Prophets who speak of Peace and a Different Way.
These are quotes from prophets of different backgrounds and faiths who have inspired us on our journey. We invite you and others to share with us other quotes. We would like to gather quotes from many faiths.’
Chief Oren Lyons – “Indigenous Peoples, a New Partnership”
“Even though you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we in our canoe, we share the same river of life. What befalls me befalls you. And downstream, in this river of life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.” Chief Oren Lyons – 10 December 1992 in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on the theme: “Indigenous Peoples, a New Partnership”.
Abraham Heschel’s prophetic Judaism
‘Awareness of the divine begins with wonder’.
‘Religion has declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion — its message becomes meaningless. Religion is an answer to humanity’s ultimate questions. [We need] to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer.’
Joan Chittister – Unity Is Seeking Out Differences
‘Unity is more than solidarity and more than uniformity. Unity, ironically, is a commitment to becoming one people who speak in a thousand voices. Rather than one message repeated by a thousand voices, unity is one message shaped by a thousand minds’.
‘We become what we do. We become new inside when we urge ourselves to do new things. We become awake when we do not allow ourselves to simply sleep through life. We become more sure of ourselves when we trust ourselves enough to refuse to fear.
Martin Luther King – from his book ‘The Strength to Love’
The choice is either nonviolence or nonexistence
I now believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good. If we assume that humankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. In our day of space rockets and guided ballistic missiles, the choice is either nonviolence or nonexistence.
Gandhi showed the way
Gandhi showed me that the non-violent approach does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect. It calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it so stirs the conscience of the opponent that reconciliation becomes a reality.
The church cannot be silent
Page 152 – I am no doctrinaire pacifist, but I am convinced that the church cannot be silent while humankind faces the threat of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to her mission, she must call for an end to the arms race.
Greater armaments have produced greater fear
Page 120 – We have armed ourselves to the nth degree. Expenditures for defense have risen to mountainous proportions, and weapons of destruction have been assigned priority over all other human endeavors. The nations have believed that greater armaments will cast out fear. But alas! They have produced greater fear.
Re: all life is inter-related
In a real sense, all life is inter-related. All men and women are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. This is the inter-related structure of reality.
Re: our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
The horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima showed us that we need something more spiritually sustaining and morally controlling than science. Apart from God’s spirit, science is a deadly weapon that will lead only to deeper chaos. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Thomas Merton – ‘The Unquiet Monk’ by Michael Higgins
“We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools”
Thanks to King, Merton began to see the moral and political validity of a non-violent movement aimed at converting the opponent and benefiting him by releasing him from his sense of guilt. A movement oriented ultimately towards healing the sin of racism.
Merton wrote of a new society that would be radically different from the present one, a society in which the human would no longer be diminished, and would be actively and freely involved in the world. Such a society will value the labour of all, be equitable and participate in the Kingdom of God by means of justice and mercy. In other words, the new society will be a society grounded in divine truth.
Today more than ever, the gospel commitment has political implications, because you cannot claim to be ‘for Christ’ and espouse a political cause that implies callous indifference to the needs of millions of human beings and even cooperate in their destruction. (From ‘Unmasking the Illusion’ )
Jean Vanier – ‘A Human Future’
‘An immense fear of anguish and poverty and death is at the root of the growing gap
between the rich and the poor today’.
Archbishop Oscar Romero
‘Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is dynamism, peace is generosity.
It is a right and it is a duty.’
Rev. William Barber
‘The nation’s problem isn’t that we don’t have enough money. It’s that we don’t have the moral capacity to face what ails society’.
Ted Schmidt
‘Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men & women willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right”.
