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Month: November 2011

Christianity/Culture/Politics/Violence

Status quo good with literal Satan

Posted on November 18, 2011 by stephen t berg / 11 Comments

Everyday, on my way to work, I walk by a car with a bumper sticker that reads, "Michael the Archangel protects Us from Satan." And everyday, I’m...

Active nonviolence/Christianity/Peace/Religion/Violence

Remembrance Day Peace/Prayer Walk–an intrusion of light

Posted on November 13, 2011 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the viol...

Active nonviolence/Peace

Prayer Walk–Remembering Peace

Posted on November 10, 2011 by stephen t berg / 4 Comments

As an alternative way of marking Remembrance Day, consider coming to the inter-faith, inter-denominational prayer walk. This is in no way a protest or replaceme...

Christianity/Culture/Politics/Religion

A response to ‘Churches too silent on corporate greed’

Posted on November 8, 2011 by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

Yesterday I received the following letter from pastor Shawn Birss, who is the pastor of a church called, Look to the Cross. “I read your recent article in the E...

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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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