Sojourners’ Statement On Climate Victory (and Keystone XL Pipeline Defeat)

January 18, 2012

Press statement from Sojourners on Obama Administration Rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline
Christian and Other Faith Leaders Praise Administration’s Decision to Put Creation over Narrow Corporate Interests
Washington DC, January 18 – Christian and other faith leaders today welcomed the news that the Obama administration has rejected the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial project, [...]

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Keystone XL Pipeline permit denied!

January 18, 2012

Yea! This is huge. This is “earth-sized” big!
Here’s the word from the horse’s mouth (aka The State Department):

Today, the Department of State recommended to President Obama that the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national [...]

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Paul Dekar on the New Monastics and the Old Monastics

January 17, 2012

Thanks to The Merton Seasonal editor Patrick O’Connell for inviting me to review Paul Dekar’s new book Thomas Merton: Twentieth-Century Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century Living.
The Merton Seasonal is a quarterly joint publication of the International Thomas Merton Society and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.
Dekar’s book is fantastic and has all kinds of hidden gems. [...]

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Thomas Merton: Love, Not Duty

January 16, 2012

“It is not dutiful observance that keeps us from sin, but something far greater: it is love. And this love is not something which we develop by our own powers alone. It is a sublime gift of the divine mercy, and the fact that we live in the realization of this mercy and this gift [...]

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Louis Armstrong: ‘What a Wonderful World It Would Be If Only We’d Give it a Chance’

January 15, 2012

Some of you young folks been saying to me, “Hey Pops, what you mean ‘What a wonderful world’? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either.”
Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it [...]

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For Tim DeChristopher, Civil Disobedience is a Duty of Love

January 13, 2012

Tim DeChristopher, co-founder of the environmental group Peaceful Uprising, protested an highly contested oil and gas lease auction of 116 parcels of public land in Utah’s redrock country by signing a Bidder Registration Form and placing bids to obtain 14 parcels of land (totaling 22,500 acres) for $1.8 million. He didn’t have the money. DeChristopher [...]

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Weak Republicans = Weak Obama?

January 12, 2012

ColorLines editor Kai Wright always provides incisive commentary. As the Republican candidates move from New Hampshire to South Carolina and on to Florida, I’m wondering how to push Obama to change abusive economic policies and practices that “crush my people, and grind the face of the poor into the dust” (Isaiah 3:15). Wright says that [...]

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Guantanamo: ‘If I Had My Way, I’d Tear This Building Down’

January 11, 2012

Blind Willie Johnson had it right back in 1927 when he sang, “If I had my way, I’d tear this building down.” The U.S. concentration camps on Guantanamo Bay turn 10 years old on Wednesday. As Americans — and as people of faith — we should tear those buildings down.
I’m not naive about who some [...]

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Pope Benedict’s Homilies on Hildegard Von Bingen

January 9, 2012

It’s rumored that Pope Benedict may this year complete the canonization process for the great Rhineland mystic Hildegard von Bingen and also make her a “doctor of the church” to honor her tremendous contributions to the Christian faith. If you have never listened to Hildegard’s music, please treat yourself here.
Below are excerpts from Pope Benedict’s [...]

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George Herbert: ‘Love bade me welcome’

January 4, 2012

In the middle of the night, I was reading the notes in Adrienne Rich’s new poetry collection Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. Rich quotes from Simone Weil’s The Iliad or The Poems of Force. The reference pushed me off to look up collections of Weil’s writings. While reading an article on Weil’s experience reciting the [...]

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