Ken Robinson "Gifts"

An Abundant Community Part 1

An Abundant Community Part 2

On Friendship

"There are no strangers here

just friends we haven't met."

-William Butler Yeats

Community Building with Peter Block

Peter Block (Community)

Geoffrey Canada

The Here and Now... Jean Vanier

It is the same story for all of us.
As children in school we say:
"I'll be happy as soon as I am old enough to get out of school and can work!"
Once out of school and with a job, we say:
"Ah, I can't wait until I get married, then I will be happy!"
A while after the wedding celebration,
when the couple realises that life is a bit lacking in variety,
they say, "But when we have our own children... then we will be really happy."
Once the children are there, it's wonderful.
but they cry at night and we sigh,
"Ah when the children get older..."
Then when the children do grow up and create all kinds of problems,
the couple dreams of the children leaving home and they will finally be alone.
As the couple grows old, they think of the past and say:
"Wasn't it wonderful in the good old days, when we were younger!!"

We have difficulty living the present moment,
trusting in the presence of God in the here and now and giving thanks.
-Jean Vanier

Jesus, the Mad Hatter...

Jesus can be seen as paranoid. He believes he is God and that the world is out to get him. Centuries may pass before it is possible to assess the full extent of the disaster. If Jesus was not the Messiah, then he was a lunatic who thought he was. It is difficult to see how there can be any middle ground.

In his own way, Paul would have perhaps understood either view, Paul as the only one who ever dared speak of the foolishness of God, of the crucifixion itself as folly, of the folly of his own preaching. If the world is sane, then Jesus is the mad hatter and the last supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says Follow me and be crucified. The world says Drive carefully- the life you save may be your own- and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, get and Jesus says, give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion.
-Frederick Buechner

Banksy Trailer

Micmacs

Bono, Glen Hansard, Damien Rice

Tough Text...

Luke 6.27-36

27"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Garrison Keillor "On Christmas"

Two years ago forty-one people came to my house for Christmas dinner, some merchants and bishops and poets and about sixteen barbarians, mostly Goths and Visigoths and several Huns, hairy savages who hunkered down at the table and ate like wild swine, belching and shrieking, and spent the evening pillaging and plundering and left the place in ruins. We were picking food off the chandelier for weeks. And after I swept up the refuse and offal and sluiced out the dining room, I said to myself, "No more hairy savages for Christmas." So last year, I invited only civilized people, and in case the barbarians showed up, I had a catapult installed on the roof that would hurl boulders at them and pots of boiling oil.

It was a pleasant and civilized Christmas, but as the bishops and poets and merchants sat and drowsed over dessert, one poet piped up and said, "Oh, by the way, what happened to those little pig-eyed fellows who came for Christmas last year, the ones who wiped their hands on the dog? They were a stitch! So uninhibited, throwing peas at each other! We talked about them at the abbey for weeks afterward!"

That was when I realized an important truth about Christmas.

Christmas is not a discussion group or a committee meeting or a memorial service. Christmas is a show. If you think of it as a show, you will have a successful Christmas. You are supposed to entertain people at Christmas. And it isn't so entertaining if only polite people come and sit quietly and chew their food. All those ladies magazine articles about fabulous centerpieces you can make in ten minutes out of bread bags --- they leave out this essential fact --- but now I am telling you: follow these rules and your Christmas will be spectacular! Yes Thir!

Christmas Principle # 1
Don't sweat the shopping. You have a catalog in your hands, why not use it? Don't spend the two weeks before C-Day driving around to little shops searching for just the right shade of Peruvian porcelain trivets for Bud and Esther's kitchen. Buy them sweatpants. Bud and Esther are not trivet-type people, and any trivets you give them will spend thirty years in the lower drawer of a hutch and will sell for thirty-five cents someday in an estate sale. But they will wear the sweatpants. You, my dear, need to spend these last few days resting up, not in a frenzy. When Pavarotti sings "Aida" at the Met, does he spend the afternoon shopping for a scarf for the soprano? No. So lie around the week before Christmas and read Dickens. Go to the movies. Play Scrabble. You will be a better entertainer if, before your big show, you relax and let things drift. Practice your facial expressions: Twinkly Benevolence ... Childlike Anticipation ... Contentment.

Christmas Principle # 2
Don't sweat the dinner. Stick with the classic stuff, and forget about innovation --- it isn't worth the hard labor and the heartache. That Yule bouillibaisse with chopped chubs and sprats sprinkled with mulled millet and the broccoli compote and cheese flute flambé --- sweetheart, that is a recipe for misery. All you need is spuds, yams, bread crumbs, a frozen veggie, cranberries in a can, a big bird, and a tub of butter. Order the pies from the bakery. Christmas dinner is a classic, like baseball, and the less fiddling you do with it, the better everyone likes it.

Christmas Principle # 3
Don't think of them as guests, think of them as a cast. This is so important. Your guest list can make or break you, and the commonest mistake is to invite only people who are a lot like yourself: quiet, tasteful, earnest, considerate, modest, tolerant, nicely coiffed, moisturized, pleasantly scented, no trouble to anybody. This is not a good idea, it's like putting together a choir and only inviting sopranos. A show needs gaudy characters, some heavies, it needs Big Personalities. Like your bachelor uncle Earl who wears the squirting mistletoe tie and talks in a loud voice about his gall bladder: you need him. Invite your la-di-da cousins with their $60 haircuts and Armani outfits, who put on fake Continental accents, trying desperately to cover up their Iowa-ness. Invite your disgruntled brother, seething about some national disgrace or other. Invite any other relatives whom you sort of dread seeing, for fear of the dreadful things they might say or do --- you need these people to create interest and drama on the Christmas stage! Your brother-in-law who feels that Martians are flying in and out of Roswell, New Mexico; putting their deadly organisms in America's corn starch, and that this was prophesied in the Old Testament. Your cousin Moonflower Shakti (nee' Wanda Anderson) who is channeling the wisdom of ancient Mesopotamia. When Moonflower sits next to Uncle Earl and his gall bladder, sparks will fly, and they will create Christmas memories that will last into the 21st Century. This is good.

Christmas Principle # 4
Get people's attention the moment they come through the door and let them know that this is going to be a zippy Christmas, one to remember. People often arrive in a grumpy mood, huffing about the guy who cut in front of them on the Interstate --- don't let grumpiness get a foothold: win them over right away. Send your husband to greet them at the door, wearing a swimsuit and a toupee, with ornaments taped to his chest. Train your dog to wear a Santa beard and stand on its hind legs and wave its little paws. I like to throw my arms around each guest and whisper, "Thank goodness you've come, you're the only fun person here, everyone else is as moody as a woodchuck. You're all I have so don't let me down!" This lets them know that I'm counting on them not to slouch and get mopey.

Christmas Principle # 5
Lighting. It made Garbo a star and it can make your Christmas. Winter is the dark time, so you want Christmas to be brilliant and sparkly areas. Outdoors, the shadows lengthen, wolves close in around the brave little house, but put a candle in the window --- voila! Drama! It's the Little Match Girl! Lights! Illuminate! A pool of light on the serving table. The tree lit up with colored bulbs. Candles everywhere, dozens of them. If necessary, hold a small flashlight between your knees to give your face that irresistible glow. Smile. Show teeth. Shine.

Christmas Principle # 6
Work on your Second Act. This is where most Christmases fall apart. The First Act is fine --- the twinkliness, the merriment, the aroma of turkey basting --- but two hours pass and there is no plot development. People get sleepy. The Second Act demands Crisis. Uncle Earl chomps down on an hors d'oeuvre and impales himself on a toothpick. The brother-in-law sees faces of space aliens in his mashed potatoes. A vegan, Moonflower discovers, too late, that the dressing contained bits of pork sausage and she collapses on the floor and hyperventilates. These little scenes keep up people's interest during the hours when the body is digesting animal fats and the I.Q. sags and the eyelids get heavy. Remember this principle: it isn't really Christmas unless somebody does something for which they must be forgiven later. Do you hear me? I mean, A good Christmas demands a 'Discordant Moment', and a great Christmas has many of them. Those moments when someone looks up from dinner to say in a choked voice, "This family has never accepted me as who I am, a gifted person, and that is why my life is so confused, and I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," and leaps up and dashes into the bathroom and locks the door and weeps bitterly as the other guests stand guiltily, heads bowed, in the hallway, dabbing at their eyes. You need that pain, that 'Discordant Moment' to give you a Second Act.
If nobody else will provide it, then the host must. Pick up something soft, like a napkin, or a marshmallow, and hurl it on the floor and say in a shrill embittered voice, "I've taken all I can take! Can't you see that? Everyone expects me to be the calm, responsible one! Everyone expects me to manage things, arrange Christmas, make everyone happy, be the host! But I can't be that person for you anymore! I am tired of living a lie! I'm not calm! I'm not responsible! Inside, I am a seething cauldron of emotional conflict! Why can't anyone see this?" And you leap up from the table and dash to the bathroom and lock the door and sob. Can you do this? Try. Everyone will be terribly upset, and that's good. This leads you to ....

Christmas Principle # 7
Act Three. Conciliation. The tears are dried. People hug. "I was a fool, I didn't see how much you really cared," cries the person who ran sobbing to the bathroom, "I didn't see how close this family really is, forgive me," and of course everyone does. "You'll never feel alone ever again," they say. Your disgruntled brother gives you a big grin, and Moonflower says, "I think I'm ready to be Wanda again. I'm going to be the best Wanda I can be!" Uncle Earl says that he has a confession to make, that twenty years ago he secretly invested Grandpa's modest estate in a little company called Microsoft and now each and every one of you is a multi-millionaire. You all hold hands and someone starts singing "Silent Night," and your brother-in-law turns out the lights, and the candles flicker, and outdoors the snow is starting to fall across this great land of ours, and everyone is smiling with tears in their eyes, even the vile cousins --- and there is a knock on the door, and you open it, and there is a little boy on crutches, a scarf wrapped around his neck, and he has brought you a bit of Christmas pudding. You invite him in, and also the flinty-eyed geezer who is with him, the one with gruel stains on his vest, and you all hold hands in a circle, you and Dorothy and Snow White and Peter Pan and Jimmy Stewart, and you say, "This has been the nicest Christmas I can remember!

Leaves of Grass: Walt Whitman

Finally Comes the Poet

After the seas are all cross’d,(as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist,
ethnologist,
Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name;
The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.

Then, not your deeds only, O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified,
All these hearts, as of fretted children, shall be sooth’d,
All affection shall be fully responded to—the secret shall be told;
All these separations and gaps shall be taken up, and hook’d and link’d together;
The whole Earth—this cold, impassive, voiceless Earth, shall be completely justified;

Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the the Son of God, the poet,
(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose;)

Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

"The True Joy In Life" : George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Grace by Wendell Berry

The woods is shining this morning.

Red, gold and green, the leaves

lie on the ground, or fall,

or hang full of light in the air still.

Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes

the place it has been coming to forever.

It has not hastened here, or lagged.

See how surely it has sought itself,

its roots passing lordly through the earth.

See how without confusion it is

all that it is, and how flawless

its grace is. Running or walking, the way

is the same. Be still. Be still.

“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

Rilke on love poems...

Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not.

Dostoyevsky Quote

If it could be proved that Christ is not the truth, the resurrection, and life, then I would rather have Christ.

Responsibility

Jer. 9:23-4

Thus says the LORD:"Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.For in these things I delight, declares the LORD."

• We Know God less by contemplation than by emulation.
• joy is the happiness we make by sharing.
• Enhancing the freedom of others
• Life alone is only half a life.

• If someone is in need, give. If someone is lonely, invite them home. If someone you know had recently been bereaved, visit them and give them comfort. If you know someone who has lost their job, do all you can to help them find another.
• We gain more than we give.
• The most mourned and missed are not the most successful, rich or famous. They are the people who enhance the lives of others. These were the people who are most loved.

My Grandmother by Valzhyna Mort

my grandmother
doesn't know pain
she believes that
famine is nutrition
poverty is wealth
thirst is water

her body like a grapevine winding around a walking stick
her hair bees' wings
she swallows the sun-speckles of pills
and calls the internet the telephone to america

her heart has turned into a rose the only thing you can do
is smell it
pressing yourself to her chest
there's nothing else you can do with it
only a rose

her arms like stork's legs
red sticks
and i am on my knees
howling like a wolf
at the white moon of your skull
grandmother
i'm telling you it's not pain
just the embrace of a very strong god
one with an unshaven cheek that scratches when he kisses you

Encountering the Other: Jean Vanier

"Meeting the stranger does not mean just saying hello; it is not just listening to his or her story. It is understanding them and to go even further: to appreciate the difference. Then we can enter into communion together. But there again it is a long road."

I finished this book today. I read it about two years ago. I am at a more urgent and desperate place to become a lover of the poor. I can no longer escape it, and no longer want to try to. It is a place of peace and anxiety. Send me to love, send me to groan and plead for the people, my friends. May they be heard again as hey were in Egypt, so many years ago.