from love to justice

“

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one… . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil… . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via invisibleforeigner)

Reblogged from Invisible Foreigner

Tags: boston

“

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Tags: boston

Supreme Court Hears Case Tomorrow on Patentability of Human Genes

Pulling for SCOTUS to overturn this one. Human genes (and plant genes!) should never be patented. Let public universities do the research that will benefit the common good - not make profit. Sorry biotech ;(

Tags: SCOTUS DNA human genome project patent public university biotech

“

How often are the travails of the women whose vulnerabilities Gosnell exploited — the poor, immigrants and otherwise marginalized people — given wall-to-wall, trial-level coverage? If you’re surprised that in the face of politicized stigma, lack of public funding or good information, and a morass of restrictive laws allegedly meant to protect women, the vacuum was filled by a monster — well, the most generous thing I can say is that you haven’t been paying attention.

—

“There is no Gosnell coverup”

Salon.com

“

Every attempt to evade the struggle against alienation and the violence of the powerful and for a more just and more human world is the greatest infidelity to God. To know God is to work for justice. There is no other path to reach God.

— Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 156.

“

I have suggested elsewhere that the religions are neither accidents in history nor encroachments on divine providence, but are, in various ways, instruments of the Holy Spirit working out the divine purposes in the world and that the unevangelized, if saved at all, are saved through the work of Christ by the Spirit (even if mediated through the religious beliefs and practices available to them)… Only a pneumatological approach to the religions enables us to hold in tension the distinctive confessional claims of Christian faith alongside the actual claims of the religions themselves, because the Spirit’s being poured out on all flesh does not cancel out but instead preserves the diversity of human voices.

—

Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh

…getting excited about this research topic!

“

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

— Pope John Paul II (via invisibleforeigner)

Reblogged from Invisible Foreigner

Tags: easter jp2

DFW on how worshipping something finite "will eat you alive"

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly….. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

— DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, IN HIS OWN WORDS | More Intelligent Life (via invisibleforeigner)

Reblogged from Rooted + Radical

Tags: david foster wallace worship money sex power

“

It could be justly argued that when the ancients have recourse to their cultures to interpret the divine it is called theology; when persons of non-European cultures use their own concepts and images to speak of God, the theological establishment calls it “syncretism” and “paganization” of Christianity

— Tissa Balasuriya, “Liberation of the Holy Spirit,” The Ecumenical Review

“

To resist the powers is to court the enmity of the world. If we are to love our enemies we must make some. So we are called to participate in “the sufferings of God in the world” (Bonhoeffer).

— Gabriel Fackre, The Christian Story

Previous (2/24) Next »