WE DO NOT WORK FOR LOVE
8.23.2007
"...cannot see our brother in need without stripping ourselves..."
our brother [or sister] in need
without stripping ourselves.
It is the only [genuine]
way we have
of showing our love."
PLEASE DO NOT WAKE ME!!! THE ROAD TO HELL.
Why does the media lie?
FROM OUR BLOOD-SOAKED
DREAM / THE WORLD'S
I DON'T ASK FOR THINGS CUZ IF THEY ARE MINE THEY'VE BEEN GIVEN ALREADY
CUZ IF THEY ARE MINE
THEY'VE BEEN GIVEN
TO ME ALREADY.
:-)
"SAVED:" YOU LOSE EVERYTHING... EXCEPT THE GREAT STUFF
YOU LOSE EVERYTHING...
EXCEPT THE GREAT STUFF
WE "DO" SELL OUR SOUL IN THIS CULTURE
- Keep my job
- Keep my wife
- Please my parents
- Stay out of jail
- Stay alive
- Stay safe
- Avoid hunger
- Avoid pain
- Be popular
- Be successful
- Get sex
- Get stuff
- Protect "my children" (if they are not among "the least of these.")
- Protect "my family" (if they are not among "the least of these.")
- Etc.
- Etc.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE?
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE?
- Selfish, self-centered, finite centered, pleasure-seeking Flesh?
- Otherish, other-centered, infinite, humane, loving, joy-filled Humanity / World-Famliness / Militant Good / Love?
You cannot chose to be both or neither.
You will, YOU WILL "BE" one or the other.
!!!!! WHAT BEING "SAVED" LOOKS LIKE !!!!!
BEING "SAVED" IS RADICAL "CANCER" SURGURY
Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel 30 who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
- YOU CANNOT LOSE "GOD," GOOD, LOVE, LIFE, TRUTH
- WHATEVER YOU LOSE IS NOT "GOD," GOOD, LOVE, LIFE, TRUTH
- ALL CANCER WILL BE REMOVED: YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT "GOD," GOOD, LOVE, LIFE, TRUTH
8.21.2007
TODAY'S "CHURCH" IS LIKE AN ANCHOR TO A LIFESAVING SWIMMER
Is there any justification before Jesus / Good / God / Churchgoers / Clergy for diverting energy from "the least of these" to Church?
reduced to rubble
by decay
NO ONE USES
THE DECAYED REFUSE
TO REBUILD.
THEY ALWAYS START ANEW.
IF MATERIALS
FROM THE RUINS
PRESENT THEMSELVES
AS APPROPRIATE
THEY ARE ACCEPTED
WITH JOY.
BUT NEVER ARE THEY
THE STARTING POINT.
SIN OF EMPIRE: GIVING CAESAR WHAT IS GOD'S
"But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil." Matthew Chapter 5
It is imperative that the "Peace" movement grasp this; AND THEY DO NOT.
NO attention to go toward
sinful "government," and
AND ALL NEEDED ATTENTION
TO BE FOCUSED ON
OUR SUFFERING / ERRING
SISTERS AND BROTHERS!
WE WILL SERVE ONE MASTER. SELF? or HUMANKIND?
to SELF? or to HUMANKIND?
Slavery is an inescapable condition - our nervous system WILL BE FOCUSED in a quasi permanent way. This is inescapable.
Each of us will be either:
- Slave to SELF / SELFISHNESS / DISINTEREST IN OTHER'S WELL BEING / EXPLOITATION / DELUSION;
- Slave to WELL BEING OF HUMANKIND / OTHERISHNESS / LIFE / TRUTH / LOVE / LIFE.
WHICH MASTER DO YOU SERVE?
WHICH MASTER WILL YOU SERVE?
8.20.2007
DYING TO THE FLESH?
My body is not, NOT happy about the idea. But it is not pulling me away from the idea either. "Dying to the flesh?" Yes, this is what I sensed.
Am I moving in this direction? Certainly.
Do I have any regrets? Yes. I regret that I am learning about this and gaining some capacity for it at 56 years not 8 years old. Oh my God, what a mistake, what an error, what a travesty is our worship of selfishness / disconnection / self-indulgence.... Hell. Pleasure Island. Filthy. Blood soaked.
Will I ever be good at it - at Dying to the Flesh? I pray so. We'll see.
:-)
DEEP GRIEF. GOOD GRIEF?
Exactly as I enter this post I then find my self reading pages 66-67 in Phil Berrigan's must read, "Fighting the Lamb's War." Phil writes:
"What might Reverend King say if he could visit our country’s death cages, crowded with African-Americans waiting to die? If he could walk our inner-city streets again and see the legacy of crack cocaine, the. gangs, and hopeless poverty? I imagine him weeping, his tears drowned out by sirens and the sound of automatic gunfire, his message of love and reconciliation smothered by fascist ideologues.
Black mayors. Black Congressmen. Black police chiefs. Black generals. Black rock stars. Black film stars. Black sports stars. Some commentators argue that the glass is half empty, others that it is half full. The analogy hardly matters. We lurch toward the year 2000, dragging our bloody chains, our crimes, behind us. Millions of African-Americans are still living in poverty, captive to the “tricks” of institutional racism, police bmtality, white fear, and capitalist manipulation."
"Malcolm X intended to present his case before the United Nations. He was determined to tell the world that the United States govern ment was systematically violating the human rights of its own black citizens. Would the white community believe him, then or now? When the police fracture a welfare mother’s skull, or kill her son in the hallway of a housing project, the crime hardly makes the news. When the bullet-riddled body of another black teenager is taken to the morgue, the event is of no importance. What we don’t see, we don’t believe. What we don’t know, doesn’t happen. The mirror we looked into in the fifties has become the vicious magic show of the nineties:
- Ending affirmative action means creating meritocracy.
- Cutting people off welfare means giving people hope.
- Putting people to death means respecting life.
- Building atomic submarines, instead of schools, means protecting democracy.
- Destroying our children means saving them."
8.19.2007
SUFFERING FOR LOVE IS "THE" KEY TO UNLOCK THE HEART
IS "THE" KEY
TO UNLOCK THE
HEART / CONSCIENCE /
HUMANITY / WORLD-FAMLINESS.
8.18.2007
OUR PRIMARY IDENTITY MUST BE BROTHER / SISTER.
Our primary role as healthy, helpful, hopeful, joyful, suffering adults is / must be Brother / Sister. Anything less is failure on any meaningful front.
Your Loving brother, Start
CONFRONT COURTS UNLESS GOD IS ABOVE THE "LAW"
Among the self murdering errors of even best of the dreadfully self labeled "nonviolent" "peace" movement is the mistaken, unclear notion regarding how it should address itself to the "law."
Here is the correct answer.
- When Humanity / Love / World-Family / God-the-Father reigns then it may usually be appropriate to address and thereby respect the courts.
- AS IS THE CASE TODAY when God is nowhere to be found in the US let alone the Courts confronting the Courts / State simply empowers evil, the Idol State, address ourselves directly to the State in any way. We are to address ourselves to our brothers and sisters, including those within the State - but as brothers and sisters - not a State functionaries.
8.16.2007
OUR "AGENDA" DOESN'T INCLUDE JAIL TOO OFTEN. P.B.
We have our own agenda and it doesn't include going to jail too often. We want to say that we were there; we don't want to say how far we went in."
Phil Berrigan
YOU VOTE WITH YOUR FEET... AND LIFE. P. BERRIGAN
OURS IS THE EVIL GENERATION. P. BERRIGAN
Luke's Gospel (11:29) speaks of an "evil generation", and ours is certainly that. No sign is allowed this generation except the sign of Jonah the prophet. And that sign is the Cross - the execution, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Fidelity to that sign will not be easy, but it will not be hard. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. (Mt. 11:30). We are not to be afraid, Just believe. (Mk. 5:36)"
ACCEPTING VIOLENCE WITH LOVE ENDS THE SPREAD
WITH LOVE
ENDS THE SPREAD
"THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH COULD NOT..." P. BERRIGAN
"The early Christian Church could not bear the purity and weight of the true meaning of Jesus' execution. It could not grasp the sheer voluntariness of the Cross, the voluntary love of His choice. And so the belief grew that God sent Jesus to die, that from his conception He was doomed to die, the divine scapegoat. Theology acquired a determinism, even tinges of fatalism. The divine/human mission to restore God's Kingdom began to fade; the Church's unequivocal condemnation of violence and war began to fade. The empire began to absorb Christians, exacting taxes and military service from them."
Phil Berrigan
"STATE IS A PUBLIC... REBELLION AGAINST GOD." PHIL BERRIGAN
Some quotations from Phil Berrigan on Law:
- the Bible gave human law ample treatment. 1st Samuel 8th chapter, for example, exposes the State as a public, bureaucratic rebellion against God.
- the law, like the State is inherently flawed and violent -- its function to legalize a rebellious State.
- Paul's Letter to the Galatians -- his most sustained indictment of human law.
- The genesis of the State then, ancient or modern, is rejection of God, rebellion against God. "They have not rejected you [Samuel], they have rejected me as their King." (1 Sam. 8:7)
- As the ruling hierarchy told Pilate: "We have no King but Caesar." (John 19:15)
- Paul equates the law with sin and death -- sin because law has nothing to say to sins of omission, and death because most will draw their morality from the law.
- The morality of most Americans is legalized. To become "law abiding" is to fear the penalties of the law, to become house-broken, domesticated.
- Morality limited by the boundaries of the law is spiritual death.
LEGAL DISSENT IS CONSENT - THOREAU
CONSENT - THOREAU
How are we to understand this?
- Driving the speed limit is to say that there is not an emergency.
NOBODY'S PEACEMAKING CUZ NOBODY'S PEACEMAKING
- NOBODY'S PEACEMAKING CUZ NOBODY'S PEACEMAKING
- Nobody's liberating Palestine cuz...
Nobody's:
- Stopping use of depleated uranium cuz...
- Ending the starvation of 18,000 children / DAY cuz...
- Rescuing and Restoring Darfur...
- Ending the war in Iraq cuz...
"This is no day
to pay lip service...
we must
pay life service....”
Dr. Martin Luther King,
COMMUNITY DIES WITH FOCUS ON "ME" OR "COMMUNITY" ITSELF
Do most honest attempts at "community" fail with a misguided notion that they are to focus on helping the "individual" or on fostering "community?" The impossibility and assured destruction of this can be imagined in this way:
and at the same time
watch yourself in the mirror?
is ABOUT the "individual's
growth" or fostering
"community" it is cut
off from its roots and
begins to die.
TRUE COMMUNITY /
"FAMILY" ONLY COMES
FROM EMERGENCY SHARED
WAR OF HUMANITY WILL COST 1000'S OF LIVES
ps: This is extremely inexpensive compared with wars of destruction. But it is NOT without cost in lives. 10's of thousands of lives it will cost.
Mine seems to be happily pledged to saving the world.
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IS TRUE RELIGION'S FRUIT
IS TRUE RELIGION'S FRUIT.
WHAT FREEDOM IS IN PRISON? CONSCIENCE, FREEDOM OF.
Are you your pulse? Are you your lusts / appetites? Are you your conscience / humanity?
Conscience / Humanity comes closest, right? In which case:
CONSCIENCE / HUMANITY.
WE RELIGIOUSLY DESTROY
CONVENTION,
BEING "SAFE,"
PATRIOTISM,
8.15.2007
"CONSISTANT WITH THE SPIRIT OF JESUS...?"
with the spirit of Christ,
Martin Luther King,
and Mohandas Gandhi?"
Philip Berrigan
THIS IS THE
ULTIMATE QUESTION
FOR THE
FOLLOWER OF JESUS:
THE SPIRIT OF JESUS?"
OF THE DOGMATIST;
THE FUNDAMENTALIST;
THEY UPHOLD "LAWS"
AND TRAMPLE "SPIRIT."