The One who asked that the cup of rejection might be removed from his lips does not summon his disciples to a life of moral rigor alone. He is not appealing for them courageously to transform their torment into understanding. Nor does he speak out of dread for his own imminent and supremely unjust death. He is pleading that his Kingdom might come by some other means than the cruciform suffering that his disciples will surely encounter because of their faithfulness to him and his gospel. As with the silent but firm answer that Jesus receives in Gethsemane, so with the equally clear though implied answer to Sunday’s hard query: There is no other way than the Cross.
Ralph C. Wood, Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God, 220. (via invisibleforeigner)
As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of religion. It teaches us to enter willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers.
Religious energy is in the dark energy, seldom in the answers. Answers are the way out, but that is not what we’re here for. When we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation.
Fixing something doesn’t usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the perilous dark path of true prayer.
RICHARD ROHR (via bananena)
Black women’s empowerment involves revitalizing U.S. Black feminism as a social justice project organized around the dual goals of empowering AfricanAmerican women and fostering social justice in a transnational context. Black feminist thought’s emphasis on the ongoing interplay between Black women’s oppression and Black women’s activism presents the matrix of domination and its interrelated domains of power as responsive to human agency. Such thought views the world as a dynamic place where the goal is not merely to survive or to fit in or to cope; rather, it becomes a place where we feel ownership and accountability. The existence of Black feminist thought suggests that there is always choice, and power to act, no matter how bleak the situation may appear to be. Viewing the world as one in the making raises the issue of individual responsibility for bringing about change. It also shows that while individual empowerment is key, only collective action can effectively generate the lasting institutional transformation required for social justice.
Patricia Hill Collins; Black Feminist Theory
When my mother taught me to read, took me to the public library when I was five, and told me that if I learned to read, I could experience a form of freedom, neither she nor I saw the magnitude of that one action in my life and the lives that my work has subsequently touched. As people push against, step away from, and shift the terms of their participation in power relations, the shape of power relations changes for everyone.
Patricia Hill Collins; Black Feminist Thought
