In the battle. . .

This clip from Henry V could be applied to our battle against the forces, the seemingly unrelenting forces of poverty, despair and oppression.

Still, the speech by Henry calling his band of brothers to fight, against all odds the battle they were called to fight, fits well with our own struggle in the city.

As Matt Lair, board member with Urban Connection--San Antonio, who sent this to me said, "We few.  We happy few!"

High risk

Not a Low-risk Investment

 The kingdom which was the theme of Jesus' preaching and teaching is not a low-risk, blue-chip investment created for our consumption. It can't be calmly considered and casually digested. It can't be domesticated, nor can its leader be restrained from his continuous challenge to our way of life.

Prologue, The Cotton Patch Parables of Liberation

--Bill Lane Doulos

Surrender

All That Really Belongs to Us

If we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us, so it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of persons we are. And it is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of humanity, is to sacrifice ourselves for something higher--that which we believe in and love deeply.

Cesar Chavez

"to make a way out of no way. . ."

Remembering Dr. King. . .

"When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Meister Eckehart on love and others

My seminary days come back to me often. 

Today I picked up the following quotes from an article in the December website edition of Harpers magazine ("The Trinity of Love") concerning the life and message of Meister Eckehart, a 14th century Dominican priest.  I first read Eckehart when I was about 25-years-old.  His writings and sermons were among the sources that first exposed me to the rich mysticism of Christian thought in the Middle Ages.  Hear him:

If you love yourself, then you love all others as yourself. As long as you love a single human being less than yourself, you cannot truly love yourself—if you do not love all others as yourself, in one human being all human beings: and this human being is God and man.

–Meister Eckehart, Sermon No. 13, “Qui audit me” (Sept. 8, 1325) in Meister Eckharts deutsche und lateinische Werke, vol. 1, p. 195 (J. Quint ed. 1936)(S.H. transl.)

The Harpers' commentary following the quote challenges me: 

He then develops this idea in the context of a new doctrine of love in which love of self is carefully juxtaposed against the love of fellow humans and of God. He cites a passage from Paul of Tarsus in Romans 9:3 in which he wishes to be “cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.” Self-sacrifice is thus defined as the essence of love and the overcoming of the self (in his words–thus is a human truly human).

But this “true” human is essentially also what Eckehart calls a “just man.” For him, the demand for justice must be everything, what he lives and breathes to achieve, more important than the outer formality of religion. And it is radical in its social implications, as Eckehart the noble says “I call you not servants, but friends.” But it starts with the abandonment of temporal connections in the quest for a mystical union with the spiritual. . . .says Eckehart—“the highest and most extreme thing that the human can give up, that is that he give up God for the sake of God.” These words may confound, and they certainly challenge the temporal and sacred authority of his time, but there is a clear internal logic to them, which challenges its audience to reject the paths they tread in favor of a new and mystical view of the world and humankind.