Traveling Light Relay

In the literature of Scripture, wisdom is, broadly speaking, the knowledge of God’s world and the knack of fitting oneself into it. The wise person knows creation. He knows it boundaries and limits, understands its laws and rhythms, discerns its times and seasons, respects its great dynamics. He understands that creation possesses its own integrity and significance quite apart from his claim on it, and quite apart from any possibility that creation will make him happy. The wise person gives in to creation, and he gives in to God, and he does the first because he does the second. He knows that the earth is the Lord’s, and so the fullness thereof. He knows that wisdom itself is the Lord’s. He knows some of the deep grains and textures of the world because he knows some of the ways and habits of its maker.

— Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

Comprehensible, sensible sin is one of the unexpected gifts I’ve found in the monastic tradition. The fourth-century monks began to answer a question for me that the human potential movement of the late twentieth century never seemed to address: if I’m O.K. and you’re O.K., and our friends (nice people and, like us, markedly middle class, if a bit bohemian) are O.K., why is the world definitely not O.K.? Blaming others wouldn’t do. Only when I began to see the world’s ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, sin, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior.

— Kathleen Norris
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

When you agree to live simply, you put yourself outside of others’ ability to buy you off, reward you falsely, or control you by money, status, salary, punishment, and loss or gain of anything.
When you agree to live simply, you have little to protect and no desire for acquisition, even for acquisition of any “moral capital.” If you imagine you are better, holier, higher, more important to God than others, it is a very short step to justified arrogance or violence toward those others. In fact, it is almost inevitable.
When you agree to live simply you can understand what Francis meant when he said, “A brother has not given up all things if he holds onto the purse of his own opinions.” Most of us find out that this purse is far more dangerous and disguised than a money purse, and we seldom let go of it.
When you voluntarily agree to live simply, you do not need to get into the frenzy of work for the sake of salary or the ability to buy nonessentials or raise your social standing. You enjoy the freedom of not climbing. You might climb for others, but not just for yourself.
When you agree to live simply, you have time for spiritual and corporal works of mercy because you have renegotiated in your mind and heart your very understanding of time and its purposes. Time is not money anymore, despite the common aphorism! Time is life itself.
When you agree to live simply, you can easily find a natural solidarity with all people on the edge and the bottom—the excluded, the shamed, and the forgotten—because you stop idealizing the climb and finally realize there isn’t a top anyway.
When you agree to live simply, people cease to be possessions and objects for your consumption or use. Your lust for relationships or for others to serve you, your need for other people’s admiration, your desire to use other people as a kind of commodity for your personal pleasure, or any need to control and manipulate other people, slowly—yes, very slowly—falls away.
When you agree to live simply, there is no long-standing basis for any kind of addiction. You are free to enjoy, but you never let any enjoyment become your master. You practice non-addiction every day by letting go, not needing, and not desiring anything in particular. Fasting, detachment, and simplicity were the original words for non-addiction in the spiritual traditions.

— Richard Rohr
from Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future. But barrenness is not only the condition of hopeless humanity. The marvel of biblical faith is that barrenness is the arena of God’s life-giving action. Inexplicably, this God speaks his powerful word directly into a situation of barrenness. This is the ground of the good news. This God does not depend on any potentiality in the one addressed. Abraham and Sarah were quite without potential. The speech of God presumes nothing from the one addressed but carries in itself all that is necessary to begin a new people in history. The speech of God overcomes and overpowers the barrenness of reality.

— Walter Brueggemann
Genesis, in the Interpretation Commentary Series

Science does an excellent job of telling me why I don’t have a tail, but it can’t explain why I find that interesting.
Science shines when dealing with parts and pieces, but it doesn’t do all that well with soul.
It can do a brilliant job of explaining how we and other species have adapted and evolved, but it falls short when it comes to where the reverence humming within us comes from.
When I’m talking about God, I’m talking about the grenzbegriff kind of faith that sees science and faith as the dance partners they’ve always been, each guiding and informing the other, bringing much-needed information and insight to their respective levels of hierarchy. To see them at odds with each other is to confuse the levels of hierarchy, resulting in all sorts of needless debates, misunderstandings, and terrible bumper stickers.
I say all of this about science and faith because when I’m talking about God, I’m talking about the source of all truth, whatever labels it wears, whoever says it, and wherever it’s found—from a lab to a cathedral to a pub to Mars.
This is important, because for many in our world, somewhere along the way reality got divided up into the secular and the sacred, the religious and the regular, the holy and the common — the understanding being that you’re talking about either one or the other but not both at the same time.
This dis-integrated understanding of reality — the one that puts God on one side and not the other, the one that divides the world up into two realms – it’s lethal, and it cuts us off from the depths and separates us from the source.
Because sometimes you need a biologist, and sometimes you need a poet.
Sometimes you need a scientist, and sometimes you need a song.

— Rob Bell
What We Talk About When We Talk About God

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all

— Joseph Epstein
from his essay “The Green-Eyed Monster”

If 10 percent of the bid rigging, if 10 percent of the fraud, if 10 percent of the price gouging, if 10 percent of the wasted time by employees, if 10 percent of the breaking in, or if 10 percent of the stealing that was going on in New York City was gone, if 10 percent of the people of this city had an experience of God in such a way they got convicted and their consciences started to screw down better and they began to stop stealing, there would be billions pumped into the economy.
Whenever you ever read anything about how much it costs to live or to produce things in New York, you have to stick at least a 25 percent tax on top of it. It’s an imaginary tax. It’s called the corruption tax. It’s because of the way things are done. It’s because of the bribes. It’s because of the kickbacks. It’s because of the bid rigging. It’s because of the outright corruption. It’s because of the subtle corruption. It’s because of the unpaid taxes. It’s because of all the cheating. It’s because it’s a cash-based economy where nobody tries to pay his or her taxes. It’s because of all that stuff.
The entire superstructure, as great as it is in a place like New York City, is eroding and is going to come down, because four words (“Thou shalt not steal.”) aren’t being taken seriously.

— Tim Keller
in a sermon preached in New York City, June 1994