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Month: March 2009

Active nonviolence/Benedictine/Religion/Spirituality

Lent and the disarmed heart

Posted on March 14, 2009 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Here’s the rest of the "Lenten Ride."  The blog post that grew into an article.  Published in today’s Edmonton Journal. Technora...

Peace/Politics

Lunch and more with Todd Babiak

Posted on March 12, 2009 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Todd Babiak took a breath and held his ground. A young man, a protester, impassioned and mostly articulate, aimed a misquote at Babiak and waited for his respon...

Politics/Violence

Nightly News

Posted on March 11, 2009 by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

I watch less news these days. It has something to do with misery overload. Being told, in dying colour, night after night, about the insurmountable climb, the g...

Poverty

An uplifting walk through Thailand’s slums

Posted on March 7, 2009 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Project L.I.F.E. helps the country’s poor and exploited A feature article published in today’s Edmonton Journal. Technorati Tags: PattayaThailand,Ba...

Posts pagination

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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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