To give thanks is to recognize what has come to you.... How does the seed give thanks? It flowers. You take what you have, who you are, and you respond to the gift of that beingness with a course of action that aligns with it. You do what is in your nature.

The individual who is simple, who accepts themselves as they are, makes only a minimum demand on others in their relations with them. Their simplicity not only endows their own personality with unique beauty; it is also an act of love. This is an example of the truth that whatever sanctifies our own soul does, at the same time, beneft everyone who comes into our life.

When we are dissatisfied with things as they are, or suffer and know pain, we begin to imagine what the world would be like if things were different--if there were no hunger or thirst and all tears were wiped away (Rev. 7:14). Creative imagination reaches toward God, and glimpses a new heaven and new earth. The new reality has nothing to do with the present order. In fact, the one who responds to call seeks to put something more beautiful in the place of what she sees. This is where the friction and fight begin.

Martin Luther King was not killed because he had a dream. Dreamers are easily dismissed. He was killed because he sought to introduce into the political arena what he saw with his heart and mind. The same was true of Gandhi and of our Lord.

As Jesus made clear his solidarity with the poor and his vocation to engage them in a liberating process, he came into confrontation with entrenched political and religious powers. As suspicion of him turned to resistance and then to hatred and fury, he began to prepare his disciples for what he would have to suffer. Peter immediately took Jesus aside to protest his continuing on what was surely a collision course....

Those who say yes to the perilous vocation of implementing vision at each stage will find new resistances emerging in themselves as well as in the society. Opposition to the new is very natural and should not cause any of us to be taken by surprise. The best way to understand it in one's contemporaries is to have named and owned it in one's self. That process is also some protection against the self-righteousness that plagues too many reformers as well as the pious.

One of the things about forgiveness you have to remember is that it is not only spiritual. It is part of real politics. In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.

He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us.

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.

Oh God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born--
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love--
in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.

Beethoven, despite his unruly reputation and wild romantic image, was well-organized. He saved everything in a series of notebooks that were organized according to the level of development of the idea. He had notebooks for rough ideas, notebooks for improvements on those ideas, and notebooks for finished ideas, almost as if he was pre-aware of an idea's early, middle, and late stages.

May I suggest that our potential for change and growth is much greater than we are willing to admit and that old age be regarded not as the age of stagnation but as the age of opportunities for inner growth? The old person must not be treated as a patient, or regard his retirement as a prolonged state of resignation.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
          To find the lost,
          To heal the broken,
          To feed the hungry,
          To release the prisoner,
          To rebuild the nations,
          To bring peace among people,
          To make music in the heart.

Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security.

Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius, looking back over his years of conquest, is reported to have said: 'Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I have built great empires. But upon what did they depend? They depended on force. But centuries ago Jesus started an empire that was built on love, and even to this day millions will die for him.'

The Child we seek doesn't need our gold. On love, on love alone, he will build his kingdom.

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour and truth were trampled by scorn--
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn--
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.