Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

From Eichmann to Bin Laden

"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. This new type of criminal ... commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong."

-- Hannah Arendt
Eichmann in Jerusalem

The Great Deed - Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich was a great English Christian mystic from the 14th-15th century. Her Revelations of Divine Love relate a series of "showings" given by Christ and endorsed by the Church as a genuine message from Christ.

Revelations of Divine Love - Chapter 32

Our good Lord once said to me, ‘All manner of things shall be well’ and another time he said, ‘You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.’ My soul understood a variety of truths in these two sayings. On the one hand, God wants us to know that he does not only concern himself with great and noble things, but also with small, humble and simple things. And this is what he means when he says, ‘All manner of things shall be well,’ for he wants us to know that even the smallest things shall not be forgotten.

The Beauty of Ambiguity (Mystery) by William P Young

There is a Wind… that wraps itself around the edges of necessity, tugging and pulling until those boundaries become torn and begin to move to the motion of that which is not visible.

I am back in the warmth of the cabin, watching through the window as early spring rains drench the surrounding landscape, low hanging clouds darkening the day. A late snow is coming, but not quite yet. Even though the fire crackles and snaps as it eats through its main course, I still snuggle deeper into the heaviness of the quilt that Papa left for me. She is soon back with a cup of tea, something that smells of wood and mint and a hint of jasmine. I grin. She knows me best, and whatever it is that she is handing me, I trust.

"Rough week, eh?” she asks, as if she doesn’t already know.

The Problem with Zeal - St Isaac of Syria

Have Peace in Your Heart

"Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth.

"Someone who is considered among men to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like: once he has truly learned it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf.

"The gift of God and of knowledge of him is not a cause for turmoil or clamour; rather this gift is entirely filled with a peace in which the Spirit, love and humility reside.

"The following is a sign of the coming of the Spirit: the person whom the Spirit has overshadowed is made perfect in these very virtues.

"God is reality. The person whose mind has become aware of God does not even possess a tongue with which to speak, but God resides in his heart in great serenity. He experiences no stirring of zeal or argumentativeness, nor is he  stirred by anger. He cannot even be aroused concerning the faith."

John the Baptist: Wild Wise Man - Excerpt from Radical Grace by Richard Rohr

For many reasons we have chosen St. John the Baptist as the patron of our Center for Action and Contemplation.  Our feast day is celebrated on June 24, as the sun (reminiscent of John 3:30) agrees to decrease.  John the Baptist is the prophet who rejects the system without apology, eats the harsh food of that choice and wears the clothes of rejection.  Like our native peoples here in New Mexico, he goes on his vision quest into the desert where he faces his aloneness, boredom and naked self.  He returns with a message, a clarity, a surety of heart that reveals a totally surrendered man.  First he listens long and self-forgetfully; then he speaks, acts and accepts the consequences.  Surely he is the ultimate wild man!  Or is it wise man?  He is both. 

Orual and Psyche on the Violence of the gods (God)

"Do you and I need to flatter the gods any more? They’re tearing us apart . . . oh, how shall I bear it? . . . and what worse can they do? Of course the Fox is wrong. He knows nothing about her. He thought too well of the world. He thought there were no gods, or else (the fool!) that they were better than men. It never entered his mind—he was too good—to believe that the gods are real, and viler than the vilest men.”
     “Or else,” said Psyche, “they are real gods but don’t really do these things. Or even—mightn’t it be—they do these things and the things are not what they seem to be?"

    -Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Shit: Excerpt from F. Buechner's "Book of Bebb"

Bebb said, "That man knows his history, Antonio. It's his special subject, and he knows it inside and out. He reeled off a whole list of times and places where he said we'd met before. He told about the days they had children eight, ten years old and up working in mines like pack mules maybe twelve hours in a stretch till their pitiful little bodies were nothing but skin and bones and they couldn't hardly se in the daylight while people like me went on looking the other direction and preaching they kingdom come. He told about the days they tore the living flesh off people with red-hot tongs and broke their legs with hammers because they didn't believe like they should about doctrine. He went on how those old-time crusaders used religion for an excuse to rape women and raise hell and how back in slavery times there was ministers of the Gospel owned slaves just like everybody else and proved out of scripture it was the way things was meant to be. I don't suppose there was a single miserable thing anybody ever did in the name of Jesus that Roebuck didn't spell out chapter and verse before he was done. He enjoyed it. You could tell from the way he worked his face what a good time he was having.

A Prophecy Unheeded III: Erasmus, 1514

Excerpts from an open letter written by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam to Abbot Antony Bergen (addressing Emperor Maxmillian), 1514. Cited in Erasmus and our Struggle for Peace, by Jose Chapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950).

I see great movements arising. . . . May the favor of God calm this tempest in Christendom. . . . I often wonder what drives—I will not say Christians—but men to exterminate one another like madmen at the price of such effort, such expense, and such risks. What do we do all our life long but wage war? Not even all animals fight, except some wild species. And even they fight not among themselves but with animals of a different species. Besides, they fight with their natural weapons and not with machines in the invention of which we employ an ingenuity worthy of the devils. . . .

Clarion Book of the Month: Excerpts from The Recovery of Love by Jeff Imbach

The Recovery of Love: Four Contemporary Mystics Address our Contemporary Crisis of Intimacy
by Jeff Imbach (Fresh Wind Press, 2005).

from page 82-83

It was common in the Christian circles in which I grew up to reduce love to a discussion of the distinctions between the three greek words for love: agape (self-sacrifice), phileo (familial affection), and eros (passion). By dissecting the word into discrete categories it was possible to elimnate the dangerous and end up with an innocuous but religiously acceptable ideal of love. Seen this way, love became tame at best and hopelessley guilt-producing at worst.

 

T.S. Elliot and "Little Gidding" by Ron Dart

The Boston Globe once called T.S. Eliot “the most important English speaking poet and critic of the 20th century.” There is no doubt that Eliot was a major presence on the stage of 20th century literary, religious, political, and intellectual life.

Eliot had an uncanny and incisive way of seeing through the pretensions, distractions, mirages, and wasteland of the modern era. He saw because he went deep, and from such depths spoke forth much insight and clarity to his time. He was, in short, not a man taken in by illusions and thinness.