In honour of Dorothy Day, and all she stood for.

Here's some quotes from one of the greatest women of our time.

■ The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.

■ The true atheist is the one who denies God’s image in the ‘least of these’.

■ The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?

■ We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter... A family needs work as well as bread… We must keep repeating these things… Eternal life begins now.

■ We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.

■ Most of our life is unimportant, filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.

■ I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

■ Spend your life working on something that outlasts it.

■ Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.

Nobel Goals for 2012

This was posted by one of my personal heroes, Shane Claiborne, on his blog. I thought it was so beautiful that I'd share, and perhaps try to carry these out myself as my resolutions. Why should January 1st be the only day to change?

12. Do something really nice – that no one knows about.

11. Spend more money on other people than I spend on my self. Love my neighbor as I love myself. And love myself as I love my neighbor.

10. Laugh often… especially at advertisements that try to convince me that I must buy more stuff in order to be happy.

9. Learn a new life skill – like carpentry, pottery, or canning vegetables. Teach someone else I life skill I know how to do.

8. Love a few people well, remembering that what is important is not how much we do but how much love we put into doing it.

7. Write a letter to someone I need to say thank you to. Write another letter to someone I need to ask to forgive me.

6. Track down a critic or someone I disagree with and take them to lunch. Listen to them.

5. Compliment someone I have a hard time complimenting… and mean it.

4. Choose life. Do something regularly to interrupt the patterns of death – do something to end violence, bullying, war, capital punishment and other mean and ugly things.

3. Pause before every potential crisis and ask “will this matter in 5 years?”

2. Get outside often and marvel at things like fireflies and shooting stars. And regularly get my hands into the garden… so when I type on the computer I can see dirt under my fingernails.

1. Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one

Try to Love the Questions

My friend sent this to me the other day, and it made me smile. Thought you might enjoy it too.

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Love the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, July 16, 1903

Stories from the street

Stories are the life-blood of a person. They make us who we are. They help us understand one another. How we think. How we act. The decisions we make. The values we hold dear.

I met an artist the other day who told me about how he started painting. Why he paints what he does. He said that he had a rough childhood growing up. He was abused, and he couldn't handle the stress of it all and wanted an escape. So he started abusing alcohol and hard drugs, and eventually found himself in rehab. He sought out counselling, resisting help at first until he found a person whose story he could relate to as well. They suggested he try out art - so he thought about it. And here he is - 29 years sober, an artist for 24 years. He paints with watercolours and fills in the top with oiled pens and symbols from Carl Jung.

Despite being a dropout, he reads a lot of Carl Jung psychology, and his paintings are supposed to portray his 'unconscious.' He said that he has a lot of trouble painting life around him, and that he finds solace in expressing his inner self instead.

I have to say that in that one soul was the talent of a dreamer, and I took home one of his paintings gladly. It's beautiful and is hanging on my wall right now.

It's kind of amazing to think how much strength is in a person. How someone who might have been labelled a failure or a reject has more strength that I think I could ever fathom coming up with myself. That man gives a gift to the world through his hands. He shares a part of his heart and his mind with the people who come in and out of his life through his art, and in taking a piece home, perhaps I am, in a way, also taking home the story that made it.

Let's not give up on one another but always have hope for tomorrow.

See Terry's work here.

Feeling lost and found

It's a funny feeling when your life seems to be hurtling forward at unprecedented rates, and you have no control of where it's going. Kind of intimidating.

Strange how it both bothers and does not bother me. It appears that the thing that bothers me is more not knowing than actually the part where I don't have control. But then again, maybe knowing is having control. Or perceived control of what will happen. Then again, our plans rarely come to fruition. There's usually some new and exotic twist that makes life interesting. Worth waiting around for.

So I guess I'll just wait for the surprise.

Slaves to Righteousness

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness... Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:15-22


Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

O to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

Polished Shoes

I am given the power
To live in the white tower
Shall I be a king
Stamp with a signet ring

Or can I make the choice
That others cannot
To live at the bottom
Instead of looking down from the top

Can we march around the walls
Trumpets high, marching tall
And break down the bricks
Of this place of conflicts

Throw away our polished shoes
Pick up our sandals
Let's paint our skin
Holding hands, enter in.