Thursday, December 4, 2008

A Bad Divorce

I just wanted to share a quote from a book that Denny already read and I just started; this struck me as something that has been on my heart and in my mind but I hadn't found the words to express it until now. The author is discussing what he considers a "critical problem of our age", the fact that we have created "a bevy of divorces within spirituality, forcing ourselves and others to have to make unhealthy choices". One of the divorces (meaning a split) is the divorce between morality and social justice and he says:
"Too rare is the case where we see together in the same person, the same ideology, the same group, or the same church, an equal passion for social justice and for private morality, for action as for contemplation, and for statecraft (politics) as for soulcraft (mysticism). What this means is that the person who leads the protest group usually does not lead the prayer group, the person concerned with family values is usually not as concerned with poverty in inner cities, and the social, political agitator generally lacks the interior depth, selflessness, and calm of the mystic. The reverse is also true." (The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser)
Just some food for thought.

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