Tony Campolo - what love requires

Heard Tony Campolo speak at Chautauqua in July, 2013

• Love requires that you look into a person and not at a person
• The need to connect into the deep recesses of a person's life
• Story of Tony's praying for someone who ultimately died 
• The story of the inner transformation
• He wasn't cured but he was healed.
• When you enter into people's sufferings you are exhausted
• Eyeball to eyeball contact
• Love is about connecting with people deeply. So deeply that it is draining
• Story of Guy Doad, teacher - despised as a young boy, ridiculed by his classmates, uplifted by a teacher who said that he was a poet
• Jesus - I felt power to flow out of me
• There is an energy that flows from God through you to other people 
• Blessed are those who are poor and willingly become poor
• The story of Schlinder's list - I could be doing so much more
• Going door to door offering to pray with people
• The programs are already in place, but you have to go door to door to find the needy to connect them with the services
• I want you to become poor people materially, spiritually
• For these are my people says Jesus

David Brooks - Moral Geniuses

David Brooks is a writer for the New York Times. For more go to:

• Moral geniuses 
• Public broadcasting 
• Catholics from Boston
• The moral side
• Teaching at Yale - raised by über moms, weigh less than their infants
• Flashing mandarin cards at their infants
• Cashiers on loan from Amnesty International
• Seaweed snacks
• I want a snack that will prevent colio rectal cancer

Frances Perkins

• Reading poetry to lepers
• Totally dominate classroom discussion even though they haven't read the books
• University of Chicago - atheistic students being taught by Jewish professors
• Teaching books that authors gave their lives for
• I feel drained and exhausted in delivering stories
• Students don't have time to read books that are transformative
• They read to learn but not internalize
• Lost opportunity cost
• Faith in science and not developed in the moral categories
• Giving people moral instruction
• Asked young people what moral dilemmas they faced

Saint Augustine

• Augustine - born to a very strong mother
• Wanted to get ahead, left to go to Carthage; the cauldron of love
• Lashed by the hot stripes of passion
• Married for 15 years with a commoner, dumped her for someone of the same class
• Painful process - lusty guy
• Confessions - 16 year old stole some pears, wasn't hungry, wanted to fit in, deep within wanted to do bad
• Bound by an iron of my own choice 
• Habit for which there was no resistance
• Murphy's Law at stake
• Along comes Mom, but he can't give up lust - battle self against self
• The sound of a little girl's verse
• Make no provision for the flesh
• No conversion more famous
• You have to look outside yourself
• 5 days before her death, they have a conversation - forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to the things ahead - into the realm of pure spirit
• The word repeated - HUSH - the world, the self and the mind is hushed 
• His mom dies at 57, Augustine is 33
• Had to connect with students 
• Lonely man of faith - two accounts of creation - we are made of dust and ashes, the first more agenda driven and the second more built for silence
• Adam 1 and Adam 2 
• Adam wants to conquer the world
• Adam 2 wants to rest
• These two sides in permanent confrontation - operating with different mindsets
• The first lives by an economic logic the 2nd lives by a sacrificial logic
• We live in a world which emphasizes Adam 1 and rebuts and denies Adam 2
• France's Perkins - born in Maine
• There my dear is my hat, get a hat which is wider than your cheek bones
• No way with getting away with BS
• Made her do chemistry and Latin
• Mount Holy Oak - 1902 - sent around the world
• Sent them everywhere alone
• Go where nobody else wants to go
• Went to a settlement house, the arithmetic of compassion, falls in love in New York City in Greenwich Village
• Sees a fire that is devastating 
• Takes up a cause of workers rights
• What does history want me to do?
• 1920's - notes on the male mind
• Guys will only listen if she dresses like their mothers
• Mother Perkins - tremendously impact full - works for Franklin Roosevelt
• Her private life was a mess, but publicly was instrumental to social welfare legislation
• Her late life was happier - filled with purpose 

Dorothy Day

• One other example - Dorothy Day - lived through the San Francisco earthquake 
• That little event - very self critical
• The long lonliness
• I became pious and smug
• Moved to Greenwich Village
• Modeled the books she was reading
• Reading Dovstovetaky
• Had sex a lot, one of her protests she was arrested, one suicide attempt
• Suffragette arrest
• Like Augustine - hits the bottom with her 2nd imprisonment - thought it was an indictment of her lifestyle
• Lives with a guy, has a kid - with the kid came the ambition to worship and adore led to her becoming a Catholic - started soup kitchens, life of incredible service - their gratitude became my absorption
• Delicious moment in her life
• Robert Coles - interviewed her - my great love was I had theirs this long in my life
• Adam 1 bowed down to Adam 2

• There are 2 ways of doing goodness
• Some commonalities like
• We are divided creatures
• We are self-centred
• That pride is the central vice
• Humility is the chief virtue, seeing yourself accurately
• Sin is the central battle
• No person can survive on their own
• Defeating weakness only comes by becoming silent
• Living by a code
• Only save yourself by sacrificing yourself
• God is you as you truly are - e Gilbert - Dorothy Day would not agree
• For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment. If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. (James 2:13, 15-17 KJV)
• An ethos of self distrust
• The heart can not be taught to students who are there to advance
• Caring and digging in
• Never forget the message is the person
• Life is much bigger than we think
• Teacher finding an inner guiding presence 
• Journalism - writing during the day and drink at night
• My responsibility - if someone committed suicide I had to get quotes from the family 
• From there to work for William F Buckley
• 5 people of moral geniuses
• Jim Lehrer
• George Schultz
• The central challenge of our time is the widening gap between rich and poor
• Whole menu of things that need to be done 
• The choice you are making is not just for today
• Every little decision moves your soul in one or another direction
• Try to be hard on yourself 
• What gives me hope?
• Lack of moral direction 
• Crime rates down, teenage pregnancies, abortions are down, socially we are in good shape
• Social movements work from the bottom up
• Disasters - light bulb memory and then the process of interpreting it
• How we interpret events is as much the shaper of action 
• Unions - students have no collective conscience 
• You remember the teacher more than the course
• Balance between Adam 1 and Adam 2 - two ways - habits, small acts of kindness , remember the name of people you meet; copying good people, we are wired to mimicking good people

Trevor Potter - the financing of Elections

Heard Trevor Potter speak at Chautauqua in July 2013

• Money and Politics
• Former chair of the Election Process
• Campaign Finance Law
• Delinquent intersection between money and politics
• Chief counsel to Stephen Colbert
• Just remember he's the funny one
• Lower the tone on money and politics
• Where are we in the financing of elections
• Corporations have the same right to contribute to political campaigns as do private individuals
• $100s of millions donated from non traceable sources
• $7 Billion spent on the last election
• 337% increase in 20 years
• 2008 less than half that
• $85 Million Senate race
• The Supreme Court has ruled that spending limits on elections is unconstitutional 
• The government can only appeal that candidates spend less
• No legal limit on campaign spending
• The Buckley decision
• No limits on self-funded candidates
• First Amendment was written to prevent restriction of free speech even if that speech was against the government
• But what does this have to do with restricting campaign spending
• 1904 - one robber baron said when Teddy Roosevelt was elected - 'we bought his election, he just didn't continue as though he had been bought'
• 1907 corporations were limited to what they could contribute
• Citizens United in 2010, the majority of the Supreme Court agreed that corporations had the legal status of persons an therefore shouldn't be restricted in terms of campaign contributions
• Where are we?
• Corporate money? Yes
• Foreign money? No
• It is now the Supreme Court and not Congress who determines who can contribute and who cannot
• The huge jump in campaign contributions because of the Citizens United 
• Dark Money - you don't know where the money is coming from
• Justice Anthony Kennedy - what was he smoking? To think that all corporate campaign money could be traced 
• Gutting of the disclosure provisions
• Names like Americans for a better America
• Corporations like these veiled contributions, don't have to answer for their campaign spending to the public or to their shareholders
• Congress could change this but they are deadlocked
• It is not clear how they thought that the process wouldn't be corrupted?
• The court was simply wrong in thinking that this would be independent
• Wholly independent turns out not to be!
• Where does the money come from?
• Average Americans - lowest recordable level $200
• What percentage 1/3 of 1% of Americans donate at the
• Minimum donation
• 163 people gave over 50% of total Superpac donations
• Worried that it will be limited to a couple of guys in a room
• The rich being left out by the super rich
• Most donors are men
• 222 Obama 2012
• Total number of fundraisers attended for his reelection campaign
• 9 Reagan 1984
• Total number of fundraisers for his reelection campaign 
• 4 hours - daily congressional schedule making fundraising calls for a safe seat, more for a contested seat
• Corporate Spending - hasn't changed in terms of union contribution but significant increases for private corporations
• SuperPacs may be bad for America but they are good for CBS
• Negative ads are effective, they undermine confidence in a candidate
• Motivation - Justice Kennedy - making profits, corporations can be sued for poor returns
• When a corporation enters a political race it is with the intent of supporting the short term profit interests of the company
• This entrenches the status quo
• I am not a US company and I don't make decisions based on what's good for the US - former CEO Mobile Exxon Lee Raymomd
• It is important exposé the ugliness of political fundraising Chris Murphy -   recently elected Senator
• What constitutes the greatest threat to US democracy - campaign spending -
• Members of congress are spending 1/2 their time dialing for dollars
• If you have money you have a leg up on the competition
• American Anti- corruption act
• PAC / Superpac / secretly
• PAC is a political action committee
• It is an organization, opening a bank account having a treasurer registered with the government
• Candidate can have a pact - a candidate action pac
• Super PAC - no limit on amounts
• Regular pacs have a $5,000 limit
• As long as the group is only doing independent expenditures 
• It has unlimited resources independent of candidates - so called independent ads
• The anonymity of the donor? What is the argument for anonymity - they ought to be disclosed
• Requiring people to declare who I am is forcing or compelling speech
• Is there any chilling affect on contributions if names are revealed?
• The story of Target and Minnesota 
• Target contributed $500,000 to a candidate who was pro business but who was subsequently a anti-gay candidate
• Target took a real hit because of anti-gay legislation
• Bain capital - super PAC tried to hide under the radar
• The values of full disclosure help uphold democracy - people need to know who the speaker is - 

Ali Veshi

Ali Velshi spoke at Chautauqua in July 2013.

• Are Markets Moral?
• Worked for Lee Hamilton
• Give me my money back
• Honoured to be here
• I am here as a story teller
• My job is to pass stories around
• Al Jazeera America
• Markets and Morality
• Question? Are the markets moral?
• Are markets moral, immoral, amoral,
• Or value neutral?
• Audience split between immoral and amoral
• Twitter - fruit markets?
• Human nature means limits have to be imposed
• Where does morality come from?
• The ethical glue that holds us together
• What is considered right and wrong?
• Commerce - some exchange involved, structure regarded
• Markets are amoral, the less regulated the greater efficiency but the greater discrepancy the more immoral markets become
• How should markets be governed?
• It has brought wealth to many but today the markets are terrifying
• The buccaneer days of the Robber Barons - systems which pointed to fascism, dictatorship
• Roosevelt thwarted that
• Many blame Roosevelt for creating obstacles
• The backlash against the markets is still on the rise
• The market - the institution of trade
• Protesters say that CEOs shouldn't be making many times what the lowest paid employees make
• Gordon Brown argues the market should be regulated
• We are an economically bifurcated society
• These problems are not new, there have been times where great polarization also existed
• The corrupting influence of money itself
• Ruskin 150 years ago - mandate for corporate leaders 
• Should provide for the nation, can provide jobs for all
• Good pay for all
• Honesty is the best policy
• Honesty begets trust
• Strong leadership for those who can implement change
• Those who have wealth use it for good
• Markets should be servants for the people
• Is the market itself the problem?
• It can be tough to be heard
• Markets tend to follow mathematics rather than the social good
• The ongoing challenge of the right balance between the individual and society
• Group interest or individual - what is more important?
• Socially responsible funds - help the environment
• Morals - how do they impact investment returns - investing in guns produces high returns
• Principles aren't principles until they cost you
• Stopped doing business in South Africa - impacted apartheid
• Immorality in the markets - is the evil the market itself or those who abuse it? Like athletes who take performance enhancing drugs - is the fault the sport or the athlete?
• The mortgage crisis - packaging debts by Banks and farming them out meant the banks were no longer on the hook
• Cigarette and drug companies - horrible instances of malfeasance only indicate that dishonesty is rampant
• We want fairness and transparency
• The fracking debate
• Regulation if applied fairly is acceptable
• Small businesses are perceived as friendly because their owners are like those around them - neighbours
• We are our brothers' keeper first
• Some corporations try to act morally
• Markets are moral even if they don't know they are
• Markets can generate prosperity which when used by people generate great good
• An effective tool
• Market is a like a cat // doesn't matter if it's black or white just as long as it catches mice
• Shakespeare in the Park - free with long lines but when some get ahead without the wait 
• Line standers - no longer a public good; homeless people standing in line for Supreme Court hearings
• Scalping tickets - used to be an issue, stubhub -
• Market makes no comment re: morality 
• A longing for corporate decency
• Technology flattens the buying process
• Designers may get 100% of the proceeds through an Internet sale but the cost is much less
• Unions in the 1950s was 3 in 10 workers
• Systems inefficiencies get weeded out but the loss of good fair wages is part of the outcome
• Personal responsibilities exceed regulatory things
• Benefit corporations enlightened way to go
• Sub-prime lending crisis immoral even though not breaking the law
• Everyone is on high alert
• We have had a culture of maligning regulation, public service - 
• Implementing social audits
• We will be the best effectors of market change if we exercise ourselves
• Stocks go up despite layoffs
• We have got to find a way for people to be fully employed and profitable
• Sell your desks and chairs before you lay off
• Move employees to 4 days rather than lay one of them off
• How can we redeploy employees?
• Layoffs impact so many not just the people laid off but the ancillary industries like restaurants are also affected 
• If it bleeds it leads - is CNN moral?
• Give the news that is most important before the news that is juiciest
• Too big to fail - companies have to submit a living will 

EJ Donne

EJ Donne - heard him speak at Chautauqua in July 2013

• Our divided political heart
• Justice, morals, the equal dignity of every person regardless of who they are
• Justice we assume can't be bought or sold
• Wealthy people can buy their way out of the draft
• The writ of money and the rule of the economy
• Health care a market proposition
• Why should children hopelessly snared in poverty which is no choice of their own be denied the necessities of life including healthcare?
• The need to temper markets with morals 
• Does this land or my way best represent American values?
• 'Americans can be relied to the right thing after they have exhausted all the possibilities' - Churchill 
• Our arc bends toward justice
• From the very beginning we have both an individual and community entities 
• We, the people - Declaration assumes community
• Pledging to each other mutual care, working together
• The first negative political ad - the Declaration of Independence
• They were not anti- government
• First version of socialized medical plan was in 1790 to care for seamen
• One nation birthed in disagreement - born out of competing values
• Made compromises rooted in the idea of being ruled by the people
• A refutation of laissez faire economics
• The radical individualism 35 years in the late 1800's
• The power of high finance over government in the 1920's
• Restored by government - limits on business
• Markets worth it only when under moral leadership 
• The language of the market place dominates public discourse 
• We used to talk about immunizing young children - now we talk about investing in our children 
• Strengthening family values are worth doing whether they justify economic calculations or not
• Poverty - does it make economic sense to address the problem in solely economic terms?
• The questions of economic concern are moral when it is about what food access, housing
• The Market is in dire need of criticism
• The market can't be credited with solving all problems
• It is very good with measuring profit
• But not good at creating universal health care
• Market depends on the notion of Common good, on trust depending on virtues 
• Insiders and outsiders - pollute our economics
• Economics our politics
• A capitalist society relies on non-capitalist values 
• We must see each other as members of the same body
• Whenever this flag is flown, we take care of our own
• Bruce Springsteen - Building a nation where we can survive depends on our making conditions where we can survive
• Talking Fair Trade
• What effect will this have on people
• Free trade can't be used to undermine good jobs
• How economies can be governed?
• I will believe Texas believes corporations are people when they execute one
• A call to take care of more than their own
• Remarkable tweet from Tampa Bay - "How cool would it have been had Robert Zimmerman offered to drive Traynor a ride home?"
• Religious opinion 
• Where does Jesus call for a cut in the capital gains tax?
• When family values are used to bash gays and lesbians it is wrong
• But when it is used to take issue with inequality, the incarceration of 2 million black men in prison
• Door to door is still the best way to address the real issues
• Health care is complicated 
• 60% of employers cover health care down from 85% after the 2nd world war

Chris Hedges

from quotesgram.com

Rise up lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you --
Ye are many, they are few!         Percy Bysshe Shelley

Why do you stand
they were asked, and
Why do you walk?

Because of the children, they said, and
because of the heart, and
because of the bread.                 Daniel Berrigan

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. Howard Zinn

My notes from a session with Chris Hedges when he spoke at Chautauqua in July, 2013.

• my Dad was a Presbyterian Minister
• An outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights
• GBLT rights supporter from the late 60's
• Church harsh on him for his GBLT activism
• in one of his last services he conducted Easter service for the GBLT community
• he believed marriage is a sacrament between two committed people who love each other
• All liberal institutions have collapsed
• What happened?
• How was it that progressive forces have been destroyed?
• More people died for labour rights in the US than any other country!
• WW1 broke out - the collapse of the Eastern Front - no support in the US for the war
• the first instance of mass communication being used to win Americans over to a position they initially resisted. It reconfigured American society persuading people by emotional appeal rather than using logic or reason
• The effectiveness of mass communication - very few are able to resist - even intellectuals have succumbed
• The proliferation of mass communication - the creation of black publicity
• has instituted the psychosis of permanent war where the dreaded Hun becomes the dreaded red
• Severe repression of criticism, for one - the Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill hung on trumped up charges
• Madison Avenue inculcates consumer mentality, American society is contaminated by a culture of lies
• The systematic destruction of radical forces, reducing change to mere incremental reform
• Howard Zinn's History of America, birthed of his awareness of 'the voices never heard!' 
• In our day people like Noam Chomsky shut out from the mainline media streams
• Numerous mechanisms to shut people out
• All of the openings in American history were radical - the suffrage movement, the labour movement, the civil rights movement
• and yet now the Civil Rights movement has been gutted with the recent Supreme Court decision
• Predatory class has no impediment
• No self imposed limits on capitalism - everything is a commodity
• We live in a global system of Neo-feudalism
• We moved from an empire of production to an empire of consumption
• Clinton /Obama - politicians who 'feel your hurt but instigated NAFTA; the deregulation of the media, the gross civil violations of NSA'
• Once in the street - you are worth nothing
• In prison prisoners paid $1 an hour - an economic commodity
• Corporate funding equal in Democratic as in Republican
• We have undergone a corporate coup d'état  - and they have won
• Democratic Party would be on the far right in Europe
• The systematic killing of descent
• There is no way to vote against Goldman Sacks
• Global oligarchy
• Drones, privatized armies. Night raids in our own cities
• Don't play the game
• We must recapture the moral imperative of radical movements
• The question is not how do you get the right people to rule, the matter is how do you get the people who rule to be afraid
• America is a deeply violent culture
• The Christian Right - fundamentalists once reluctant to become political - the celebration of grasping the cross with the gun - target the vulnerable, blame the demise of society on gays, trade unionists, feminists,
• Bankrupt liberalism
• We have systematically killed radicalism
• Occupy movement gave expression to the majority
• Health care should be a million miles from capitalism, but in the US we are trying to marry the two. It is a moral degeneration where private insurance companies hold young sick children hostage
• Richestan - where the rich live separate from America and yet rule America
• Corporations are systems of death - formal mechanism; our formal channels of governments can't stop them.
• Corporations are colour blind
• Speaking truth to power - a faith responsibility
• We have nothing else less than civil disobedience to defend us
• Faith that the good draws the good - the essence of faith
• The power of the powerless is that truth can be recognized when it takes to the streets
• We must stand up for what is right; it is not impractical - it is a very lonely walk
• Like Martin Luther King we must 'take non-violence as my lawfully wedded wife'
• The poor have been abandoned by the liberal class
• We cannot go back to where we were
• A material diminishing is not a spiritual diminishing
• The government is frightened
• The government doesn't even trust the police to protect them
• They trust private corporations like NSA
• Keep doing the good you are doing
• Draw the good to the good
• The truth we speak is accessible to the frontline defenders - ie the police
• MSNBC the same as FOX except with a different spin
• The voices are there, hidden but out there
• Read Cicero, don't tune out the voices like Jeremiah Wright, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader

Esther de Waal - On Henri Nouwen and Rembrandt's painting of The Prodigal Son

Notes from Esther de Waal's opening talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016.
Her comments were based on Nouwen's book 'The Return of the Prodigal', which in turn were his reflections on Rembrandt's masterpiece.

• We are even more lost
• Coming home and staying there, where true love is to be found
• It is the gift that we are to lay claim to
• Where do you dwell?
• Christ's answer is 'come and see.'
• How does Henri go beyond his deep searching?
• The new monasticism - to keep the still centre in our lives
• If you are looking for theology in Wales, look for the poets
• The visual was very important for Henri
• When I am too tired to read, to tired to do or to pray, I can still look at art
• Looking at a painting with my heart's eye
• Quite deliberate steps - battered by mission and vision statements
• The need to look with long and prayerful attention
• The need to enter into art
• June 19, 1983 - Henri first encounters the Return of the Prodigal
• Just completed a 6 month tour of the US, overwhelmed by his own neediness
• In July 26, 1986 he goes to St. Peterburg's to see the painting
• It is a huge painting 6 feet by 8 feet
• He sees the feet of the prodigal
• Luther called the parable the gospel within the gospel
• Picasso drew a painting of the prodigal before he comes home
• Illusion - to play with words
• The story of the prodigal are the root of the 3 Benedictine rules
• Listening quietly, listening intently
• To change, to move forward,
• To come home, staying in the loving embrace of the father
• We are lost, we have lost the key to our heart, profound and inescapable journey
• Henri sat for hours in front of the painting in the Hermitage, there day after day
• The feet - the bare feet which has experienced the harshness of the earth
• The duality of the two hands
• One hand tender and the other strong, two diverse voices both speaking the words of truth
• Eyes that go into our innermost self, one so compassionate
• Neither of those eyes were judging looks
• How do you see?
• You can glance, you can look but only for what you want to see
• Look, stay still, gaze into the innermost being of your subject
• Holding himself still before the haze of God; that gaze without judgment, and this the gaze we are to look with at others
• It means you see Easter in the other
• You forget the labels, you gaze with the eyes of the resurrection
• The eyes of the elder son, are the eyes of judgment, frozen anger, resentment - he has worked hard and has done everything expected of him
• Look at him leaning on his staff, fashionable head gear, very, very scary
• Contrary to the generous master who invites labourers to come and be pay regardless of how long they work
• Figures are frozen in time

15th Century 'Holy Trinity' (Troiksa) Icon by St. Andrei Rublev

• 15th Century icon - 3 people sitting in a circle
• They are all relating
• Feet happily on the ground
• The cup among them - the cup of suffering
• The unity of the trinity bring relief to the suffering of the Russian people
• Holding things together
• The box holding the bones of the Martyrs
• We are drawn in to that table, that circle of
• Love,  the hands united pointing to the cup
• They can listen to one another, it is a circle of love that we are being called to
• Can't tell who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - the deep communion among the free
• The listening eyes, the gift of the gaze

• The prodigal can't remain kneeling forever
• His heart has been pierced by the love of his father, you are re-energized, full of love to express itself in love and action
• The need to revisit his forgiveness
• Forgiveness is the greatest gift for freedom and healing
• Being the beloved - are you going to receive it?
• The way you look at someone can transform them
• Can you see the resurrected person? Isn't this the gift of L'Arche, this household of love?

Esther de Waal - 2 - The Only Question Worth Asking

photo of Esther de Waal from 'Spirituality and Practice'

Notes from Esther de Waal's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016.
Her comments were based on Nouwen's 'The Genesee Diary', the diary of his 7 month sabbatical at a Trappist Monastery in upstate New York in 1974.

• Henri's Spiritual journey - familiar with the rule of St. Benedict
• An entry point for knowing God
• Celtic spirituality - a fruitful resource cultivating unity in the midst of division
• Henri Nouwen's writings combined art and spirituality
• Helps us to pause in the threshold
• Locked in time as we are, desiring the timeless
• To live with the door of transcendence left open
• Weaving a tapestry
• Listening, beauty, the role of the visual
• Seeking and searching all our lives
• Where are you rooted?
• The search for home, how do we come home, how are we centred?
• How can we live in the forgiving love of God?
• I live with fear - God speaks through Henri
• What a complex man he was
• I don't mind if it doesn't all add up
• Mystery - Henri wrote as though he was holding something back
• Being part of a group for a short time and then returning to a place of solitude
• Shared experiences of homecoming - Genesee - the Trappists
• The Benedictines by the 12th Century had become influential
• Some of them went back to its origins, reclaiming the roots of the monastic life
• How have I become at the end of the day any more loving? The only question worth asking regardless of one's vocation
• To read is one thing, but to create an experience makes it living
• Carrying a rhythm throughout life
• The Genesee Diary a great introduction to the Benedictine monastic life is all about
• Struggling with a divided heart - Henri found solace in the uncluttered - the cloisters - the spring of living water, the fountain, the living stream of God's word
• At first Henri is resistant, resents that while there no one sends him letters
• Resents the work, totally inept with technology, breaks the bread machine, dragging stones from the river from which a chapel is built
• I came to love those stones, he wrote at the end of his diary, where he worked
• Stirring the soup and memorizing the psalms
• Learns the rhythms
• 'I was very impressed with the discerning ear of Father John'
• Go and try and be more alone
• Confessions grow out of his meditations 
• the deeper you go into God, the deeper you enter into loving others
• The road ahead isn't going to get any easier, but my love for God is going to run deeper which changes everything
• Reaching out - the book written in Genesee - he had learned the Psalms
• 3 extracts from his Trappist time 
• listen to your struggles, the answer to your question is hidden in your heart
• protecting each other's uniqueness
• silence opens up in us a space where the word can be heard

Ron Rolheiser - the spirituality of Henri Nouwen

photo from Ron Rolheiser.com

Notes from Ron Rolheiser's first talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016.

• Henri taught theology for 16 years
• He had an intelligence to challenge the heart
• His unique stunning popularity
• His cadence, his writing, his formula for writing
• His was a very gentle voice
• Most popular writer in terms of spirituality in the last 70 years
• Academic legacy - stunning popularity
• He purged himself of the language of academia
• He'd distill ideas like wine from grapes
• Simple rather than complex
• It takes a great mind to be simple
• He was an artist, he could turn a phrase
• He developed a new language for spirituality
• He opened the field of spirituality to Protestants
• At Harvard and Yale he made spirituality topical, he brought it into the mainstream
• Humiliation brings about depth
• He was a deeply wounded and a hushed soul
• He couldn't hide his weakness
• His wound opened him up
• Henri wrote spirituality rather than write about spirituality
• He sought to find the language of the heart
• He wrote a new language about how God has touched our lives
• He tries to be direct
• He wrote about Jesus, intimacy about Jesus - not about Jesus Christ
• He tried to write as a human being not as a priest
• His formula for writing - work hard to reach simplicity
• Worked at it for hours and hours
• He worked at his craft for hours
• Radically simple without being simplistic
• He would take his own pains and break them open for everyone to read
• To be a saint it is to will the one thing (Kierkegaard)
• Life a trial - wanted poverty and luxury
• Devotional without being pious
• The liberals can't pious and the pious can't be liberal
• Dorothy Day and Henri Nouwen could be both
• He was a pacifist but he didn't alienate people with the language
• He was an iconoclast without being alienating
• Always left you with hope, without abandoning struggle
• Language sensitive to human weakness even as it moves us to the sublime
• Put on the big mind and believe the good news
• Metanoia is the opposite of paranoia
• Metanoia is the Greek word for 'Repent'
• There are no righteous people
• It is not a question of whether your family is dysfunctional but how much
• He is the saint for the complex
• Prior to 1970 there was no word 'spirituality'
• Struggle to get your life together
• Puberty is God's gift to drive you out of the house
• Trying to give your life away - how can I be more helpful? How can I give my life away?
• How can I live so my dying will be a gift?
• Mourn my people mourn
• Mourn for the absence of warmth
• Mourn for absence of love, the dark force of evil - cry for redemption for freedom

Ron Rolheiser - 'Henri Nouwen - a Saint for the complex'

Notes from Ron Rolheiser's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016. An interesting take on artistic genius, spirituality and struggle...

• Henri Nouwen - a saint for the complex
• Seeing Henri as an artist, rather than as a theologian
• He was a struggling artist
• Yet faith-filled genius
• Janis Joplin once said "It is hard to be a rock star - making love with 20,000 people and then coming home to sleep alone."
• Paul Tillich "I should have never been married - if you can't sleep with everyone, you shouldn't sleep with anyone."
• Genius born out of anxiety
• I don't know if life always welcomes me
• His neediness, he demanded that his friends be there for him
• Ordinary life is difficult for the rock star
• You only remember the one who rejects you rather than the many who praise you
• Henri had a natural insight into the human psyche
• He was a natural mystic
• As humans, we struggle with certain 'primal' energies
• The deepest thing of all - we are made in the image and likeness of God
• There is divine fire within us
• There is never enough - God has put timelessness in the human heart and therefore we never fit in to the natural rhythm of the world
• We have this powerful fire in us - the source of all that is good in us yet mired in all our addictions
• We have this superficial concept of ego - ego is good, Mother Theresa had an ego - but for her the ego was from God
• She had a huge ego but she was not an egotist
• These deep energies are dangerous - be careful with it; that energy can kill you
• The struggles - the image of God within us - deep struggles with grandiosity or depression, narcissism, rage or boredom
• Most of us won't write a great book because we are too sane
• Doris Lessing - submitted herself to various experiences - artists try it first, letting their sanity slip
• Artists pay the price - Nouwen didn't have a robust sanity
• Robert L Moore - the struggle between depression and inflation
• We cap ourselves, we get depressed because we do cap our creative energies
• Too bruised to be touched
• When you are affirmed you are re-fueled
• In ministry - you get over-stimulated either being inflated or being depressed, makes you prone to a lot of weaknesses, hurt
• When spiritual growth happens, the spirit falls into the senses and we struggle with strong obsessions
• sexuality is deeply connected to creativity
• When you say 'this energy is me' it will kill you
• Mistaking the icon with reality
• Godly appetites must be subject to disciplines
• Henri struggled to want the one thing
• He was a wounded healer
• The deepest pain is the inarticulate art, the sense of beauty that we can't draw, the story that we can't write, words underneath the threshold of consciousness
• To be a saint is to will the one thing - from Kierkegaard
• Struggling at a very deep level - Mother Theresa's diary - her relationship with the Lord was dark...
• Essential desire for God makes Henri a saint, a struggling saint who is a saint for our time - because we live in an age of excessive over-stimulation
• It is better to cry than to worry
• Are you taking your wounds to your head or your heart?
• Your heart is greater than your wounds
• Faith - some days we walk on water and other days we sink like a stone
• Default - you are not a restful person who sometimes experience restlessness; you are a restless person who sometimes experienced rest
• Sex is what is meant to take you home
• Irrigating the problem or eradicating problem

Sue Mosteller - We are God's beloved

Sister Sue Mosteller

Abbreviated notes from Sister Sue Mosteller's talk at the Henri Nouwen 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 9th, 2016

• My life is one shaped by relationships
• To learn to forgive is essential
• The power of the gospel is Jesus vulnerability
• My gift is to be powerless, to suffer with, to lay down your life for others
• Jesus and the widow of Nain. He so shared her vulnerability and anguish, he loved deeply, to be able to share loss, he felt her pain out of his gut
• Jesus isn't scandalized by our weakness and failure
• Finding home on the way home
• The daily news is filled with images of homelessness. 60 million refugees with no home
• Need to find others on their way home
• The journey of Jesus home
• The moment of his baptism, to be among us and not over us - ' you are my beloved son'
• That voice penetrated deep into his gut
• 'I am unconditionally loved' is what Jesus heard from his Father at his baptism and the nourishment of those words sustain him throughout his ministry
• Jesus lead into the wilderness to be confirmed by those words
• Every temptation is resisted by the One who called Jesus 'beloved'
• Jesus and the blind man - do you want to be healed?
• Jesus doesn't have to perform, he is the beloved and out of that belovedness he loves others...
• He wants us all to be forgiven
• He was so patient with the disciples who never get it
• Our mission Jesus spells out plainly, is to find its resource in these words: 'As the Father has loved me, so I love you'
• You will receive power to love others
• The parable of the prodigal son assures us: "I will bless you when you leave and when you come home"
• The Father allows us to leave



with Jean Vanier

• Our journey home - a sacred centre in each one of us, to be truly who we are

Jim Antal - laying it on the line for Climate Change

Jim Antal alongside some other advocates for the planet

Notes from Jim Antal's talk at the Henri Nouwen 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016

• Be not afraid
• Henri's attitude towards the environment
• After Yale, ambivalence about academia
• Then Harvard - Henri was the most popular among lecturers
• As someone who sought accolades, he left Harvard even though he was one the the school's most popular professors
• Supported protest by FOR and Sojourners
• Jailed for 3 days - anti-nuclear protests
• Henri did one act plays on Vincent Van Gogh, played Chopin, fearlessly lived life
• Laid bare his fears, vulnerabilities
• Henri's unresolved anxiety would last at times for days. Pain expressed in anxiety rather than grief
• Henri had the courage to name his and our fears
• he repeatedly encouraged us to move from the house of fear to the house of love
• Fear has no ultimate power - 
• Only Love has power and with Love comes the power of the Holy Spirit
• Henri to Jim 'God needs you to be a minister
• Do not be afraid'
• And when Jim announced his engagement, Henri insisted: 'we are called to be generative' despite the nuclear threat
• Fear not / Jesus most repeated advice
• We need this courage
• Courage coming from unceasing prayer
• Prayer is an antidote to fear
• Connecting the life of prayer with the life of activism
• Prayer is a very dangerous and subversive act that threatens the powers of the world
• 1978 - writing from Assisi, Henri reflecting on the witness of St. Francis wrote: 'From here the world is different, the world is upside done, totally...'
• Everything has to be asked again
• St Francis speaks from every stone
• Not allowing the stones of Rome silence me
• Being deaf is the opposite of obedience
• Feb 1982 - love casts out fear and how powerful we are when we move beyond fear - how love moves mountains
• Writing about the day of the Lord - can't go there, it feels like touching the sun
• Only as a deep lover can you risk your life!
• To speak out is to be keenly aware of the world's homelessness
• While I was exhausting myself resisting war, the appetite for war around me was increasing
• When we radiate the peace of Christ, we radiate a peace that is transformative
• otherwise we can be expressions of war even while advocating for peace
• Stay aligned with God through prayers - resisting the world's anger by prayer

Contemporary advocates for God's creation

• Nuns on the bus
• Climate change is the ultimate cause on which all other causes are hedged
• Creation is the expression of God's hospitality
• The continuity of creation is over
• In our time, the fact that creation is hospitable is no longer true
• If creation becomes inhospitable the question of God's hospitality is in question, even though the cause for the planet's degradation is us and not God
• We are harmed the home of our host
• Species extinction is 1000 times faster than 50 years ago
• How frequently are you preaching on climate change?
• We are letting God's creation go
• If we don't preach this, the next generation of the church will be nothing other than processing the grief of having let the world be destroyed
• We need a transition to a circular economy, to censure greed
• The doctrine of the public trust must be restored
• No one should be able to own nature
• Reclaim fiduciary responsibilities
• It has become perfectly legal to invest in the very investments that destroy the environment we, including the investors, live in
• Capacitating the church to turn the tide for climate change
• 1978 Exxon hired the best climate change scientists in the world only to subsequently bury what these scientists discovered
• The US and specifically Exxon buried the reports about climate change - the US is the only place where climate change is denied
• Encourage our faith communities to submit to various authorities an appeal for the earth
• The rug has been pulled from the assumptions themselves
• We are responsible to stand up for creation
• Peter and Paul spend more time in jail after the resurrection than out
• Make civil disobedience a matter of discipleship as much as prayer, a matter that we should make normative
• Civil disobedience should be normative to us as Christians
• Breaking a law intentionally to question the legitimacy of the law

Shane Claiborne - What it looks like when Jesus lives in us

Notes from Shane Claiborne's initial talk at the Henri Nouwen 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016

• Learning that comes to life
• The whole point of receiving information is transformation
• To re-educate is why Jesus came
• Teach us how to use our hands that brings to life what we are learning
• Challenge the status quo, to take the words of Jesus seriously
• Grew up in East Tennessee
• Prom King
• Still recovering from my conversion
• In my early days in church, there wasn't the fire
• Then I went to a wild charismatic church
• I chose Jesus because he is beautiful
• Jesus became someone he knew and loved
• We have stopped talking about Jesus
• We need to rekindle our love for Jesus
• Jesus born in the midst of a genocide, soon a refugee
• God entering into the crap
• The kingdom compels us in a different direction
• Prayer is our getting acclimatized to being used of God
• Seeing Jesus in his most distressing disguises
• What it looks like when Jesus lives in me
• The holy one in me honours the holy one in you
• Calcuttas are everywhere
• As Mother Theresa encouraged us: We must do small things with great love
• We have grown out of proximity with the hurting and the poor
• More fashionable to talk about the poor rather than talk to the poor
• Everything in the world is pulling us away from the poor
• We must reverse this to be in relationship with the poor
• What is in question is our laws
• As Christians we are to live in ways that don't compute
• We are maladjusted people in a world which has become adjusted to injustice
• All of us are beloved
• The world is looking for honest Christians
• Owning our brokenness
• Come from a place of confession
• God works through the cracks
• Saul more like ISIS
• God prefers broken vessels
• A stuttering man becomes a prophet
• Our bruises and scars are our credentials

Shane Claiborne - Being connected to those who are suffering

He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:4

Notes from Shane Claiborne's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016

• The bringing of God's kingdom down to where life hurts
• We are not to ignore the world
• If our kids don't follow us in the faith it's because we have made it too easy rather than made it substantial
• Reading the newspaper and reading the Bible
• How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?
• Stop complaining about the church that is and start working for the church we dream of -
• The inner city is the contemporary desert
• Christians are not to be normal but trouble makers - that is what keeps us alive and young
• We are to be near the pain
• We are to be near the roads where Good Samaritans are needed
• If we are connected to the people who are disenfranchised we will know where and what the injustice is
• Watching the church become the conscience of the community
• To say we are going to feed the homeless is a sacrament - we are feeding Jesus
• The people in the margins are the people of God
• Sanctuary churches - of course we welcome refugees, we are Christian - Jesus was a refugee
• Philadelphia is a sanctuary city
• Our love doesn't stop at borders, if someone is suffering on the other side of the wall, it is the same as if that person is on our side of the wall
• Gun violence - end Gun Violence - join a larger movement
• Stay in the pain of Good Friday
• God knows what it is like to lose your son
• God is very much in tune with the pain of the world
• Stay connected to that suffering
• Our grief is not an excuse for war
• 2 wrongs don't make a right
• The cross is our way of counteracting evil in a way unlike the world
• North America has domesticated the church
• What kind of extremists will we be? For hatred or for love?
• The world is longing for Christians filled with love
• We can't settle for life after death when so many hurting people are asking 'Is there life before death?'
• Peace begins with people - not governments or nations - but with people - Isaiah 2:4

Notes from John Dear's 'Henri Nouwen and Peacemaking'

from Google Images

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God. Matthew 5:9

Our task, in these dark times, is simple: to speak the truth, resist war and injustice, practice nonviolence, walk with the poor, love everyone, say our prayers, and uphold the vision of a new world without war, poverty or nuclear weapons.
We are called to follow the nonviolent Jesus on the road to peace.
If we can be faithful to the God of peace and the Way of nonviolence, we will be greatly blessed.
John Dear

The key to changing the world and pursuing justice and disarmament is to allow the God of peace to disarm our hearts, make us instruments of peace and lead us together on the road to peace. 
John Dear

John Dear is an American Catholic priest, Christian pacifist, author and lecturer, and a former member of the Society of Jesus. He has been arrested over 75 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice and nuclear weapons. Wikipedia

John spoke at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'The Way of the Heart Conference' on June 11th, 2016 at the University of Toronto's Mississauga Campus.
For more about John Dear click on: Father John Dear

• Henri Nouwen - a great peace activist
• He spoke against the war in Iraq
• Dan Berrigan never talked about Jesus
• Henri was putting stuff together 
• Activism begins with prayer
• Currently there are 35 wars going on
• The world has 16000 nuclear warheads
• Our culture is addicted to violence
• The journey for peacemaking is a hard one.
• Nobody can be a Christian without being a peacemaker
• Making peace is about surviving about the future, we are all part of peace
• L'Arche is where we go once we get beyond war
• the time for killing one another is over

Peacemaking has become the most important task

1. Peacemaking begins with prayer - prayer is a relationship - talk to God the way you'd talk to someone you love 
2. Peacemaking builds community - he saw L'Arche as that community
3. You have to stand with the poor to be a peacemaker - peace is to be blessed by the poor
4. Peacemaking means weakness, powerless, vulnerability - peace is found in weakness - peace does not come down through power, empire
5. Peacemaking requires non-violence - every one is your brother and sister - all creatures - standing up against death. - you don't kill anyone anymore - simultaneous - non violent to yourself, non violent against all creation, part of the grassroots peace working
6. Peacemaking requires public witness, resist all the powers of war and destruction, non co-operation with evil - how do you say no to war? By saying no to racism, sexism, climate change - public resistance to things that are wrong - engage in public action
7. Peacemaking requires racial justice - Selma to L'Arche - combat all injustice
8. Peacemakers follow Jesus - I protest for Jesus because that is his way - 'the only people who don't see Jesus was non-violent are Christians - do you see Jesus as a peacemaker?
9. Peacemakers claim as their core identity they are sons and daughters of God - blessed are peacemakers - you are the children of God; love your enemies and you are really the sons and daughters of God - not saying that is false humility
10. Peacemakers practice gratitude / tell everyone how grateful you are

• Where are you on the road to peace?
• It is the narrow path - the path of peace
• 'Blessed are the meek', Merton understood to mean: 'blessed are the non-violent'
• Jesus never used the word hope
• If you want to be hopeful you have to do hopeful things
• Non-violence works
• Have faith in the God of peace
• It is not courage, it is the kingdom of God that is the hope
• This is doable
• Trump is total fascism 
• Going to prison clarifies your relationship with the government 
• Vote every day for Jesus - we are citizens of the kingdom of God
• Have others around you to continue this work for peace and justice
• "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children..." Daniel Berrigan from the Trial of the Catonsville Nine (The burning of the draft records occurred on May 17, 1968. The trial occurred on October 5–9, 1968.)
• You get more done with community
• The church is the place you go from - MLK
• The meaning of Hope - first time he spoke 
• Hope is the final refusal to give up