Beloved Community Quotes

Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.

Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.

Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone - a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.

We may be little, insignificant servants in the eyes of a world motivated by efficiency, control and success. But when we realize that God has chosen us from all eternity, sent us into the world as the blessed ones, handed us over to suffering, can't we, then, also trust that our little lives will multiply themselves and be able to fulfill the needs of countless people?

We are all lost, so lost, vulnerable and insecure. We are separated from love at birth, we are separated from God, from each other. All we want, all we yearn for is to connect.

The objective of nonviolence is to create a beloved world community.

Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Flood waters await us in our avenues. Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche Over unprotected villages. The sky slips low and grey and threatening. We question ourselves. What have we done to so affront nature? We worry God. Are you there? Are you there really? Does the covenant you made with us still hold? Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters, Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air. The world is encouraged to come away from rancor, Come the way of friendship. It is the Glad Season. Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner. Flood waters recede into memory. Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us As we make our way to higher ground. Hope is born again in the faces of children It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets. Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things, Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors. In our joy, we think we hear a whisper. At first it is too soft. Then only half heard. We listen carefully as it gathers strength. We hear a sweetness. The word is Peace. It is loud now. It is louder. Louder than the explosion of bombs. We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence. It is what we have hungered for. Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace. A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies. Security for our beloveds and their beloveds. We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas. We beckon this good season to wait a while with us. We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come. Peace. Come and fill us and our world with your majesty. We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian, Implore you, to stay a while with us. So we may learn by your shimmering light How to look beyond complexion and see community. It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time. On this platform of peace, we can create a language To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ Into the great religions of the world. We jubilate the precious advent of trust. We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope. All the earth's tribes loosen their voices To celebrate the promise of Peace. We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers, Look heavenward and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation. Peace, My Brother. Peace, My Sister. Peace, My Soul.

A government of the people, a democracy, has room for peaceful civil disobedience—a practice that appeals to the humanity and sense of justice of the opposition (not defined as the 'enemy') and insists that we do all, in fact, belong to the beloved community.

Lord, you call us out of captivity into the freedom of your beloved community. As we pass through the wilderness spaces of our lives, grant us ears to hear you, eyes to see you, and hearts that ache for you, that we might not turn away from the brothers and sisters who help us remember who we are. Amen.

I dreamed about a culture of belonging. I still dream that dream. I contemplate what our lives would be like if we knew how to cultivate awareness, to live mindfully, peacefully; if we learned habits of being that would bring us closer together, that would help us build beloved community.

Revolutions do not happen only in grand moments in public view but also in small pockets of people coming together to inhabit a new way of being. We birth the beloved community by becoming the beloved community.

But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.

I am one beautiful and powerful son of a bitch,' he told himself. 'Smart as a whip, respected, prosperous, beloved and valuable. I have the right to be healthy, happy and rich, for I am the baddest player in this arena or any other. I love myself more than I love money and pretty women and fine clothes. I love myself more than I love neat gardens and healthy babies and a good gospel choir. I love myself as I love The Law. I love myself in error and in correctness, waking or sleeping, sneezing, tipsy, or fabulously brilliant I love myself doing the books or sitting down to a good game of poker. I love myself making love expertly, or tenderly and shyly, or clumsily and inept. I love myself as I love The Master's Mind,' he continued his litany, having long ago stumbled upon the prime principle as a player--that self-love produces the gods and the gods are genius. It took genius to run the Southwest Community Infirmary. So he made the rounds of his hospital the way he used to make the rounds of his houses to keep the tops spinning, reciting declarations of self-love.

I was quick to pounce on his moral flaws and slow to recognize my own blind sin. But because he stayed faithful, by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, he broke through my moral calluses. The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense149 of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority…. The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” And that is what Martin Luther King Jr. finally set into motion, even in racists like me.

Looking out at that crowd, I imagined those who had not yet arrived, minority students who, in years to come, would make this multitude of faces, the view from where I now stood, a little more various. If they could have heard me, I would have confided in them: As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.

Once one understands that the evolving community of life on Earth is God’s beloved creation and its ruination an unspeakable sin, then deep affection shown in action on behalf of ecojustice becomes an indivisible part of one’s life.

Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.

The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community.

Like Nadia, I wrestled with the evangelical tradition in which I was raised, often ungracefully. At times I've tried to wring the waters of my first baptism out of my clothes, shake them out of my hair, and ask for a do-over in some other community where they ordain women, vote for Democrats, and believe in evolution. But Jesus has this odd habit of allowing ordinary, screwed-up people to introduce him, and so it was ordinary, screwed-up people who first told me I was a beloved child of God, who first called me a Christian. I don't know where my story of faith will take me, but it will always begin here. That much can never change.

...we abolished marriage two hundred years ago. You see, married life did not work at all well with our system. Domestic life, we found, was thoroughly anti-socialistic in its tendencies. Men thought more of their wives and families than they did of the State. They wished to labour for the benefit of their little circle of beloved ones rather than for the good of the community.

The real goal, however, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community” where all men would treat each other as brothers and equals. “There are great resources of goodwill in the southern white man that we must somehow tap,

Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility. Feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, imperialism. But it will make it possible for us to be fully self-actualized females and males able to create beloved community, to live together, realizing our dreams of freedom and justice, living the truth that we are all “created equal.” Come closer. See how feminism can touch and change your life and all our lives. Come closer and know firsthand what feminist movement is all about. Come closer and you will see: feminism is for everybody.

The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.

each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That’s it. And that’s why it’s so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

People who are starving and dressed in rags don’t want to hear someone read a list of propositional “good news.” They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn’t hold revival meetings and call it a day — we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn’t an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don’t see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn’t embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees — those who called themselves God’s people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don’t need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God’s beloved community.

The Latino community anchored me, but I didn't want it to isolate me from the full extent of what Princeton had to offer, including engagement with the larger community. Page 148

As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls. SPRING

Every people has a past, but the dignity of a history comes when a community of scholars devotes itself to chronicling and studying that past.

Just as it takes a tree a long time to begin to grow again once it’s transplanted, so you can give your healthy roots time to find the nourishment of your new soil in your new community.

While protesting in the street, I am fighting for the rights of my community. While navigating my community, I am fighting to be loved. What more do Black women have to sacrifice to be loved by Black men? To be seen as worthy of fighting for. We have given everything. What have you given in return, Beloved? I cannot fight for you, and fight against you. I cannot honor your spirit, while you diminish mine.

India won her independence, but without violence on the part of Indians. The aftermath of hatred and bitterness that usually follows a violent campaign was found nowhere in India. The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.

Jesus entered as he did, where he did, doing what he did because God needed us to finally comprehend the truth: God is not a sky king who heads an empire. God is the love that gives itself away for the sake of more love.

Sabbath is a big no for both; it is no to the worship of commodity; it is no to the pursuit of commodity. But it is more than no. Sabbath is the regular, disciplined, visible, concrete yes to the neighborly reality of the community beloved by God.

We can restore our hopw in a world that transcends race by building communities where self-esteem comes not from feeling superior to any group but from one's relationship to the land, to the people, to the place wherever that may be. When we create beloved community, environments that are anti-racist and inclusive, it need not matter whether those spaces are diverse. What matters is that should difference enter the world of beloved community it can find a place of welcome, a place to belong.

On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I am not separate from you, my neighbour. If you are my enemy then I am my own enemy. If you are my friend then I am my own friend. Today, I have stripped off my masks and come to know myself. I am Christian. I am Jew. I am Muslim and Hindu. I am European and African. Asian and South American. I am man. I am woman. I am intersexed. I am homosexual. I am heterosexual and asexual. I am abled. I am disabled. I am all these things because you are, and you are all these things because we are. I exist in relation to each of you, this is what gives my being meaning. Why must I label myself like a bottle of wine? When I am the bottle, the wine, and the drunkenness. Why must I label myself at all? When I am the flesh, the light, and the shadow. When I am the voice, the song, and the echo. Tell me why I must label myself when I am the lover, the beloved, and love. I am not separate from you, my neighbour. And you are not separate from humanity. We are all mirrors, reflecting one another in perpetuity.

how valuable mass nonviolent resistance could be. The real goal, however, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community” where all men would treat each other as brothers and equals. “There are great resources of goodwill in the southern white man that we must somehow tap,” King asserted, and we must work to “speed up the coming of the inevitable.

I had to be strong, for every man and woman in our fair community was here to witness my beloved being put to rest, some with satisfaction, and some with relief. But all would gather an accounting of the events here today, to be relayed at future balls and parlour teas, as a comeuppance for my marrying an outsider.

If enough individuals are full of despair and anger in their hearts, there will be violence in the streets. If enough individuals are full of greed and fear in their hearts, there will be racism and oppression in society. You can't remove the external social symptoms without treating the corresponding internal personal diseases...Pope Francis draws our attention to the 'invisible thread' of the market, which he describes as 'the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.' This mentality generates inequality, which in turn generates 'a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control'...changed individuals cross racial, religious, ethnic, class or political boundaries to build friendships. These friendship work like sutures, healing wounds in the social fabric. They 'humanize the other,' making it harder for groups to stereotype or scapegoat. They create little zones where the beloved community is manifest...They help people envision the common good--a situation where all are safe, free, and able to thrive. As my friend Shane Claiborne says, our problem isn't that rich people don't care about poor people; it's that all too often, rich people don't know any poor people. Knowing one another makes interpersonal change and reconciliation possible. (p. 167-168)

We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That's it. And that's why it's so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

When my daughters were baptized, we had a big celebration with cupcakes and champagne. Together with our community we sang “Jesus Loves Me” over the newly baptized. It was a proclamation: before you know it, before you doubt it, before you confess it, before you can sing it yourself, you are beloved by God, not by your effort but because of what Christ has done on your behalf. We are weak, but he is strong.

This was a school that didn’t just teach history — no, it wore the past like a comfortable jacket, beloved for all of its frayed ends. Gansey II described students — comrades, really — forming bonds of brotherhood that would last for the rest of their lives. It was C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, Tolkien and his Kolbítar, Glendower and his poet Iolo Goch, Arthur and his knights. It was a community of scholars just outside of adolescence, a sort of Marvel comic where every hero represented a different arm of the humanities.

Love, its power and authority, always gets there first, comes to believe first, and always waits for the others, especially the leaders, to catch up! This is the reality of what happened among the disciples and the community of the Beloved Disciple, John, and those closest to Jesus, called His friends. They mature and develop differently from other disciples, and the community of the Church has to struggle with the fact that the last one anyone thought would be the leader was the one who betrayed Him and contributed to the dissolution of the disciples when Jesus was arrested and crucified.

People are not fleeing churches today because they have lost their deep hunger for a spiritual connection and participation in authentic spiritual communities. Rather, they are fleeing because so many churches now seem bereft of the very spirit that birthed them in the first place. If clergy want to find their people, they might try looking in coffee shops, in homeless shelters, among the young who have pitched their tents in parks to dramatize economic injustice. While we shop, salute, and worship celebrities and athletes, the world is falling apart. What we need today is a move to Occupy Religion.

before he went back to helping the boy. Missing from the Warrior tent were Kalona and Aurox. For obvious reasons, Thanatos had decided the Tulsa community wasn’t ready to meet either of them. I agreed with her. I wasn’t ready for … I mentally shook myself. No, I wasn’t going to think about the Aurox/Heath situation now. Instead I turned my attention to the second of the big tents. Lenobia was there, keeping a sharp eye on the people who clustered like buzzing bees around Mujaji and the big Percheron mare, Bonnie. Travis was with her. Travis was always with her, which made my heart feel good. It was awesome to see Lenobia in love. The Horse Mistress was like a bright, shining beacon of joy, and with all the Darkness I’d seen lately, that was rain in my desert. “Oh, for shit’s sake, where did I put my wine? Has anyone seen my Queenies cup? As the bumpkin reminded me, my parents are here somewhere, and I’m going to need fortification by the time they circle around and find me.” Aphrodite was muttering and pawing through the boxes of unsold cookies, searching for the big purple plastic cup I’d seen her drinking from earlier. “You have wine in that Queenies to go cup?” Stevie Rae was shaking her head at Aphrodite. “And you’ve been drinkin’ it through a straw?” Shaunee joined Stevie Rae in a head shake. “Isn’t that nasty?” “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Aphrodite quipped. “There are too many nuns lurking around to drink openly without hearing a boring lecture.” Aphrodite cut her eyes to the right of us where Street Cats had set up a half-moon display of cages filled with adoptable cats and bins of catnip-filled toys for sale. The Street Cats had their own miniature version of the silver and white tents, and I could see Damien sitting inside busily handling the cash register, but except for him, running every aspect of the feline area were the habit-wearing Benedictine nuns who had made Street Cats their own. One of the nuns looked my way and I waved and grinned at the Abbess. Sister Mary Angela waved back before returning to the conversation she was having with a family who were obviously falling in love with a cute white cat that looked like a giant cottonball. “Aphrodite, the nuns are cool,” I reminded her. “And they look too busy to pay any attention to you,” Stevie Rae said. “Imagine that—you may not be the center of everyone’s attention,” Shaylin said with mock surprise. Stevie Rae covered her giggle with a cough. Before Aphrodite could say something hateful, Grandma limped up to us. Other than the limp and being pale, Grandma looked healthy and happy. It had only been a little over a week since Neferet had kidnapped and tried to kill her, but she’d recovered with amazing quickness. Thanatos had told us that was because she was in unusually good shape for a woman of her age. I knew it was because of something else—something we both shared—a special bond with a goddess who believed in giving her children free choice, along with gifting them with special abilities. Grandma was beloved of the Great Mother,

If we are lucky enough, as I am, to be from time to time in quite close contact with young people, they can sometimes make it easier to hang on to this notion when they function, as every person does vis-a-vis every other person they come up against, as a mirror. Always we are being reflected in the eyes of others. Are we silly or sensible, stupid or clever, bad or good, unattractive or sexy...? We never stop being at least slightly aware of, if not actively searching for, answers to such questions, and are either deflated or elated, in extreme cases ruined or saved, by what we get. So if when you are old a beloved child happens to look at you as if he or she thinks (even if mistakenly!) that you are wise and kind: what a blessing! It's not that such a fleeting glimpse of yourself can convert you into wiseness and kindness in any enduring way; more like a good session of reflexology which, although it can cure nothing, does make you feel like a better person while it's going on and for an hour or two afterwards, and even that is well worth having. The more frequent such shots of self-esteem are, the more valuable they become, so there is a risk - remote, but possible - of their becoming addictive. An old person who doesn't enjoy having young people in her life must be a curmudgeon, but it is extremely important that she should remember that risk and watch her step. Or he, his.

Did he want Nick to die on the floor of his bathroom from an overdose of mentholated rub? Did he want me to spend the last eighty years of my lifespan in a convent? Maybe he was mad that I was trying to sneak out of the house wearing his jeans for the third day in a row. "I am taking Doofus for another walk," I said clearly,daring him to defy me. "That would not be good for Doofus." Josh folded his arms. "Mom,that would not be good for Doofus." Oh! Dragging Mom into this was low.Not to mention Doofus. "Since when is going for a walk not good for a dog?" I challenged Josh. "He's an old dog," Josh protested. "He's four!" I pointed out. "That's twenty-eight in dog years! He's practically thirty!" "Strike!" Mom squealed amid the noise of electronic pins falling. Then she shook her game remote at both of us in turn. "I'm not stupid, you know.And I'm not as out of it as you assume. I know the two of you are really arguing about something else.It's those jeans again, isn't it?" She nodded to me. "I should cut them in half and give each of you a leg.Why does either of you want to wear jeans with 'boy toy' written across the seat anyway?" "I thought that was the fashion." Josh said. "Grandma wears a pair of sweatpants with 'hot mama' written across the ass." "That is different," Mom hissed. "She wears them around the kitchen." I sniffed indignantly. "I said," I announced, "I am goig for a walk with my dog. My beloved canine and I are taking a turn around our fair community. No activity could be more wholesome for a young girl and her pet. And if you have a problem with that,well! What is this world coming to? Come along, dear Doofus." I stuck my nose in the air and stalked past them, but the effect was lost. Somewhere around "our fair community," Mom and Josh both had lost interest and turned back to the TV. Or so I thought.But just as I was about to step outside,hosh appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the mud room. "What the hell are you doing" he demanded. I said self-righteously, "I am taking my loyal canine for a w-" "You're going to Nick's,aren't you?" he whispered. "Do you think that's a good idea? I heard you yelled at him for no reason at the half-pipe,right before he busted ass.

drop the economist’s beloved notion of ‘externalities’, those incidental effects felt by people who were not involved in the transactions that produced them—such as toxic effluent that affects communities living downstream of a river-polluting factory, or the exhaust fumes inhaled by cyclists biking through city traffic. Such negative externalities, remarks the ecological economist Herman Daly, are those things that ‘we classify as “external” costs for no better reason than because we have made no provision for them in our economic theories’.21 The systems dynamics expert John Sterman concurs. ‘There are no side effects—just effects,’ he says, pointing out that the very notion of side effects is just ‘a sign that the boundaries of our mental models are too narrow, our time horizons too short’.

Liberation of the Spirit As a girl, touched by the mystical dimensions of Christian faith, I felt the presence of the Beloved in my heart: the oneness of our life. At that time, when I had not yet learned the right language, I knew only that despite the troubles of my world, the suffering I witnessed around and within me, there was always available a spiritual force that could lift me higher, that could give me moments of transcendent bliss wherein I could surrender all thought of the world and know profound peace. Early on, my heart had been touched by its delight. I knew its rapture. Early on, I made a commitment to be a seeker on the path: a seeker after truth. I was determined to live a life in the spirit. The black theologian James Cone says that our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived: 'If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to prepare for it; for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.' In reflecting on my youth, I emphasize the mystical dimension of the Christian faith because it was that aspect of religious experience that I found to be truly liberatory. The more fundamental religious beliefs that were taught to me urging blind obedience to authority and acceptance of oppressive hierarchies-- this didn't move me. no, it was those mystical experiences that enabled me to understand and recognize the realm of being in a spiritual experience that transcends both authority and law.

As individuals and as species, living organisms are part of interdependent communities, existing within a web of mutualisms that Leopold once imagined as “a universal symbiosis.” Given the harm our species is capable of doing to others, it’s understandable that over the course of the conservation movement, some have tried to sever our relationships with other species, drawing hard boundaries in an attempt to limit our exploitation of other forms of life. Boundaries have been useful to conservation—and will continue to be. But the lesson of ecology, much like that of Aesop’s fables, is that human relationships with the rest of life are both inescapable and inescapably complex. The great challenge of conservation is to sustain complexity, in its many forms, and by doing so protect the possibility of a future for all life on earth. And for that, there are no panaceas.

I spent so much time tormenting myself about how I was going to go on without him, but I don't have to. Neither does Marley. We don't have to leave people behind because they've moved on to another part of their story, they can continue in ours. Grandpa, I miss you. I miss the parts I didn't even get to know. I'm still working out how to tell this story without you but I'm going to do it. I'm not like any of the things those people said. I'm like you said. You were right all along. I won't doubt it again. I think of my community here. A shield against those who seek chaos and division. The one you helped me to build, even from beyond. I smile. I feel light. I feel free. I feel ready. I wave my beret in the breeze of the river and hold it up to the sky. I may not remember the Stranger's face but I remember his words. He is so proud of you. I feel beloved and stylish all at once. Glamorous.

As painful as it was, reading about sexual violence toward Black women and girls helped me with necessary creative depictions. My book could not have been written without Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as well as Beloved, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple—this last book is so special to me because Ms. Walker is a native of Eatonton, Georgia, the home of my maternal ancestors. (My mother was one of Ms. Walker’s teachers.) My mother—Trellie James Jeffers—published an early germinal essay about colorism in the Black community, “The Black Black Woman and the Black Middle Class,” which allowed me to witness (vicariously) intra-racist sexism in African American communities. Another essay by her, “From the Old Slave Shack: Memoirs of a Teacher,” offers historical background about Mama’s experiences attending segregated schools in Eatonton, Georgia, in the 1930s and 1940s, before attending Spelman College in 1951.

The person who makes God his Beloved, what more does he want? His heart becomes awakened to all the beauty there is within and without. To him all things appeal, everything unfolds itself, and it is beauty to his eyes, because God is all-pervading, in all names and all forms; therefore his Beloved is never absent. How happy therefore is the one whose Beloved is never absent, because the whole tragedy of life is the absence of the Beloved, and to one whose Beloved is always there, when he has closed his eyes the Beloved is within, when he has opened his eyes the Beloved is without. His every sense perceives the Beloved; his eyes see Him, his ears hear His voice. When a person arrives at this realization, then he, so to speak, lives in the presence of God; then to him the different forms and beliefs, faiths and communities do not count. To him God is all-in-all; to him God is everywhere. If he goes to the Christian church or to the synagogue, to the Buddhist temple, to the Hindu shrine, or to the mosque of the Muslim, there is God. In the wilderness, in the forest, in the crowd, everywhere he sees God.

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask: Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence? Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth, and intervened recklessly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order? All these questions remind us that there is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society. For its very survival’s sake, America must reexamine old presuppositions and release itself from many things that for centuries have been held sacred. For the evils of racism, poverty and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born. Our economy must become more person-centered than property- and profit-centered. Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power. Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing about better racial conditions. First, this is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually; it is nonaggressive physically but dynamically aggressive spiritually. A second point is that nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness. A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not just the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, Alabama: ‘The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may happen to be unjust.’ A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.

Ever since the 1960s, upon the urging of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and the all-knowing Dr. Spock,* mothers have been encouraged to read to their children at a very early age. For toddlers and preschoolers who relish this early diet of literacy, libraries become a second home, story hour is never long enough, and parents can’t finish a book without hearing a little voice beg, “Again… again.” For most literary geek girls, it’s at this age that they discover their passion for reading. Whether it’s Harold and the Purple Crayon or Strega Nona, books provide the budding literary she-geek with a glimpse into an all-new world of magic and make-believe—and once she visits, she immediately wants to apply for full-time citizenship. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —author Joan Didion, in The White Album While some children spend their summers sweating on community sports teams or learning Indigo Girls songs at sleep-away camp, our beloved bookworms are more interested in joining their local library’s summer reading program, completing twenty-five books during vacation, and earning a certificate of recognition signed by their city’s mayor. (Plus, that Sony Bloggie Touch the library is giving away to the person who logs the most hours reading isn’t the worst incentive, either. It’ll come in handy for that book review YouTube channel she’s been thinking about starting!) When school starts back up again, her friends will inevitably show off their tan lines and pony bead friendship bracelets, and our geek girl will politely oblige by oohing and aahing accordingly. But secretly she’s bursting with pride over her summer’s battle scars—the numerous paper cuts she got while feverishly turning the pages of all seven Harry Potter books.

I was dumbfounded to witness this specimen of male beauty in such a compromising position. I had never imagined finding the famous Rick Samuels in a dungeon, let alone in such a vulnerable and decubitus posture. He was my visiting lecturer, who had advised me to be selective in posing pornographically and for high art. He specifically told me that he was careful not to associate himself in the porn industry. Here he was, lying bare among men whom he did not know or have the vision to see. They were using him as a sex object, gratifying themselves regardless of how he felt. The men took turns pumping their swollen instruments into both his orifices until they could stave off their cravings no longer before they released their loads into Rick’s welcoming openings. He was the ‘power bottom,’ otherwise known to the gay underground community as a ‘cum pig’ or a ‘pig bottom.’ That evening was an eye-opener and a reformation. It reaffirmed men’s double standards in their words and actions for me. They were just like seasoned politicians, who promise a world of positive reforms before election. When elected to office, their promises are thrown to the wind. A set of new rules for personal gains then take effect. Thus is the nature of mankind. That evening, Andy, I learned an important lesson that humankind has its strengths and foibles. It is therefore worth the effort to take a closer look at a person’s character instead of embracing the superficiality that could often cloud a sound judgment. My beloved ex-’big brother,’ I am positive in my heart of hearts that you are an honorable gentleman of your word. From the first time I met you to our recent reconnection, you will always be the man I respect, honor, cherish, and, most importantly, LOVE. Young.

To take the choice of another…to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to…for all we individuals to have…our choices. ” Kar’uchai shrugged and indicated the world around them vaguely. “Your city institutions…Talking and talking of individuals…but crushing them in layers and hierarchies…until their choices might be between three kinds of squalor. “We have far less, in the desert. We hunger, sometimes, and thirst. But we have all the choices that we can. Except when someone forgets themselves, forgets the reality of their companions, as if they were an individual alone…And steals food, and takes the choice of others to eat it, or lies about game, and takes the choice of others to hunt it; or grows angry and attacks without reason, and takes the choice of another not to be bruised or live in fear. “A child who steals the cloak of some beloved other, to smell at night…they take away the choice to wear the cloak, but with respect, with a surfeit of respect. “Other thefts, though, do not have even respect to mitigate them. “To kill…not in war or defence, but to…murder…is to have such disrespect, such utter disrespect, that you take not only the choice of whether to live or die that moment…but every other choice for all of time that might be made. Choices beget choices…if they had been allowed their choice to live, they might have chosen to hunt for fish in a salt-swamp, or to play dice, or to tan hides, to write poesy or cook stew…and all those choices are taken from them in that one theft. “That is choice-theft in the highest degree. But all choice-thefts steal from the future as well as the present.

I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I don't have social media" "Oh right." He rolls his eyes. "Too good for all that." She shakes her head. "Not at all. On the contrary, I'm too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It's designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody's loneliness and promises us a community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that - weaponizing a person's isolation - it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody's like 'words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people,' blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody's influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they're lovable. And then, once you're nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people's triumphs, that's when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don't get m e started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that's just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don't need it. Any of it." Blandine cracks her neck. "I'm corrupt enough.

Hi again ! My fav quote from "Kisses from Katie " By Katie J Davis frm page 174 As an 8 year old ,when I first started hearing Céline Dion’s songs, I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover .But now a I feel so much longing for my boyfriend whom Im losing .I see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Dion feels about her lover is the way God must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him . I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what God’s heart must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . He longs and desires for my heart to come back to Him each and every minute of each and every day . God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover to come back to his teachings of giving all we a have to Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them and I am so awed by his love for me .I feel so precious and dear to him that He is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion sings to her lover. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!! Satan is not a fan of God our love affair with God and so Satan is battling every day to keep us from giving our hearts to God. I am becoming more keenly aware than ever before of this battle between God and Satan to claim my heart . The devil tricks us into giving our hearts to materialistically selfish desires: wanting more and more for ourselves so we forget Love for God and our neighbor. So that we trade our noble inheritance : the precious treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy for more ME ME ME . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward (boy friend and material abundance ) here on this earth but it does say that I will have a joy so great that it is greater than all good things of this world combined . Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do it with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath and some me time “ it does say “Serve with all your heart since you KNOW that you will receive an in heritance in heaven from the Lord as a reward “ …And we KNOW in our hearts that God is ALL we need to overflow with joy …. (Matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )which will be yours for eternity “ Bless you , Dari

As practice expands from the personal to the collective, from the internal to the external, from the particular to the universal, it comes to embody the value of inclusion of all things, of all people, of all differences. All of our experiences are invited and belong; none of us is marginalized or excluded. In this way, we are being invited to create beautiful and Beloved Communities.

If we allow ourselves to be intimidated in our search for truth by the gatekeepers of empire—the billionaires who are now buying up all our newspapers and television stations in order to report from the corporate mountaintop news that is so fake that a whole generation now gets its real news from fake news programs, then we are all wandering in the wilderness. By the way, would that more preachers of the gospel had the fearlessness of Jon Stewart.

To accept the messages, to accept others and love them the way Mary accepts them, means to take the role of a mother - or to partake in it - in the birth of a new world. There is no other way. The experience of pilgrims and parishioners is truly a new experience of togetherness. All who come to this parish community come to love it as their own, feel like members of the large community - the Church - in which Mary is the MOther and each person a beloved child.

It is a victory for the empire, but not for the kingdom of God, that if you are “too big to fail” it means that your rewards are privatized but your risks are socialized. You can gamble with other people’s money, and if you win, you win. But if you lose, we lose. I don’t know what economic model that is, but it’s not God’s economy, so I say, for the love of God … RESIST!

If there are rules against taking advantage of resident aliens, then why are so many Christians the first to call for deportation of migrants? It’s as if we expect these strangers to provide us with cheap manual labor, roofing our houses, landscaping our yards, pouring concrete, and caring for our children, but then we want them to disappear after sundown.

To the best-selling atheists of our time, who have lumped us all together into one ridiculous religious cartoon and then proudly announce that they don’t believe in the God that most of us don’t believe in either, I say, for the love of God … RESIST!

Or that Ayn Rand and Jesus are truly strange bedfellows? Why can’t we say this? Because we are afraid. Why are we afraid? Because we care too much about what people think of us, and not enough about whether we say what needs to be said at a time like this.

As for gifted preachers, I like a smooth voice in the pulpit as much as anyone. But there are times when I would prefer some gravel, some red-faced stammering, even a little public anguish from a preacher who has tasted the bread of heaven and lifted the cup of kindness and now feels a little drunk for justice.

Thus the fundamental illusion from which we must be disentangled, or “undone,” is that the proper definition of the life of faith itself is first and foremost a belief system with behavioral consequences, rather than a way of being in the world whose behavior consequences make clear the things we believe. In other words, we are not acting upon beliefs so much as we are believing through action—we are not believers who act but actors who believe.

That’s what the movement was all about. It was not to destroy anyone. It was to redeem, to save, to convert. It was to change people’s attitudes, their positions, their hearts. That’s what Dr. King spoke of—redeeming the soul of America, creating the beloved community.

Around the table, we know whether there is friendship and community or hatred and division. Precisely because the table is the place of intimacy for all the members of the household, it is also the place where the absence of that intimacy is most painfully revealed.

was then I first saw how difficult it was to energize a community that felt marginal and voiceless in the larger discourse of a democracy.

In the gospel of Matthew, the ninety-nine sheep are left behind by the shepherd to seek the one that is missing. This narrative undermines the majority perspective. None are truly free until all are free. The majority is unwhole until the minority finds its place in the circle. We see this concern for "all" again in 2 Peter 3:9:"The Lord...is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance." Theologian James Alison highlights this passage in 2 Peter as indicative of the apostles' dawning realization that the kingdom Jesus reveals is finally non-sacrificial. The New Testament undoes majority reasoning with a glimplse of universal love--a love that cannot be contained, begetting a beloved community opening ever outward. In the mind of God, which holds all things, there is only this all. The membership of the community opens out into infinity: What of the stranger, the enemy, the orphan? What of the trees, the rivers, the plankton? Who is now my neighbour?

I particularly welcomed any chance to work on issues such as economic development and education that were crucial to the community in which I was raised. I not only cared deeply about those people but also understood their needs from firsthand experience.

Thirty-eight neighbors did nothing. How does this happen? It happens when we become apathetic about our roles in society. It happens when we forget that we are a community, that we are connected to one another and have an obligation to engage with other human beings.

A Phillips serial (in contrast to the jerky, obvious, and corny melodramas of the Hummerts) usually contained just one main scene in each installment, peopled by only two characters. Her scenes were sparse, the settings lean, the people clear without the endless repetition of names that filled a Hummert soap. Phillips was the first serial writer to effectively blend her soaps. Her popular Today’s Children was phased out of its first run in 1938 by having its characters sit around the radio and listen to The Woman in White, which replaced it. When three of her soaps were scheduled consecutively and sponsored by General Mills in 1944, Phillips expanded this idea of integrated storylines. The major characters of the resurrected Today’s Children drifted through The Guiding Light, and mutual visits with The Woman in White were also common. Ed Prentiss, who was then playing Ned Holden of The Guiding Light, was used as a “master of ceremonies” for the hour, a guide through the intricate framework of the three soaps. The fourth quarter-hour was filled with nondenominational religious music, Hymns of All Churches. At one time during this period, Phillips was considering breaking the traditional lengths, running stories of ten to 20 minutes each rather than the precise quarter-hours. After a season of this experimenting, the block was dismantled, and The Guiding Light went into its postwar phase. In the earliest phase, it followed the Ruthledge family. The Rev. John Ruthledge had come to Five Points two decades before, establishing himself and his church as the driving force in the community. This had not been easy. Five Points was a “melting pot of humanity,” as Phillips described it, with Poles, Slavs, Swedes, Germans, Irish, and Jews living in uneasy proximity. As one character described it, it was a neighborhood of “poverty, gossipy neighbors, sordid surroundings,” with “no chance to get ahead.” Ruthledge had run into stiff neighborhood opposition, but now he was accepted and even beloved. His Little Church of Five Points had become popularly known as the Church of the Good Samaritan:

To bear witness to injustice is to tell a story about our world based upon firsthand observation of real-life circumstance, fueled by moral outrage, concerned for the common good and promoting social change. When our stories provide a sense of history, social responsibility and concern for the common good, they can foster a democracy rooted in the public interest and promote a society that embraces an inclusive social contract. We must make hope possible. The goal is to change things, to remove a bit of the unnecessary suffering of our world, to create what Martin Luther King referred to as “the Beloved Community.” We must believe that we can make a difference. To change the “system” necessitates a change of will in which we acknowledge our complicity with the status quo and decide to no longer silently go along with the way things are. Instead, we decide to live our values, speak our truth and do what must be done.

If we do not know we are the beloved sons and daughters of God, we are going to expect someone in the community to make us feel that we are. We will expect someone to give us that perfect, unconditional love. They cannot.

Frederick D. Haynes III—disrupt convention, unmask deceit, and level criticism against established power. Black preaching at its best builds up the hope and possibility of a beloved community. This hope resides in the fundamental belief that God made all persons of one blood.

But once I am able to truly confess my most profound dependence on others and on God, I can come in touch with my true self and real community can develop.

there may have been no practical reason for Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding, or for God to put “every beautiful tree” in the garden for Adam and Eve to enjoy, or for Him to adopt us into His family and lavish His love upon us. Maybe these were all simply expressions of His nonsensical love. And maybe that’s what worship is. It’s what happens when God’s delight in us inspires our delight in Him, sparking an endless loop of joy between Creator and creature, between Lover and beloved.

Discover the heart and soul of Idabel at The Red B. Our passion for outstanding food and warm hospitality has made us a beloved community treasure since 2011. Indulge in unforgettable flavors. Phone: (+1)5802867919 Address: 10 N Central Ave, Idabel, OK 74745 Website: theredb.com

And if the white people don’t stand with the Negroes as they go out now, then there will be a danger that after the Negroes get something they’ll say, ‘Okay, we got this by ourselves.’ And the only way you can break that down is to have white people working alongside of you—so then it changes the whole complexion of what you’re doing, so it isn’t any longer Negro fighting white, it’s a question of rational people against irrational people.”89 The civil rights movement needed to foster this new reality, to seek, as Moses said, a “broader identification, identification with individuals that are going through the same kind of struggle, so that the struggle doesn’t remain just a question of racial struggle.” Moses also invoked the vision of the beloved community, the ideal of a universal brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, which Martin Luther King, Jr. had eloquently proclaimed in his recent sermons.90 Moses’s position was principled and philosophical and ultimately more persuasive.

Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church, he speaks out against the Vietnam War. People push back against King. They tell him he's not patriotic. In that speech, he says that there comes a time when silence is betrayal. He says he's about to say this criticism because he loves the country, not because he hates the country. He also, in the same speech, says America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. But he says it's going to be a bitter but beautiful struggle to transform America, because he says the goal of America is freedom. Now, that's perfect. That's brilliant. That's beautiful. He's telling us all the different sides of our country and he's inspiring us to do something about it - right? - but he's also not calling us villains. He's saying that we can actually transform and create and build this beloved community. But King wants us to tell the story of poor people, farm workers. He wants us to end militarization and materialism and racism. So what I think, again, I think everything comes down to storytellers and the story, everything. And I - and I'm serious about that. And so we need to tell ourselves a different story about America.

The accepted etymology of the word religion was that it came from religere, meaning “to bind together,” but Cicero had said its true root was relegere, “to reread.” The truth was, she liked both answers. What brought people together in a sense of love and community and the impulse to go back to beloved books weren’t that different for her. Both of them left her feeling calmer and renewed. Nono said it meant she was an introvert and an extrovert at the same time. Anna couldn’t really argue against that.

It's easy to be afraid right now-- there is so much to be done. None of us can do it all, but we must each do what we can. And we must take care of ourselves in the process, our very human bodies and psyches, our comparatively little but beloved lives. Love gives us hope. Hope gives us courage.

I don’t have social media.” “Oh, right.” He rolls his eyes. “Too good for all that.” She shakes her head. “Not at all. On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

The use of the single word Love at the center of the other words of principle invites what to me is a radical shift in our understanding of beloved community. Recitation is no longer an option. The word unadorned invites conversation and actions that elicit its deepest meaning in community.

207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018 Call – +91 7022122121 ### The Development of Kannada Literature and the Rise of Online Accessibility The rich history of Kannada literature, which stretches back more than a millennium and is littered with vibrant narratives, poetic forms, and academic works, is extensive. The development of Kannada writing has been both rich and varied, ranging from the ancient texts of the 9th century to contemporary novels and essays. The way readers interact with their literary heritage has changed significantly as the digital age has progressed, making Kannada literature significantly more accessible. Thanks to platforms like Veeraloka Books, readers can now explore the depths of Kannada literature without being restricted by location. By making it possible for customers to purchase books with just a single click, these online retailers have created a link between readers and authors. This progress from customary physical book shops to computerized stages has been critical in advancing Kannada writing, guaranteeing its significance in a quickly impacting world. The extensive selection of titles offered by Kannada books online is one of the most significant benefits. Poetry, fiction, historical novels, and biographies are all forms of Kannada literature. Stages, for example, Veeraloka Books curate a huge determination of these works, taking care of different peruser interests. Because literature has become more accessible to everyone, you can find something that piques your interest whether you're a casual reader or an avid collector. In addition, readers can get their beloved books delivered to their homes through Kannada books online, saving them the hassle of going through crowded stores or standing in long lines. People who live in remote areas or in areas with few bookstore options will appreciate this convenience. Online platforms remove barriers and foster a deeper connection between authors and their audiences by delivering Kannada literature to your doorstep. Sales alone are not enough to stop the digital transformation of Kannada literature; It also includes promoting fresh and upcoming authors. Online platforms make it easier for aspiring authors to have their voices heard in a more democratic setting than traditional publishing avenues. Self-publishing on platforms like Veeraloka Books has helped numerous authors reach a larger audience than ever before. This change ensures that the literary landscape remains dynamic and vibrant by encouraging experimentation and innovation in Kannada writing. E-books and audiobooks have also become more widely available, making them more accessible. These choices provide readers who prefer digital formats with portability and flexibility. Younger readers who are accustomed to using smartphones and tablets can now more easily access Kannada literature. Audiobooks cater to those who enjoy listening to stories during their daily commutes or while multitasking, while e-books are portable, making it simple to read on the go. Moreover, the web empowers perusers to draw in with writing in manners that were already impossible. Discussions of books, authors, and literary themes can flourish on social media, online forums, and other platforms. Perusers can associate with one another, share surveys, and effectively partake in the abstract talk encompassing Kannada composing. The community of readers of Kannada literature is also bolstered by this interaction, which not only enhances the reading experience. In conclusion, Kannada literature faces both challenges and opportunities in the digital age. Platforms like Veeraloka Books make it easier for people with disabilities to access literature, allowing it to flourish.

In the beloved community of 'Our Father,' the same desperate love that a mother has for her baby or that a child has for his or her daddy is extended to all our human family. Biological love is too small a vision. Nationalism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives or the people of our own country is not a bad things. But our love does not stop at the border. We now have a family that includes by transcends biology and geography. We have family in Iraq, Peru, Afghanistan and Sudan. We have family members who are starving and homeless, dying of AIDS and living in the midst of war. This is the new family of our Father.

It seems to me that I have greater peace and am close to God when I am not “trying to be a contemplative,” or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this. —THOMAS MERTON

The brief story of the supper at Emmaus carries within it a number of core principles of the Christian life as Luke understands it. First, the idea that one comes to know Christ through acts of generosity to other human beings. It is because of their kindness to a stranger that the disciples find the beloved teacher whom they had lost. Second, there is the idea that they can conjure his presence in prayer and in communal acts such as the breaking of bread - by remembering his life, death, and resurrection - even in an undistinguished house in an anonymous village. The simple acts of generosity and community in daily life are the acts that make real the living presence of Jesus.

Christ's vehement frustration with the church of Laodicea was that she'd be of some use! The last thing I want to tout is a works-centered faith, but we have been called to faith-centered works. Christ intends for us to be useful! Churches are meant to be viable, active forces in their communities. In

Thousands, tens of thousands, and millions right now are mobilizing to stoke those fires from below, to develop a shared faith that injustice can be opposed and justice aspired to, that human solidarity and connectedness can become a living force, that a spirit of courage can be tempered with vast feelings of love and generosity, and that a full and passionate embrace of the lives we're given can be combined with an eagerness to move forward toward a worldwide beloved community.