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Month: May 2006

Spirituality

Hope Finds Strength

Posted on May 8, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

I was talking to one of our street guys the other week. He was selling ‘Edmonton Street News’ outside of the Farmer’s Market off Whyte Ave. Be...

Spirituality

Trust the Art

Posted on May 7, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Our friend Ellen is an artist. It is not simply that she paints with oils and creates works of beauty that connect to people in a variety of personal ways. And ...

Christianity/Spirituality

Life in the Present

Posted on May 6, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Living life in the present is living the spiritual life. Being attentive to the person across from you without already formulating a response while she is speak...

Spirituality

Obsculta

Posted on May 5, 2006 by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. (Luke 16) I remem...

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Over the coming months, I’ll be slowly retiring Grow Mercy. This Easter marks 20 years and some 1500 posts. (And here, a deep bow to you, for reading and/or responding.) I’ll not, however, be retiring the impulse behind Grow Mercy, but will be shifting, exploring, following a hybridized urge, and a genre to suit. For me, what these decades have increasingly revealed is how writing is a spiritual path. Now, for whatever time and energy remains for me, I’ll be tilting more toward The Ragged Psalmist, still inchoate, but the handle feels like it fits. I do hope you’ll subscribe.

Why — The Ragged Psalmist?

Because some stubborn ember, still warm, compels me to write some cobbled songs — praise and lament, cries and sighs — and sound them back to the sacred Mystery.

To throw a wrench into a world geared up for business; to resist the moneychangers in their corporate temples — because poetry is political, and light is its administrative wing.

Because old lies and old words screw us over and must be remade to tell the truth; because our glossary of mockery needs burial, and the lexicon that’s left needs anointing.

To strive to honour the life of a sparrow; attend the spell of a dead star — whose light we still see; to feel, down to the bone, the quantum foam, we all flail in.

To thicken compassion and thin out aggression; to oppose injustice and hate in a way that excludes no one, not even the hater.

To let failure, discouragement, suffering and perishing have their say, without any spoon of bromide; to let joy, delight, and beauty come as they may.

To penetrate darkness and delusion — and so discover all this love in us.

Because mindfulness and mercy need constant oxygen.

Because in the time that’s left I want to tattoo the implications of our “forgiving victim” on the body suit of my heart.

Because reality points to unity — and we must hurry to catch up.

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