The only way...

A core principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation is: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Just go ahead and live positively "in God, through God, with God."

In the short run, you will hold the unresolved tension of the cross. In the long run, you will usher in something entirely new and healing.

This was the almost intuitive spiritual genius of Saint Francis. He wasted no time attacking the rich churches and pretentious clergymen; he just went to the side and did it differently.

Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness

I find this the most extraordinarily encouraging remark. Somehow something at the deepest level of me wakes up, opens its eyes and looks into the dawn, and smiles. This is how I have always longed to live, and even since childhood I have somehow known that the culturally acceptable answers - as I grew up, these were roughly "Fight all that opposes you, with your fists if at all possible..." - were just wrong. I knew that, even when I appeared even to myself to accept them. As I have grown older, and have grown to know my Lord a little better, it has grown clearer and clearer that St. Francis' way is the only possible way for me to live. It's not a matter of a better way, or a preferable way, or a holier way: it's just the only way I can do it now.

Be praised, my Lord, by all those who forgive for love of you
and who bear weakness and tribulation.

Blessed are those who bear them in peace:
for you, Most High, they will be crowned...

(St. Francis of Assisi, from Canticle of the Creatures)