Quote(s)

People over Property, Please

Author: Marx

"The bourgeoisie of the whole world which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar."

What is nonviolence? Does nonviolence protect property as well as people?

What about the destruction of property that erodes the foundations of a violent system?

Hypomone, definition

Author: Walter Wink
Book: Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament

"The early church began from the pole of steadfastness in prayer and the refusal of idolatry, manifesting that hypomone which the Book of Revelation regards as the highest Christian virtue. It is usually somewhat limply rendered "patient endurance," but it is in fact closer to "absolute intransigence," "unbending determination," "an iron will," "the capacity to endure persecution, torture, and death without yielding one's faith." It is one of the fundamental attributes of nonviolent resistance."

Evil runs roughshod through corporate boardrooms & even churches, unnamed...

Author: Walter Wink
Book: Unmasking the Powers: the Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence

"Nothing commends Satan to the modern mind. It is bad enough that Satan is spirit, when our worldview has banned spirit from discourse and belief. But worse, he is evil, and our culture resolutely refuses to believe in the real existence of evil, preferring to regard it as a kind of systems breakdown that can be fixed with enough tinkering.

love can be mended, always mended

Author: John Knoepfle

"love is like a bowl
so when you break it
glue it together
if it won't hold water
fill it with apples"

This is one of my favorite quotes. My favorite song about love in marriage is "Funny Valentine."

Perfection, for me, is the enemy of love. But once we break our perfect image, we find another use for the thing we have. So much of love is being willing to glue it back together when we break it.

Dialogue cannot exist, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people

Author: Paulo Friere
Book: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others.

Warmth is Insufficient. Attention is Necessary

Author: Simone Weil

"Prayer is made of attention. It is the direction towards God of all the attention that the soul is capable of. The quality of the attention makes for much of the quality of the prayer. It cannot be replaced by the heart's warmth."

I am struck by the fact that so many people feel that simply the heart's warmth is what makes for love. For Weil, love is also comprised of the intellects willed focus, the careful study. The scratching of the scholar's pen.

In order to love, one must reflect deeply, thinking, praying, and, yes, reasoning.

Don't loan money at interest. Leviticus.

Author: God
Book: Bible

"If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, do not exact from him advance or accruted interest, but fear your God. Let him live by your side as a kinsman. Do not lend him money at advance interest, or give him your food at accrued interest. I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.

If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the Jubilee year."
Leviticus 25:35-40

The interesting thing here, obviously, is the way that interest is regarded as something to be avoided.

Poetry: a Daimonium?

Author: Czeslaw Milosz
Book: Selected Poems: 1931-2004, Page #88

Ars Poetica? (Czeslaw Milosz)

"I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other with exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing that is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it's an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,

Pages