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For those whom they consider radicals

Have you ever heard a man scream as he was beaten over the head by two or four policemen with clubs and cudgels? Have you ever heard the sickening sound of blows, and seen people with their arms upraised, trying to protect their faces, stumbling blindly to get away, falling and rising again to be beaten down? Did you ever see a man, shot in the back, being dragged to his feet by policemen who tried to force him to stand, while his poor body crumbled, paralyzed by a bullet in the spine? ... I too have fled down streets to escape the brutality and vicious hatred of the “law” for those whom they consider “radicals.” And to the police anyone who protests injustice, who participates in labor struggles, is considered a radical. Dorothy Day "Who is Guilty of ‘Murders’ in Chicago?" in the Catholic Worker (1937)

Forgiveness and compassion

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? bell hooks In conversation with Maya Angelou, Shambhala Sun (1998)

Lack of imagination

Why is it my job to win over someone who doesn’t have love in their heart? To some degree, we are in this moment because of a lack of imagination. Because our fellow countrymen and women have decided that imagining the lives of someone like me is too heavy a lift. It takes too much time. Jennifer Finney Boylan "The Fight is Not Over" in Advocate

Everything is known and loved

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?

George Eliot The Mill on the Floss

The light shines

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5

Bluffing braggarts

I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened— I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! What God has done for me will never be forgotten, the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others. His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him. He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced his chosen child, Israel; he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high. It’s exactly what he promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now.

Mary The Magnificat (The Message)

Awake

For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford from “A ritual to read to each other”

The love they offer

Does God have set way of prayer, a way that he expects each of us to follow? I doubt it. I believe some people - lots of people - pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer?

Dorothy Day The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus

Pray continually

This is how you pray continually - not by offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so that your life becomes one continuous and uninterrupted prayer.

St. Basil the Great Homily on the Martyr Julitta

Exercise of imagination

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.

Ursula K. Le Guin The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

Let speeches fall silent

Let speeches fall silent and platitudes cease from hawkers of violence they brand as “peace.” Let people who suffer find places to speak, and holders of power give way to the weak. Let teachers of hatred, suspicion, and fear, and those who would kill for the views they hold dear, be turned from their ways and disarmed of their wrath to walk on a new, more compassionate path. Forgive us the times we neglected to act; forgive our excuses for courage we lacked. God, teach us the wisdom that leads us to grace: your image is found in our enemy’s face. Adam Tice “Let Speeches Fall Silent” (A hymn after the Orlando massacre) Thank you to those who have inquired about missing daily asterisk quotes; it’s always nice to be missed! We’ll be taking an extended hiatus for a number of reasons; stay tuned to Topology today for more information. We recently heard this hymn, though, and it was too good not to share.

The greatest of these is love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres…. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 13 As is our tradition, Topology will be taking a break from our daily publishing schedule—including the daily asterisk—in the month of August. Thank you for reading; we’ll be back with more quotes in September!

All are welcome

Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive. Built of hopes and dreams and visions, rock of faith and vault of grace; here the love of Christ shall end divisions: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place Let us build a house where prophets speak, and words are strong and true, where all God’s children dare to seek to dream God’s reign anew. Here the cross shall stand as witness and as symbol of God’s grace; here as one we claim the faith of Jesus: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place Let us build a house where love is found in water, wine, and wheat; a banquet hall on holy ground, where peace and justice meet. Here the love of God, through Jesus, is revealed in time and space, as we share in Christ the feast that frees us: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood and stone to heal and strengthen, serve and teach, and live the Word they’ve known. Here the outcast and the stranger bear the image of God’s face; let us bring an end to fear and danger: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place Let us build a house where all are named, their songs and visions heard and loved and treasured, taught and claimed as words within the Word. Built of tears and cries and laughter, prayers of faith and songs of grace, let this house proclaim from floor to rafter All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place. Marty Haugen “All Are Welcome” (1994) Hat tip: Emily Ulmer

Life is not possible

Life is not possible without an opening toward the transcendent; in other words, human beings cannot live in chaos. Once contact with the transcendent is lost, existence in the world ceases to be possible. Mircea Eliade The Sacred and the Profane

A kind of human kind of union

We heard health care and we thought public option we thought reaching across the street across the lines across the aisle was the manifestation of not a red state not a blue state but these united states we thought we could be sure of ourselves in this one way sure of our human element our basic decency and if justice was how love showed itself in public then love was defined by access to care when someone anyone thought that cough that burned the chest was probably nothing but who knew that fever after three days that inability to breathe to sleep to wake in justice in love we thought we were ready to be just as good to be better and despite all the ways we exist alone no one would be on their own we were ready to take a stab at a kind of human kind of union we were ready to check-up to look after in this one way we were ready to care for each other we were ready to see our range of possibilities as a precious commodity to know every other as another to live in the width of our being and we weren’t ignorant or stupid or naïve or idealists or socialists or communists or Canadians we understood the private options would still keep us alive longer we understood the private options would treat the disease not the symptoms the private options meant access to specialists to privacy to elective procedures to a team of doctors to radiology imaging to brand-name drugs we understood the impossibility of real equality but this single shift toward a national community we thought despite being founded on genocide and sustained by slavery in God’s country we thought we were ready to see sanity inside the humanity we thought the improbability of the face on capitol hill meant possibility. Claudia Rankine “The Health of Us” from Literary Hub

There is only one world

In belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting of self and world. This condition of clarity and focus, this being fully present, is akin to what the Buddhists call mindfulness, what Christian contemplatives refer to as recollection, what Quakers call centering down. I am suspicious of any philosophy that would separate this-worldly from other-worldly commitment. There is only one world, and we participate in it here and now, in our flesh and our place. Scott Russell Sanders Staying Put

The very design

The very design of the suburbs inhibited the gathering of citizens who might want to mount a protest. Instead of broad parks at the steps of city hall, there were four-lane streets without sidewalks, and malls that were not public at all but privately owned and patrolled by security guards. Mark Sundeen The Unsettlers

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