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Category: Politics

Politics/Spirituality

The Corporation and Mercy-less Raids

Posted on July 10, 2008 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

…with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords. (Psalm 55)   ...

Politics/Uncategorized

George Carlin hippy-dippy weatherman to withering satirist (1937-2008)

Posted on June 24, 2008 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

George Carlin died yesterday. Sad news. My fondness for him began the first time I saw him on Ed Sullivan. I don’t remember his material for that show but...

Politics/Poverty/Spirituality

Care and condescension

Posted on June 17, 2008 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

…I seem to be following a thread from yesterday’s post. Years ago I came across a quote, which I can no longer locate, that said something to the ef...

Peace/Politics

Federal apology no cure-all

Posted on June 13, 2008 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

As a follow-up to the Federal apology to aboriginals, here’s a link to an article in the Surrey Leader that you’ll find insightful, realistic, and h...

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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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