Shane Claiborne on Politics

"Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can pass good laws, but no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do."

                                       Shane Claiborne in The Red Letter Revolution

The Prayer of Oscar Romero by Bishop Kenneth Untener

The kingdom is not only beyond our own efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s word.
Nothing that we do is complete.
The kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals includes everything that we are about.
We all plant the seed that one day will grow.
We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces efforts far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything.
Knowing this enables us to do something, and to do it well.
Our work may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way.
Our actions present an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are the workers, not master builders.
We are ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.

i thank you God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--ee cummings

      I have felt
      A presence that disturbs me with the joy
      Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
      Of something far more deeply interfused,
      Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
      And the round ocean and the living air,
      And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
      A motion and a spirit, that impels                             
      All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
      And rolls through all things. 

                                                      -Wordsworth