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  • "Happy Are Those Who Thirst for Justice" by Richard Rohr

    "Happy Are Those Who Thirst for Justice" by Richard Rohr

    Happy are those who hunger and thirst for justice.  They shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)  Most Bibles to this day will soften the word justice into what is right, or righteousness.  Those have a kind of religious feeling.  But the word in Greek is clearly justice.  This Beatitude is set right at the mid-point, and the word justice appears again at the end.  It could be seen as a couplet saying, This is the full point.  To live a just life in this world is to life a life identified with the little ones.  As much as Matthew tries in vain to soften it for his middle-class audience, its still radical, revolutionary and most extraordinary.  What Jesus is saying is, Make sure youre not satisfied.  Keep yourself in a state of dissatisfaction.  Contemplation and voluntary simplicity bring us to that state.  Real prayer stirs holy desire (as do deprivation and injustice, when we take them to prayer).  The unconscious bubbles up, and you find out what you really desire.  (It isnt a new set of clothes, although if you move too quickly you really think it is.)  Stay with it longer-a new set of clothes is not going to do it!  What you really desire is always God.  The sad thing about those who try to avoid that state of longing and thirsting is that they can never be satisfied.  Wealth never sees enough wealth; justice is satisfied with justice. 

    from Sermon on the Mount by Richard Rohr

    and

    Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen)

    The Saints Who Live Short Lives - Henri Nouwen

    As we see so many people die at a young age, through wars, starvation, AIDS, street violence, and physical and emotional neglect, we often wonder what the value of their short lives is. It seems that their journeys have been cut off before they could reach any of their goals, realise any of their dreams, or accomplish any of their tasks. But, short as their lives may have been, they belong to that immense communion of saints, from all times and all places, who stand around the throne of the Lamb dressed in white robes proclaiming the victory of the crucified Christ (see Revelation 7:9).

    The story of the innocent children murdered by King Herod in his attempt to destroy Jesus (see Matthew 2:13-18), reminds us that saintliness is not just for those who lived long and hardworking lives. These children, and many who died young, are as much witnesses to Jesus as those who accomplished heroic deeds.

  • "House of Faith" and more Quilting along with a little Karaoke

    PMC's birthday is next Thursday... we made her a little bag to celebrate the gift she is!

    From House of Faith Nov 01 09

  • The Significance of Each Life - Jean Vanier

    Daily Thoughts from Jean Vanier
    The Significance of Each Life - Jean Vanier

    It is always good for individuals, communities and indeed nations, to remember that their present situation is a result of the thousands of gestures of love or hate that came before. This obliges us to remember that the community of tomorrow is being born of our fidelity to the present. We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the huge and glorious final humanity.

    - Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p.152

  • Battambang Adventure 2009

    I'll put journal entries in soon but, for now, here are the photos! I was so grateful to be able to enjoy the hospitality in Battambang... I loved the pace of that town!  

    From Battambang Adventure 2009
    From Battambang Adventure 2009
    From Battambang Adventure 2009

  • Another Bag... "Secret Garden"...

     Tonight, I help Srey Boul, new house help, finish up her bag... making the strap and putting in the zipper... I feel "grandmotherly" affection for each project... this one is so like it's mother maker!

    From Another Secret Garden style - Srey Boul

  • Another "Secret Garden" Patchwork Bag...

    From Mohm's Secret Garden Bag

    To my surprise and delight, Mohm, the house hold helper, has been burning the candle at both ends to complete this bag before she heads out to Malaysia to be a domestic.  She said her eyes were sore from working so hard... She had the sarong and orange fabric last Tuesday and created 18 patches taking about an hour each... just shy of 3 per day... this on top of an already full work day of nearly 11 hours... all her free moments where devoted to this endeavor. I helped finish it up tonight... helping with the strap and the inserting the zipper using my little Juki. 

    She was so grateful... and I was so gratified.  I would have never imagined quilting would bring this kind of enthusiasm with the twenty-something set, in my circles in Cambodia.

    I had one woman mentioned she's been offered several sessions on classroom management skills to work with children yet she'd never been offered a class for a skill like this. I'm so pleased to bring this creative possibility into the lives of some. I'm especially touched when it is someone who is illiterate as I feel any creative expression can tell a piece of someone's story to the next generation in a beautiful way.

  • "A Negative Sacrament?"- Richard Rohr

    "A Negative Sacrament?"- Richard Rohr

    During my sabbatical retreat at the Gethsemani Trappist monastery in Kentucky, I spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch of the hermitage where Thomas Merton lived.  I would ponder one thought for twenty minutes, and then for the next twenty minutes it was another thing.  By the time I was to the third one or the fourth one, I didn't even remember the first one anymore.  In the silence they were able to come and go because there was nothing I could do with them.  There was no one I could yell at, or work out a problem with.  I couldn't go write a nasty letter, I couldn't get on the phone and chew someone out or love someone, whatever it might be.  I had to let it be.  I couldn't attach myself to it.  Now if I were living in society, I would have probably acted upon my feeling, gossiping to someone else about a difficult situation.  Gossip is a kind of negative sacrament.  Remember our old definition of sacrament?  We said sacraments, once you do them, effect what they symbolize.  It's the same way with gossip.  When you talk negatively you invest in your negativism.  You justify it, and it becomes harder to avoid.  The most nasty and irrational judgments I have received from people have often followed upon a negative bull-session.  For me the way to break it is silence.  In silence I see my negative feelings passing before me like mist.  All of these paranoid and self-pitying feelings were not really justified by the situation out there as much as they were needed by myself.  They were attachments that I created to define and validate myself.  In the hermitage they meant nothing.

    from Letting Go:  A Spirituality of Subtraction

  • "Carry Our Cross" by Richard Rohr

    "Carry Our Cross" by Richard Rohr

    St. Paul loved his people enough to ask a lot of them.  He led them into the true source of power, he taught them how to die, how to carry the cross-and not in a death-dealing way.  We modern Christians have been told to carry the cross by just bowing our heads and putting up with it.  Really, I don't think the individual has the power to carry the cross.  I think only the Body of Christ can carry the cross, which is why the Twelve-Step movement has been so important.  Our Western tradition has given us an individualistic private salvation, without a support system for us to believe in it, or for us finally to see the resurrected power that comes from it.  Take the example of a woman in an alcoholic marriage or a lone sister in a convent of broken, destructive women.  They might ask, "Are you asking me simply to stand in there and be destroyed?"  I'm saying, "No."  God never said you could do it by yourself.  Immerse yourself in the love and the life of a supportive community.  Find and discover the spiritual family of God.  Together, confront the corporate evil of the world.  That's what we're confronting in Twelve-Step groups.  We do need some network of faith or base community to survive in this world-and sometimes to survive in this Church.  We're not confronting individual evil.  We're confronting a complexity of factors that must be confronted with corporate good, the Body of Christ.

    from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family

  • Cambodian Cooking 101 (first recipe)

    Okay now... I've had several friends suggest I put together a cookbook... will occasional cooking blogs do? I hope so... I've thought of ways to adapt the following recipes to make them really easy for a North America to access a bit of the flavour of this fabulous foodie place!


    Shredded Chicken Sprouts and Cabbage Salad (orginally with Banana blossom yet this is a bit too tricky to find across the pond Pacifique) serves 4 as a starter... 2 as a meal

    one bag (3-4 cups?) of shredded cabbage (for coldslaw)
    one bag fresh bean sprouts
    one container alfalfa sprouts
    some fresh mint (approx. 2 Tbs. crushed and torn) keeping a few leaves aside for decoration
    some fresh basil (approx. 2 Tbs. crushed and torn) keeping a few leaves aside for decoration
    one red pepper slice into very thin strips
    2 poached chicken breasts* torn into thin strips or sliced
    1/2 c. chopped dry roasted and salted peanuts (keeping some for sprinkling on each serving)

    Dressing
    1 chili pepper minced (jalapeno or bird)
    1 lime's worth of juice (or 3 Tbs. vinegar)
    3 cloves garlic minced
    2 shallots minced
    2 Tbs. fish sauce
    2 Tbs. palm (or brown) sugar
    1 tsp. salt (to taste)
    1 c. water

    *(or block of firm tofu cut into large matchstick shape and marinated with 2 Tbs. dark soy and 2 Tbs. sugar, 1 tsp. dried ground ginger to taste)

    Mix together all the all the veggies and chicken and some peanuts toss with dressing to taste... eat or plate on top of a bed of romaine lettuce or baby spinach... and sprinkle with the balance of the peanuts and put a few basil and mint sprigs and a few red pepper slices to finish. Yum! I hope...

    This is a cookbook I hope to get some day!!! I've eaten at Friends Restaurant it is a wonderful NGO getting street kids into the hospitality industry.

  • Called out of Slavery - Henri Nouwen

    Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen)

    Called out of Slavery - Henri Nouwen

    The Church is the people of God. The Latin word for "church," ecclesia, comes from the Greek ek, which means "out," and kaleo, which means "to call." The Church is the people of God called out of slavery to freedom, sin to salvation, despair to hope, darkness to light, an existence centered on death to an existence focused on life.

    When we think of Church we have to think of a body of people, traveling together. We have to envision women, men, and children of all ages, races, and societies supporting one another on their long and often tiresome journeys to their final home.