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Category: Peace

Beauty/Peace

The Bright Eyes of Fadil Fejzic

Posted on January 15, 2007 by stephen t berg / 4 Comments

Fadil Fejzic, is someone I would want to meet. Muslim man in Central Bosnia (A James Mason photo) I read this story in James Alison’s new book Undergoing ...

Beauty/Peace

Andrea House and Friends

Posted on January 13, 2007 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

One day, in a conversation with Andrea, I discovered that I knew her as a nun in a previous life. And it came to me that it’s not really surprising she is...

Peace/Spirituality

New Year Postscript

Posted on January 1, 2007 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

The new year came and went. No marker, no line, no countdown, no climactic catapult into the new year. Decided to see my year as circular. No line running out, ...

Christianity/Peace/Religion/Violence

Make 2007 a Church-free Year

Posted on December 30, 2006 by stephen t berg / 4 Comments

An article by Wency Leung (Vancouver Sun), reprinted in today’s Journal, held no surprises but did confirm something most lapsed or lapsing conservative 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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