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One of the most important things to unpack and unlearn when you’re part of a white supremacy saturated society (i.e. the global north) and especially if you were raised in an intensified form of it (evangelicism, right wing politics, explicit racism) is the urge to punish and take revenge.

It manifests in our lives all the time and it is inherently destructive. It makes relationships and interactions adversarial for no good reason. It undermines cooperation and good civic order. It worsens some types of crime. It creates trauma, especially in children.

Imagine approaching unexpected or unacceptable behavior from a perspective of "how can this be stopped, and prevented" instead of "you’re going to regret this!”

Imagine dealing with a problem or conflict from the perspective of “how can this be solved in a way that is just and restorative” instead of “the people who caused this are going to pay.”

How much would that change you? How much would that have changed for you?

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God does not hang back as a mere spectator when power is utilized to oppress the weak and crush the poor. God does not keep sovereign distance in the face of human crimes. God's angry voice echoes through the centuries: "Cain, where is your brother?"

Leonardo Boff, Way of the Cross--Way of Justice

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There is a real physiological aspect to things like anxiety and depression, and to ignore that and suggest that simply believing in Christ is a guarantee to make those problems go away is a form of prosperity gospel.

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Honestly, if you see an angel that’s all eyes and wings and wheels of fire, you should be worried. Like, not because it’s going to hurt you or anything, but because scripturally, angels invariably appear to ordinary people in human form. In general, they only show their inhuman true forms to prophets – which means if you’re seeing them like that, they come bearing responsibility.

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“I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once their hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.”

James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” 1955

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Hey. You. The American teenager inexplicably reading this. Don't join the US military. You're better than that. The military is a bunch of cops. Are they technically diverse and inclusive? On some level, kind of, almost. But their job is to kill people. They kill innocent people every day. They abuse their own members, especially their members who aren't white cis het middle class Christian men. The US exists through perpetual violence against the global working class, including its own working class. The military is how it carries out a large portion of that violence. You deserve better. You're better than that. Don't join.

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“Did not the Lord make all men and women upon the earth of one mould, why then should there be so much honour and respect unto some men and women, and not unto others, but they are almost naked for want of Cloathing, and almost starved for want of Bread?”

— Hester Biddle, early Quaker, The Trumpet of the Lord Sounded Forth,1662.

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I’m a big fan of people finding a spiritual or religious practice that works for them but if you’re required to pay money to a particular person or buy a certain thing regularly from a certain place I don’t think that’s a spiritual practice. You may have been scammed.

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ANDROGYNY NEXT TO GODLINESS, four and a half feet long, the most difficult to photograph piece i've ever crocheted. inspired by this article about Michelangelo's women.

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Why should any man have power over any other man's faith, seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?

George Fox

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“Indeed, it was the message of the church for hundreds of years that things would not change, and that one’s task on earth was simply to accept wherever one was on the social-economic scale as God’s will. But now the poor are discovering that it cannot truly be God’s will for most of God’s children to suffer. God wills life and love and fullness for all and not just a few. And God wants our help to bring that about.”

Excerpt from Liberation Theology by Robert McAfee Brown

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God does not hang back as a mere spectator when power is utilized to oppress the weak and crush the poor. God does not keep sovereign distance in the face of human crimes. God's angry voice echoes through the centuries: "Cain, where is your brother?"

Leonardo Boff, Way of the Cross--Way of Justice

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“All of the so-called hard sayings of the Sermon [on the Mount] are designed to remind us that we cannot live without depending on the support and trust of others. We are told not to lay up treasures for ourselves, so we must learn to share. We are told not to be anxious, not to try to ensure our future, thus making it necessary to rely on one another for our food, our clothing, and our housing. We are told not to judge, thereby requiring that we live honestly and truthfully with one another. Such a people have no need to parade their piety because they know that in a fundamental sense it is not theirs. Rather, the piety of the community capable of hearing and living by the Sermon is a gift that God gives them through making them learn to serve one another. Such a piety exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.”

— Stanley Hauerwas, “A Sermon on the Sermon of the Mount,” Unleashing the Scripture, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 69

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“Faith is not acceptance but protest— against the world that is, in favor of the world that should be.”

—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks