So Much To Think About

a Better Place
Modernity’s mantra, “make the world a better place,” is invoked repeatedly in one guise or another. Every invocation promises that with money and power, we could really make a difference. The myth (or lie) that this perpetuates is that the only thing standing between us and a better world is lack of resources. The truth is that, at the present time in our modern age, there is no lack of resources, no lack of wealth. The abundance of the world is overflowing. People are hungry and starve, etc., for lack of goodness. It has been observed by some that every famine in our modern time has had politics as its primary cause. We are not the victims of nature – but of one another. (unknown)

Free Speech
No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.
‘Fredrick Douglass

I value free speech, not so much because I’m right and you need to hear from me, but rather because I’m very often wrong and need to hear from you. Free speech rests upon a foundation of human fallibility. 
David French

three possibilities in any given argument:
1. You are wrong, in which case freedom of speech is essential to allow people to correct you.
2. You are partially correct, in which case you need free speech and contrary viewpoints to help you get a more precise understanding of what the truth really is.
3. You are 100% correct, in which unlikely event you still need people to argue with you, to try to contradict you, and to try to prove you wrong. Why? Because if you never have to defend your points of view, there is a very good chance you don’t really understand them, and that you hold them the same way you would hold a prejudice or superstition. It’s only through arguing with contrary viewpoints that you come to understand why what you believe is true.
Greg Lukianoff

Evil is corporately agreed upon as good before individuals ever dare to do it.  We all cooperate in absurd systems. When we humbly and honestly recognize this, we learn much more readily how to join hands with one another. We’re trained to compare and compete; that’s the nature of capitalism. The gospel undercuts that by saying, first of all, that we are one; and secondly, that each of us is a unique individual. Holding our oneness and individuality together reveals the Christian mystery: “You are all Christ’s Body, and individually, you are parts of it” (1 Cor. 12:27).
Richard Rohr

Without Comment
Get well cards for Terminally Ill

ubuntu
The concept comes from the Zulu phrase Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which literally means that a person is a person through other people. Another translation is, “I am who I am because we are who we are.”. . . With this in mind, who I will be is deeply related to who you are. In other words, we are each impacted by the circumstances that impact those around us. What hurts you hurts me. What heals you heals me. What causes you joy causes me to rejoice, and what makes you sad also causes me to weep.
By channeling the ancient wisdom of ubuntu, we can engineer a badly needed love revolution to rise up out of the ashes of our current reality. . . . The empathy that grows from listening to others, from connecting with our neighbors, and from loving our neighbors as we love ourselves can define the courses of action we take.

Searching
…as belief in God fades in the modern world we increasingly turn inward to discover a ground of being, value, and meaning within ourselves. We no longer look “up” but “in.” Through subterranean self-exploration, as spelunkers of the soul, we wander through the mineshafts of our psyche seeking our “true,” “real,” and “authentic” selves. And having discovered this “true self,” like digging up a diamond in a coal mine, we set it as our North Star, seeking to stay loyal and true to ourselves. 
And if that fails, if we return to the surface empty handed, we turn outwards toward each other, co-dependently hoping that the meaning of your life can be borrowed as my own. 
Richard Beck

Social media
…social media, it is a circus tent full of funhouse mirrors where distorted, twisted images stare back at other distorted, twisted images. Every screen is a portal into a vast, churning sea of human insecurity, confusion, and anxiety.  So where are we to turn? Wherever we look, inside ourselves or outward toward each other, every mirror I find is either broken or distorted. I’m never able to get a clean look at myself or a clear look at you.
…we need a relationship that is fundamental and foundational, a mirror that is steady and clear. Something transcendently solid where we can find constant, unconditional rest. Something possessing an eternal, oceanic calm beyond the stormy churn of human need and the anxious raining of my own mind. God, dear readers, is this grounding, fundamental relationship. God is how we escape the quicksand of neurosis and the needy, inconstant web of human brokenness. 
Richard Beck

Fantasy and fiction, at their best, are not good because they are created by someone. They are good because they make it possible to see more clearly what God has created – something that is neither fantasy nor fiction. Such is our life. Gifts. Joy. Wonder. Fr Stephen Freeman

STILL ON THE JOURNEY