Author: Karl Möller

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Members of any race, nation, gender or social condition

Commenting on Isaiah 56:3-8, which talks about the inclusion of foreigners and eunuchs among God’s people, foreigners and eunuchs, that is, who keep the Sabbath and the covenant, Walter Brueggemann notes that:

the community welcomes members of any race or nation, any gender or social condition, so long as that person is defined by justice, mercy, and compassion, and not competition, achievement, production, or acquisition. (Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to a Culture of Now)

Quite so! Brueggemann is also right, it seems to me, to suggest that this ‘stance of generous inclusiveness’ is a direct contradiction of the Mosaic rules in Deuteronomy 23:1-8. Isaiah’s words are an example of prophetic critique of Israel’s ancient traditions, the kind of critique that Jesus was to continue some centuries later.

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Free to be

Those who remember and keep Sabbath find they are less driven, less coerced, less frantic to meet deadlines, free to be, rather than to do.

Sabbath is not simply a pause. It is an occasion for reimagining all of social life away from coercion and competition to compassionate solidarity.

Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to a Culture of Now

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Giving up control

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two – love and controlling power over the other person – are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

Rob Bell, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality

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The mind and the senses

They had been brought up in a tradition that told them in one way or another that the life of the mind and the life of the senses were separate and, indeed, inimical; they had believed, without ever having really thought about it, that one had to be chosen at some expense of the other. That the one could intensify the other had never occurred to them …

From Stoner by John Williams

Very sad – and, one suspects, all too often so very true.

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Authentic power

And another quote by Pope Francis, again as quoted in Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots:

Let us never forget that authentic power is service.

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Scars

Nobody who has opened up new paths leaves without scars on his body.

Pope Francis, as quoted in Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots