“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.†– Albert Einstein
Category: Verse & Quote of the day
Quote of the day
“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also – if you love them enough.”
– George Washington Carver
Quote of the day
“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
What Jesus Meant
The popular Christian question “What would Jesus do?” is not an especially useful one, Wills notes, for Jesus did many things we would not, and should not, do. Should Christian believers today, Wills asks, “like Jesus, forbid a man from attending his own father’s funeral… or tell others to hate their parents?… Are they justified in telling others, ‘I come not imposing peace, I impose not peace but the sword’…? Or ‘I am come to throw fire on the earth’…?” Such moments in the Gospels, Wills writes, “were acts meant to show that he is not just like us, that he has higher rights and powers… [as] a divine mystery walking among men.”
– John Meachum reviewing Garry Wills’s book What Jesus Meant
“We must ask what Jesus meant by his strange words and deeds. In other words, if we focus on what Jesus said without determining what He meant in his original context, we run the risk of misquoting Jesus even when quoting His words.”
– Brian McLaren Everything Must Change
Quote(s) of the day
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
Abraham Lincoln
Quote(s) of the day
It (Christianity) has focused on “me” and “my soul” and “my spiritual life” and “my eternal destiny,” but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, systemic poverty, systemic ecological crisis, systemic dysfunctions of many kinds.
…those remaining in local churches and those outside of them share the same sense of doubt: a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this. The religion’s results are not commensurate with the bold claims it makes. Truly good news, they feel, would confront systemic injustice, target significant global dysfunctions, and provide hope and resources for making a better world – along with helping individuals experience a full life.
(we find ourselves wishing for)… a vibrant form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, and balanced – one that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God’s grace at work both in this life and the life to come, that speaks to individuals and to societies and to the planet as a whole.
– Brian D. McLaren :: Everything Must Change