Sojourners voiceoftheday

Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.

- Maya Angelou

Sojourners voiceoftheday

I find that it is better to love badly and faultily than not to try and love at all. God does not have to have perfect instruments, and the Holy One can use our feeble and faltering attempts at love and transform them. My task is to keep on trying to love, to be faithful in my continuing attempt, not necessarily to be successful. The quality of my love may well be the most important element of my spiritual guidance.

- Morton T. Kelsey, from his book Companions on the Inner Way

Today's Sojourners voiceoftheday

I urge you to still every motion that is not rooted in the kingdom. Become quiet, hushed, motionless until you are finally centered. Strip away all excess baggage and nonessential trappings until you have come into the stark reality of the kingdom of God. Let go of all distractions until you are driven into the Core.

- Richard Foster, from his book Freedom of Simplicity

The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

Sojourners Voice of the Day

My hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A [person] who takes away another [person's] freedom is a prisoner of hatred ... is locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

- Nelson Mandela, from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom

Friday's 'Voice'

Society dictates how power is distributed. Institutions and ideologies determine who has privilege to be dominant and who must defer. Some persons are given great power to make choices for themselves and other people and are protected from the consequences of their choices.... Religion serves to define the nature of power and its legitimate uses. Religious leaders must choose whether to collude with the dominant culture as sanctioning agents of abusive power or to be prophetic critics of the way power is distributed and defined.
- James Newton PolingThe Abuse of Power

today's 'Voice'

In the absence of Jesus’ physical leadership, a new power to lead emerges among the disciples. Like the disciples, we honor Jesus’ absence when, as Christian communities, we do not look for a single leader to ride into town on a white horse and save us. We honor Jesus’ absence when we do not "look up" to a single human leader on whom we can depend for everything. We honor Jesus’ absence when we discover the Spirit of Jesus the Servant animating us as a Christian community of faith.

- Thomas R. Hawkins
Faithful Leadership

today's 'Voice'

Power understood as the ability to accomplish desired ends is present in human relationships no matter how particular communities or societies are organized. Nevertheless, Christian communities recognize that the source of power in their life is the love of Christ which inspires and directs them. This is a style of power not of coercion but of empowerment of others.... It also connects to those at the margins of society who search for word of God’s love and justice.

- Letty M. Russell
Church in the Round

today's "Voice"

Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

- Paul Tillich

today's 'Voice'

We still need prophets to summon us back to the spiritual roots of wholeness and peace. We still need broadcasters of God’s word and magnifiers of God’s truth, so that we will understand and turn and be healed.

- Kenneth L. Waters, Sr.
I Saw the Lord

'Voice' from Sojourners today

Jesus reassures us that every effort to love ourselves and others more faithfully, however imperfectly we are able to do this, is a response to God’s call to love as he loved. It is a response to the two greatest commandments as they stand in relationship to one another.

- Paula Ripple
Called to Be Friends

Nonviolence

Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance... But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.

Thomas Merton
from Passion For Peace

Sojourners Verse & Voice from 19 Dec. 2007

Your princes are rebels
and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
and runs after gifts.
They do not defend the orphan,
and the widow's cause does not come before them.

Isaiah 1:23

Too many people come into community to find something, to belong to a dynamic group, to find a life which approaches the ideal. If we come into community without knowing that the reason we come is to discover the mystery of forgiveness, we will soon be disappointed.

Jean Vanier
Community and Growth