... have authority on his shoulders. Indeed, he says, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do the work. It is not up to us to bring in the kingdom, but it is up to us to decide in which kingdom we will invest our lives. Sister Joan Chittister writes that the ancients tell the story of a great-hearted soul who ran through the city streets crying, "Power, greed, and corruption. Power, greed, and corruption." For a time, at least, the attention of the people was riveted on this single-minded, openhearted person for ...
... occurred on the third day.' On `the third day,' for instance, God seals the covenant with Moses. On `the third day' Esther goes to the King to beg for the safety of the Jews. On `the third day' Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac.' " --(Joan Chittister, In Search of Belief [Liguori, Missouri: Liguori/Triumph, 1999], 135.) Your third day is your "crossover moment in time" beyond which nothing is the same again: a threshold moment after which nothing is the same again. What's your third day? The day your ...
... , and risk-taking are often thought to be a little weird. They are often being tested to see if they are the real things. Some people make a lot of noise about Christ-centeredness and are not the real thing. I like what I heard the Benedictine theologian, Joan Chittister, say, on the subject of "spirituality": "If it's the real thing (and sometimes it is), it does not turn the mind off; it turns it on." The question that always has to be asked about experiential religion is: What does it lead to in terms of ...
... where you can hope and dream and where people hope and dream dreams for you. Home is where people hold out hope for you when all else have lost it. After all, isn’t the Christmas story an elaboration of a divine dreamscape for the world? Joan Chittister in her book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope (2005) calls memory the “seedbed of hope.” Hope is not “in spite of” struggle and pain, she says. Hope is born in the midst of struggle and pain from the memory of goodness and beauty and truth ...
