This is the prayer book for Shane Claiborne's "new monastic" community - a Christian commune of sorts. It contains a detailed morning devotion for each day of the year, with readings from the Old Testament, New Testament and Psalms, prayers, songs, and a quote from a saint. It also contains special prayers, and outline for night devotions, and a songbook.
Perhaps what distinguishes this one from other devotional guides is the attempt to integrate into the traditional calendar of church saints, some of the more modern ones, like Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Doris Day, Dom Helder Câmara, Oscar Romero, and Gandhi, among others. It draws from activist and mystical strains in Christian history in a way that matches the goals of the new monastic movement itself. Even the songbook by itself is worth having.
Quotes:
God has created an economy in which there is enough, that God has not created a world of scarcity with too many people or too little stuff. As Gandhi said, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
One of the signs of the birthday of the church is that they ended poverty. But it was not just a systemic thing; it was a love thing.
“When I fed the poor they called me a saint, when I asked why they were poor, they called me a Communist.” (Dom Helder Câmara)
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Oscar Romero
Liturgy is public poetry and art.
So it is with worship. More important than whether something is old or new, winsome or classic is whether it is real.
We pledge allegiance to the Lamb : and to the kingdom for which he stands.
Desert father Abba Anthony said, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”
“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts: it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. That is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.” (Oscar Romero)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a twentieth-century Jesuit philosopher, prayed, “Since once again, Lord, I have neither bread nor wine nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and suffering of the world.”
If you have the internet or a printed calendar, it’s pretty easy to look up the date of Easter. (Or, if you want to figure it out for yourself, Easter is the first Sunday after the coming of the first full moon after the vernal equinox.)
Discontentment is a gift to the church.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Our invitation is to “be the change” we want to see in the church.
We shouldn’t be too surprised that the church is a mess. After all, it’s made up of people. [...]
Augustine said, “The church is a whore, but she’s our mother.”
God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parents, as for lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve.
‘All the Way to heaven is Heaven, because He said I am the Way.’” St. Catherine of Siena:
Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” reads: It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
So much of our culture is built around moving away from people rather than closer to them. [...]
We are some of the wealthiest and loneliest societies the world has ever seen.
[...]
Commitment to a people and a place is one of the countercultural values at the heart of the gospel.
Letter to Diognetus, whose author is unknown: “Christians live in their own countries, but only as guests and aliens. They take part in everything as citizens and endure everything as aliens They are as poor as beggars, and yet they make many rich. They lack everything, and yet they have everything in abundance. They are dishonored, and yet have their glory in this very dishonor…. They are abused, yet they bless…. In a word: what the soul is in the body, the Christians are in the world.”
Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. [...] As we look at history, and even as we read the Scriptures, there seems to be evidence that violence has worked at times and failed at times, just as nonviolence has worked at times and failed at times. In the end, the question is, Which looks most like Jesus? For we are called not just to be successful but to be faithful to the way of the cross, even unto death.
liturgy protects us from simply making worship into a self-pleasing act
Confessional prayer assumes that our worship takes place in a deeply flawed community. The church has always been a worrisome and dysfunctional place. But by grace we can take small steps to restore trust.
Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist.”
Ask your pastor to remove the US flag from the altar, or to include the flags from the other 195 countries of the world.
Like any culture, we who follow the way of Jesus have distinct ways of eating and partying, different from the culture of consumption, homogeneity, and hedonism. Our homes, our living rooms, even our parties can become places of solace and hospitality for those with addictions and struggles. But it doesn’t happen without intentionality. Dorothy Day said, “We have to create an environment where it is easier to be good.”
Andy Raine of the Northumbria Community has written, “Do not hurry as you walk with grief; it does not help the journey. Walk slowly, pausing often: do not hurry as you walk with grief. Be not disturbed by memories that come unbidden. Swiftly forgive; and let Christ speak for you unspoken words. Unfinished conversation will be resolved in him. Be not disturbed. Be gentle with the one who walks with grief. If it is you, be gentle with yourself. Swiftly forgive; walk slowly, pausing often. Take time, be gentle as you walk with grief.”
In the church, we celebrate martyrs and saints, not warriors and conquistadors.
Catholic peace activist Jim Douglass has written, “The Cold War has been followed by its twin, the War on Terror. We are engaged in another apocalyptic struggle against an enemy seen as absolute evil.
Twentieth-century peace activist A. J. Muste often said, “There is no way to peace, peace itself being the way.”
American farmer and poet Wendell Berry has written, “Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.”
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