apply it to church?

dos mas

"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive."
Josephine Hart, Damage


"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast it is all a sham…"
Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

human talent

two more

"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast it is all a sham…"
Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

"For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope."
George Eliot, Adam Bede

Hakuna Matata!

resouceful people

join the club

two

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences."
Robert Green Ingersoll

"Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts. It’s what you do with what you have left."
Hubert Humphrey

All Pio. All the time.

Pio 24/7

amazing. just amazing.

70 x 70 x 70 x 70 x 7

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

200,000 gather

more

sliver meet plank

"We would all much better mend our ways if we were as ready to pray for one another as we are to offer one another reproach and rebuke." ~St. Thomas More

Light One Candle

Light one candle for the maccabee children
With thanks that their light didnt die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied
Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
But light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemakers time is at hand

Chorus:
Dont let the light go out!
Its lasted for so many years!
Dont let the light go out!
Let it shine through our love and our tears.

Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suffering
Pain we learned so long ago
Light one candle for all we believe in
That anger not tear us apart
And light one candle to find us together
With peace as the song in our hearts

(chorus)

What is the memory thats valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
Whats the commitment to those who have died
That we cry out theyve not died in vain?
We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail
This is the burden, this is the promise
This is why we will not fail!

(chorus)

Dont let the light go out!
Dont let the light go out!
Dont let the light go out!

Truth in Advertising

you can only do what you are

The Benedictine ideal of the human being is not that of one who achieves and accomplishes things, not a person with an unusual religious gift, not a great ascetic, but the wise and mature person who knows how to bring people together, who creates around herself or himself an atmosphere of peace and mutual understanding.

Behind this idea image stands a high demand. No one can simply resolve to become a peacemaker. Only those who have created peace within themselves can make peace, only those who have become reconciled with themselves, their own weaknesses and faults, their needs and desires, their contradictory tendencies and ambitions.

Making peace is not a program of action that one could write on one's banners; rather, it must arise from inner peace. And inner peace is achieved only through a hard and unremitting struggle for inner purity and through prayer, in which one seeks to accept everything God presents, whether one's own weaknesses or those of others.

Benedict of Nursia - His Message for Today
Anselm Grun OSB

triumph of the cross

In one respect the cross does have a terrible aspect that we ought not to remove. To see that the purest of men, who was more than a man, was executed in such a grisly way can make us frightened of ourselves. But we also need to be frightened of ourselves and out of our self-complacency.

Here, I think, Luther was right when he said that man must first be frightened of himself so that he can then find the right way. However, the cross doesn't stop at being a horror; it is not merely a horror, because the one who looks down at us from the cross is not a failure, a desperate man, not one of the horrible victims of humanity.

For this crucified man says something different from Spartacus and his failed adherents, because, after all, what looks down at us from the cross is a goodness that enables a new beginning in the midst of life's horror. The goodness of God himself looks on us, God who surrenders himself into our hands, delivers himself to us, and bears the whole horror of history with us.

Looked at more deeply this sign, which forces us to look at the dangerousness of man and all his heinous deeds, at the same time makes us look upon God, who is stronger, stronger in his weakness, and upon the fact that we are loved by God.

It is in this sense a sign of forgiveness that also brings hope into the abysses of history. God is crucified and says to us that this God who is apparently so weak is the God who incomprehensibly forgives us and who in his seeming absence is stronger.

Benedictus
Pope Benedict XVI

Prepare ye the way of the Lord...