter?

Here is Tall Skinny Kiwi's take.....

Enjoy the read and the dialogue and the debate because I really think all of this is really, really, really, really really, important.... really!