“Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that the Spirit will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16: 15)
Trinity Sunday reminds us of the COMMUNITY in the ONE God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is mystery that we desire to become and be witnesses on the basis of our baptism – regardless of color, race, belief, language and gender?
Visit
www.badaliyya.blogspot.com
www.omigen.org/ipid
http://scbrc.net
DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...
Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:
1. Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…
2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips.
3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!
It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…
Kargador at Dawn
Work in the Vineyard
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
The Badaliyya Remembrance Prayer...
The Badaliyya Remembrance Prayer is based on a vision of prayer network - praying in concert around the world. As the Header tells it the Badaliyya prayer has as it's ground the spiritual call to "substitution", that is, to offer one’s life through prayer and action to the reconciliation of the three religions that find their commonality in Abraham.
We discover the meaning of offering ourselves in the concrete way for the well-being, even the salvation, of those of other faith traditions. It is clear that this is not an easily understood path and can only be encouraged in the context of our world today and its needs. In the words of Blessed Charles de Foucauld: "Every Christian must look on every human being as a beloved brother or sister. Christians have the attitudes of Jesus' own heart toward every human being".
We discover the meaning of offering ourselves in the concrete way for the well-being, even the salvation, of those of other faith traditions. It is clear that this is not an easily understood path and can only be encouraged in the context of our world today and its needs. In the words of Blessed Charles de Foucauld: "Every Christian must look on every human being as a beloved brother or sister. Christians have the attitudes of Jesus' own heart toward every human being".
Dhikr for Pentecost Week
Text: “Jesus breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." (John 20: 22-23)
Meditation: We have not received the spirit of slavery and live in fear, but the spirit of courage that empowers us to call God – Abba (Father)!
Visit the following web sites
www.badaliyya.blogspot.com
www.omigen.org/ipid
http://scbrc.net
DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...
Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:
1. Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…
2.Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips.
3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!
It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…
Meditation: We have not received the spirit of slavery and live in fear, but the spirit of courage that empowers us to call God – Abba (Father)!
Visit the following web sites
www.badaliyya.blogspot.com
www.omigen.org/ipid
http://scbrc.net
DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...
Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:
1. Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…
2.Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips.
3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!
It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Impunity's Limits - Remembering the "Desaparacidos"...
by Juan L. Mercado (Phil Daily Inquirer & Cebu Daily News 22 May 07 )
“All nations are constructed on the basis of great rememberings and great forgettings,” Ernest Renan wrote. Is today’s frenzy over election results, actual or fudged, mutating into amnesia that smothers other issues?
Impunity for crime here drives parents to “wear down the stones of public squares” in the words of a Honduran mother, searching for her abducted son. A recent Inquirer photo shows the late press freedom advocate Jose Burgos Jr’s widow : Edith. She stares at a dumped corpse in a macabre ritual mothers of "desaparecidos" agonize through.
“No,” Edith says, the article reports. It’s not the body of her third child: 36-year old agriculturist Jonas.. In a Quezon City mall, burly men bundled Jayjay into a car traced to the 56th Infantry Battalion. Jayjay has not been seen or heard from since.
Only motorcycle keys were left of Redemptorist Father Rosaleo “Rudy” Romano, abducted by Marcos agents in Cebu July 1985. Olongapo publisher Romeo Legaspi disappeared in January 1993. Sto. Tomas students were among those who vanished in paranoid communist progroms. Muslim community leader Datu Abdullah Sadurah Alah disappeared. And kidnapped UP students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan have never surfaced.
Abductors, meanwhile, loll in impunity. In a Mother’s Day gathering of desapaercido parents, at Quezon City ’s Good Shepherd convent, Edith said: “I have forgiven my son’s abductors, his torturers, and even their Commander in Chief. If we accept what has happened, and forgive the wrong done us, the dawn will come early”…”
Did the "capo di tutti capi" listen? “The weak can never forgive,” Asian statesman Mahatma Ghandi once said. “Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong…( Even when violence appears ) to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent…”
Forgiveness, however, does not extinguish accountability. “Men are unable to forgive what they can not punish” Hannah Arendt, stresses in her essay on Nazi terror.
That’s precisely the point of "Let the Stones Cry Out”. Published by Protestant National Council of Churches here, this 83-page report documents 836 politically motivated killings since 2001, Most remain unsolved .After the Palm Sunday killing of Indonesian priest Fr. Franciskus Madhu, SVD, in Kalinga, Catholic bishop Prudencio Andaya asked: . “Perhaps, we’ve been too silent for a long time, afraid to speak out against all killings in the past that we tolerated more killings to happen! "
A culture of impunity -- where traitor, abductor or torturer go free -- does not emerge full-blown over night. It builds up incrementally, stoked by official support, tolerance and silence. “A man begins to die the moment he remains silent about things that matter,” Martin Luther King warned.
The Philippines waffled on who collaborated with World War II Japanese occupiers, historian Frank Golay notes.This blurred the difference between Quislings and resistance fighters.
Under Marcos’ dictatorship, the Philippines “became a gulag of safe houses where members of the Armed Forces…were responsible for acts of unusual brutality,” torturing over 35,000 men and women,. Amnesty International noted. But those who tortured and salvaged bluffed and threatened their way into first de facto, then legalized, impunity.
“Policemen and soldiers who tortured and salvaged are still among us,” sociologist John Carroll, SJ noted in his 2002 paper: “A Nation In Denial”. Some were elected to national office. Little has been done to “uncover the facts, give the nameless dead their true names and decent burials”, much less identify, and prosecute perpetrators. “Unless the nation rises to vindicate it’s common conscience, it may be condemned to wander forever in the wilderness of valueless power plays among the elite.”
That has come to pass in today’s generation of abductors and killers, whether as vigilantes in Cebu City , rouge military bands or communist executioners..
South Africa ’s truth commission sought confession to shape collective memory. Greece prosecuted torturers as ‘national catharisis”. Guatemala , where 100,000 were salvaged. launched a project to “recover historic memory”.
By contrast, “the Philippines stretched impunity to it’s limits…by trying to forget it’s authoritarian past,” writes Alfred McCoy in “Closer Than Brothers” ( Yale University) “This evasion transformed torturers into heroes…Remembering became stigmatized as subversive...and politics emerged with the lingering paralysis of collective trauma”
Do parents of our desapercidos foreshadow a Philippine version of Argentinian mothers who turned Plaza de Mayo into a worldwide scream of protest against abduction of their children?.
Perhaps not – for the moment. In eight years, 30,000 individuals disappeared in Argentina . We’ve not reached the grim benchmark that Inquirer’s Michael Tan recalled : chiquitos desaparecidos : children given away, once their “disappeared” mothers, who gave birth in detention centers, were salvaged.
But the perception spreads that to survive politically, this regime would not think twice to expand further today’s impunity. How wretched the country where tenure of public office compels mothers, like Edith Burgos, to say: “I will continue searching for my son.”
Donde estas, Roger? Donde estan? “Where are you, Roger? Where are they?” cried Elvia Cristina de Gonzales of Honduras , in a poem, after her 24-year old son disappeared. In today’s Philippines , even “the stones cry out,” the same question. ####
“All nations are constructed on the basis of great rememberings and great forgettings,” Ernest Renan wrote. Is today’s frenzy over election results, actual or fudged, mutating into amnesia that smothers other issues?
Impunity for crime here drives parents to “wear down the stones of public squares” in the words of a Honduran mother, searching for her abducted son. A recent Inquirer photo shows the late press freedom advocate Jose Burgos Jr’s widow : Edith. She stares at a dumped corpse in a macabre ritual mothers of "desaparecidos" agonize through.
“No,” Edith says, the article reports. It’s not the body of her third child: 36-year old agriculturist Jonas.. In a Quezon City mall, burly men bundled Jayjay into a car traced to the 56th Infantry Battalion. Jayjay has not been seen or heard from since.
Only motorcycle keys were left of Redemptorist Father Rosaleo “Rudy” Romano, abducted by Marcos agents in Cebu July 1985. Olongapo publisher Romeo Legaspi disappeared in January 1993. Sto. Tomas students were among those who vanished in paranoid communist progroms. Muslim community leader Datu Abdullah Sadurah Alah disappeared. And kidnapped UP students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan have never surfaced.
Abductors, meanwhile, loll in impunity. In a Mother’s Day gathering of desapaercido parents, at Quezon City ’s Good Shepherd convent, Edith said: “I have forgiven my son’s abductors, his torturers, and even their Commander in Chief. If we accept what has happened, and forgive the wrong done us, the dawn will come early”…”
Did the "capo di tutti capi" listen? “The weak can never forgive,” Asian statesman Mahatma Ghandi once said. “Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong…( Even when violence appears ) to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent…”
Forgiveness, however, does not extinguish accountability. “Men are unable to forgive what they can not punish” Hannah Arendt, stresses in her essay on Nazi terror.
That’s precisely the point of "Let the Stones Cry Out”. Published by Protestant National Council of Churches here, this 83-page report documents 836 politically motivated killings since 2001, Most remain unsolved .After the Palm Sunday killing of Indonesian priest Fr. Franciskus Madhu, SVD, in Kalinga, Catholic bishop Prudencio Andaya asked: . “Perhaps, we’ve been too silent for a long time, afraid to speak out against all killings in the past that we tolerated more killings to happen! "
A culture of impunity -- where traitor, abductor or torturer go free -- does not emerge full-blown over night. It builds up incrementally, stoked by official support, tolerance and silence. “A man begins to die the moment he remains silent about things that matter,” Martin Luther King warned.
The Philippines waffled on who collaborated with World War II Japanese occupiers, historian Frank Golay notes.This blurred the difference between Quislings and resistance fighters.
Under Marcos’ dictatorship, the Philippines “became a gulag of safe houses where members of the Armed Forces…were responsible for acts of unusual brutality,” torturing over 35,000 men and women,. Amnesty International noted. But those who tortured and salvaged bluffed and threatened their way into first de facto, then legalized, impunity.
“Policemen and soldiers who tortured and salvaged are still among us,” sociologist John Carroll, SJ noted in his 2002 paper: “A Nation In Denial”. Some were elected to national office. Little has been done to “uncover the facts, give the nameless dead their true names and decent burials”, much less identify, and prosecute perpetrators. “Unless the nation rises to vindicate it’s common conscience, it may be condemned to wander forever in the wilderness of valueless power plays among the elite.”
That has come to pass in today’s generation of abductors and killers, whether as vigilantes in Cebu City , rouge military bands or communist executioners..
South Africa ’s truth commission sought confession to shape collective memory. Greece prosecuted torturers as ‘national catharisis”. Guatemala , where 100,000 were salvaged. launched a project to “recover historic memory”.
By contrast, “the Philippines stretched impunity to it’s limits…by trying to forget it’s authoritarian past,” writes Alfred McCoy in “Closer Than Brothers” ( Yale University) “This evasion transformed torturers into heroes…Remembering became stigmatized as subversive...and politics emerged with the lingering paralysis of collective trauma”
Do parents of our desapercidos foreshadow a Philippine version of Argentinian mothers who turned Plaza de Mayo into a worldwide scream of protest against abduction of their children?.
Perhaps not – for the moment. In eight years, 30,000 individuals disappeared in Argentina . We’ve not reached the grim benchmark that Inquirer’s Michael Tan recalled : chiquitos desaparecidos : children given away, once their “disappeared” mothers, who gave birth in detention centers, were salvaged.
But the perception spreads that to survive politically, this regime would not think twice to expand further today’s impunity. How wretched the country where tenure of public office compels mothers, like Edith Burgos, to say: “I will continue searching for my son.”
Donde estas, Roger? Donde estan? “Where are you, Roger? Where are they?” cried Elvia Cristina de Gonzales of Honduras , in a poem, after her 24-year old son disappeared. In today’s Philippines , even “the stones cry out,” the same question. ####
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Mystical Ladder of Love...
(The Dark Night, Book 2, Chapters 19 & 20)
Step One: Longing for God
• An “ache” within… a “sickness” at heart…
• Nothing satisfies… a feeling of “emptiness…
• Getting aware of our “foolish” pursuits…
• Acknowledging our limitations, weaknesses…
• Begin seeking “another” way…
In Ps. 119: 81, David gave us the expression as RELEASE FROM SIN, FOR FORGIVENESS & REDEMPTION. The crisis is an opportunity to let go of our idols… This is the first rung of the ladder…
Step Two: Searching for the Beloved without Ceasing…
• Passion for repentance…
• Searches for paths that lead to the beloved…
• Attentive to the epiphany of the Lord…
• Centering all care on the beloved…
• The process of purification begins…
“In all his thoughts, he turns immediately to the beloved; in all converse and business he at once speaks about the beloved; when eating, sleeping, keeping vigil, or doing anything else, he centers all his care on the beloved…” (DN II:19,2)
Step Three: Performing Good Works with Fervor…
• Contemplation results in an outflow of charity in good works…
• Care for others…
• Generosity to share…
St. John cited the example of Jacob who served the Yahweh for seven years more than the seven he had already served – all because of love and an unbreakable promise to obey God’s call (Gn. 29: 20,30).
Step Four: Pursuing God with or without Consolation…
• Being accustomed to suffering for the sake of Christ…
• “Love makes the heaviest burden light” (St. Augustine)…
• Developing a sense of equanimity, neither seeking consolation nor trying to escape desolation…
• Search for the divine pleasing… doing what is pleasing to God… no matter the cost.
The example cited by St. John is the Visitation narrative. The child in her womb leapt for joy (Lk. 1: 39-45).
Step Five: Ascending Higher with Incessant Hunger…
• Feeing of longing that is almost overwhelming…
• Impatience grows…as longing becomes intense….
• Hunger and Thirst for the Beloved…
Like the Psalmist we long to dwell in the house of the Lord…(Ps. 84: 2-4).
Step Six: Running Swiftly to God…
• Stretching towards the finish line…
• Renewing our strength and ascending on eagle’s wings (Is. 40:31)
• Like a deer racing toward a flowing spring (Ps. 42: 2-3).
St. John attributes the swiftness to reasons… 1st to dramatic increase in self-giving or charity and second to the process of purification…
Step Seven: Moving Upward with Ardent Boldness…
• St. Paul says that Love knows no bounds: it believes in, hopes for, and endures all things (Cor. 13: 17).
• Moses begged God to either forgive the Israelites for their iniquity or to strike his name from the book of life (Ex. 32:32).
• Abraham also bargained with God with boldness to save the city (Gn 18: 23-32)
This entails at one and the same time, maintaining holy boldness while conserving our humility…
Step Eight: Holding on to the Beloved…
• Communion is established…
• Reformation… on going formation … transformation
Step Nine: Burning Gently in God…
• Burning in love is re-creative…
• It wounds tenderly…
• The fire in one’s heart at Pentecost…
We are on fire but are not consumed physically…
Step Ten: Seeing God Clearly…
• Blessed “sight”… Blessed are the pure… they shall see God.
• Being in communion with God…
• Being in the likeness of God…
Step One: Longing for God
• An “ache” within… a “sickness” at heart…
• Nothing satisfies… a feeling of “emptiness…
• Getting aware of our “foolish” pursuits…
• Acknowledging our limitations, weaknesses…
• Begin seeking “another” way…
In Ps. 119: 81, David gave us the expression as RELEASE FROM SIN, FOR FORGIVENESS & REDEMPTION. The crisis is an opportunity to let go of our idols… This is the first rung of the ladder…
Step Two: Searching for the Beloved without Ceasing…
• Passion for repentance…
• Searches for paths that lead to the beloved…
• Attentive to the epiphany of the Lord…
• Centering all care on the beloved…
• The process of purification begins…
“In all his thoughts, he turns immediately to the beloved; in all converse and business he at once speaks about the beloved; when eating, sleeping, keeping vigil, or doing anything else, he centers all his care on the beloved…” (DN II:19,2)
Step Three: Performing Good Works with Fervor…
• Contemplation results in an outflow of charity in good works…
• Care for others…
• Generosity to share…
St. John cited the example of Jacob who served the Yahweh for seven years more than the seven he had already served – all because of love and an unbreakable promise to obey God’s call (Gn. 29: 20,30).
Step Four: Pursuing God with or without Consolation…
• Being accustomed to suffering for the sake of Christ…
• “Love makes the heaviest burden light” (St. Augustine)…
• Developing a sense of equanimity, neither seeking consolation nor trying to escape desolation…
• Search for the divine pleasing… doing what is pleasing to God… no matter the cost.
The example cited by St. John is the Visitation narrative. The child in her womb leapt for joy (Lk. 1: 39-45).
Step Five: Ascending Higher with Incessant Hunger…
• Feeing of longing that is almost overwhelming…
• Impatience grows…as longing becomes intense….
• Hunger and Thirst for the Beloved…
Like the Psalmist we long to dwell in the house of the Lord…(Ps. 84: 2-4).
Step Six: Running Swiftly to God…
• Stretching towards the finish line…
• Renewing our strength and ascending on eagle’s wings (Is. 40:31)
• Like a deer racing toward a flowing spring (Ps. 42: 2-3).
St. John attributes the swiftness to reasons… 1st to dramatic increase in self-giving or charity and second to the process of purification…
Step Seven: Moving Upward with Ardent Boldness…
• St. Paul says that Love knows no bounds: it believes in, hopes for, and endures all things (Cor. 13: 17).
• Moses begged God to either forgive the Israelites for their iniquity or to strike his name from the book of life (Ex. 32:32).
• Abraham also bargained with God with boldness to save the city (Gn 18: 23-32)
This entails at one and the same time, maintaining holy boldness while conserving our humility…
Step Eight: Holding on to the Beloved…
• Communion is established…
• Reformation… on going formation … transformation
Step Nine: Burning Gently in God…
• Burning in love is re-creative…
• It wounds tenderly…
• The fire in one’s heart at Pentecost…
We are on fire but are not consumed physically…
Step Ten: Seeing God Clearly…
• Blessed “sight”… Blessed are the pure… they shall see God.
• Being in communion with God…
• Being in the likeness of God…
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Dhikr for the Ascension Week (C)
Text: “And he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24: 46-48)
Meditation: We are the WITNESSES of repentance and the forgiveness of sins…
DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...
Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:
1. Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…
2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips.
3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!
It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…
Meditation: We are the WITNESSES of repentance and the forgiveness of sins…
DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...
Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:
1. Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…
2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips.
3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!
It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Prophets for our Time: Are We Listening>
by Dorothy C.Buck
When I think of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Muhammad, the ancient Hebrew prophets, Abraham, Elijah, Moses then John the Baptist and Jesus, in fact the religious reformers and visionaries of all cultures and traditions in every age, one word overshadows all else.
They knew how to listen, first to God, then to the voices of others in the world around them. As Christians we talk of God “calling” us into relationship, of the prophets being “called” to speak publicly for God, to challenge and confront the ways that God's voice was not being heard. In the Gospel according to Matthew John the Baptist is heard quoting the major Hebrew prophet Isaiah, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! ...A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!” (Matthew 3:2, Isaiah 40:3)
Unless we listen to the prophets among us we are likely to wander farther and farther away from the kingdom of God's love into a maze of tempting cultural values and materialistic idols. We hear competing voices inundating our TV programs enticing us with more and more “things” we must have and that we are told will make us “happy”. Even cigarettes and an SUV are claimed to fulfill our longings for love and companionship, and more and more credit debt is the capitalistic means of achieving the successful consumer lifestyle that feeds our economy, but not our souls.
We have ample voices throughout our short history as a country who has warned us of the dangers of not heeding the call of the poor, of not feeding the hungry, offering a drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, and welcoming the strangers in our midst. Now we are challenged, almost beyond our capacity to respond, by the fear of terrorist attacks and the distrust and hatred felt towards this country in many parts of the world. Are we listening?
(Source: Badaliyya USA)
When I think of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Muhammad, the ancient Hebrew prophets, Abraham, Elijah, Moses then John the Baptist and Jesus, in fact the religious reformers and visionaries of all cultures and traditions in every age, one word overshadows all else.
They knew how to listen, first to God, then to the voices of others in the world around them. As Christians we talk of God “calling” us into relationship, of the prophets being “called” to speak publicly for God, to challenge and confront the ways that God's voice was not being heard. In the Gospel according to Matthew John the Baptist is heard quoting the major Hebrew prophet Isaiah, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! ...A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!” (Matthew 3:2, Isaiah 40:3)
Unless we listen to the prophets among us we are likely to wander farther and farther away from the kingdom of God's love into a maze of tempting cultural values and materialistic idols. We hear competing voices inundating our TV programs enticing us with more and more “things” we must have and that we are told will make us “happy”. Even cigarettes and an SUV are claimed to fulfill our longings for love and companionship, and more and more credit debt is the capitalistic means of achieving the successful consumer lifestyle that feeds our economy, but not our souls.
We have ample voices throughout our short history as a country who has warned us of the dangers of not heeding the call of the poor, of not feeding the hungry, offering a drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, and welcoming the strangers in our midst. Now we are challenged, almost beyond our capacity to respond, by the fear of terrorist attacks and the distrust and hatred felt towards this country in many parts of the world. Are we listening?
(Source: Badaliyya USA)
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
A Hiking Prayer
Divine Master of all Creation
Grant me the ability to be alone.
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day
Among the trees and grass, among all living things.
And there may I be alone, and enter into prayer,
To talk with the one to whom I belong.
May I express there everything in my heart,
And may all the foliage of the field
(All grasses, trees, and plants).
May they all awake at my coming,
To send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer
So that my prayer and speech are made whole
Through the life and the spirit of all growing things,
Which are made as one by their transcendent source.
(Source: Catholic-Environmental Justice)
Grant me the ability to be alone.
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day
Among the trees and grass, among all living things.
And there may I be alone, and enter into prayer,
To talk with the one to whom I belong.
May I express there everything in my heart,
And may all the foliage of the field
(All grasses, trees, and plants).
May they all awake at my coming,
To send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer
So that my prayer and speech are made whole
Through the life and the spirit of all growing things,
Which are made as one by their transcendent source.
(Source: Catholic-Environmental Justice)
Friday, May 04, 2007
A Spirituality of a Great Proponent of Social Justice...
Message of radical French priest still challenges church
By Ecumenical News International
3 May 2007
The thoughts of Abbé Pierre, a French Roman Catholic priest who championed the homeless and the destitute and was revered in his home country, will now be available in English, following his death in January 2007 - writes Stephen Brown of ENI.
"Abbé Pierre is well-known in the French, Spanish and Italian speaking worlds, but he is much less well-known in the English speaking world," said the Rev. William McComish, the former dean of the Protestant St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva. McComish translated Abbé Pierre's final book, "Why, oh why, my God?", from French with his wife, Carolyn.
The French priest was born Henri Grouès in 1912 to a middle class family in Lyon. During the Second World War he was a resistance fighter and took the name Abbé Pierre - Abbé is a traditional French title for a priest. After the war, he set up his Companions of Emmaus movement for the homeless, and the group now works in more than 50 countries.
"Sadly, I think the Emmaus community has a future in this society, divided as it is between rich and poor," said McComish, at the launch of the book in Geneva on 30 April.
Abbé Pierre became a household name to many French people with his black beret and white beard, and was frequently voted France's most popular man ahead even of personalities like football star Zinedine Zidane. He used his fame to challenge political leaders about homelessness.
The book, whose French title is "Mon Dieu ... Pourquoi?", is a series of meditations by the priest on Christian faith recorded by French journalist Frédéric Lenoir.
It shows Abbé Pierre to have been out of step with several positions of the Catholic Church. In the book the priest says he supports the abolition of obligatory celibacy for priests and sees no theological obstacle to the ordination of women. He also confessed that he had "given in ... occasionally" to sexual desire.
Still, noted McComish, "This is the book of someone who was a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church."
McComish recalled that he invited the French priest to take part in a service at St Pierre Cathedral, when Abbé Pierre already used a wheelchair. The priest was held upright by a rabbi and a leader in the local mosque as he addressed the congregation.
"He was so practical. He had this attitude totally stripped of any pretension," said McComish, who first met Abbé Pierre about 15 years ago and is now active in the work of the Emmaus community foundation in Geneva.
The book has been published by the World Council of Churches in its "Risk" book series.
"We are very proud to bringing out this book," said the Rev. Theodore Gill, senior editor of WCC Publications. "We tend to get bogged down in all kinds of institutions. The 'Risk' book series tries to look beyond that to discover the Gospel."
"Why, oh why, my God? Meditations on Christian faith and the meaning of life", Abbé Pierre/Frédéric Lenoir, WCC Publications, 2007.
[With grateful acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches]
By Ecumenical News International
3 May 2007
The thoughts of Abbé Pierre, a French Roman Catholic priest who championed the homeless and the destitute and was revered in his home country, will now be available in English, following his death in January 2007 - writes Stephen Brown of ENI.
"Abbé Pierre is well-known in the French, Spanish and Italian speaking worlds, but he is much less well-known in the English speaking world," said the Rev. William McComish, the former dean of the Protestant St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva. McComish translated Abbé Pierre's final book, "Why, oh why, my God?", from French with his wife, Carolyn.
The French priest was born Henri Grouès in 1912 to a middle class family in Lyon. During the Second World War he was a resistance fighter and took the name Abbé Pierre - Abbé is a traditional French title for a priest. After the war, he set up his Companions of Emmaus movement for the homeless, and the group now works in more than 50 countries.
"Sadly, I think the Emmaus community has a future in this society, divided as it is between rich and poor," said McComish, at the launch of the book in Geneva on 30 April.
Abbé Pierre became a household name to many French people with his black beret and white beard, and was frequently voted France's most popular man ahead even of personalities like football star Zinedine Zidane. He used his fame to challenge political leaders about homelessness.
The book, whose French title is "Mon Dieu ... Pourquoi?", is a series of meditations by the priest on Christian faith recorded by French journalist Frédéric Lenoir.
It shows Abbé Pierre to have been out of step with several positions of the Catholic Church. In the book the priest says he supports the abolition of obligatory celibacy for priests and sees no theological obstacle to the ordination of women. He also confessed that he had "given in ... occasionally" to sexual desire.
Still, noted McComish, "This is the book of someone who was a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church."
McComish recalled that he invited the French priest to take part in a service at St Pierre Cathedral, when Abbé Pierre already used a wheelchair. The priest was held upright by a rabbi and a leader in the local mosque as he addressed the congregation.
"He was so practical. He had this attitude totally stripped of any pretension," said McComish, who first met Abbé Pierre about 15 years ago and is now active in the work of the Emmaus community foundation in Geneva.
The book has been published by the World Council of Churches in its "Risk" book series.
"We are very proud to bringing out this book," said the Rev. Theodore Gill, senior editor of WCC Publications. "We tend to get bogged down in all kinds of institutions. The 'Risk' book series tries to look beyond that to discover the Gospel."
"Why, oh why, my God? Meditations on Christian faith and the meaning of life", Abbé Pierre/Frédéric Lenoir, WCC Publications, 2007.
[With grateful acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches]
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