It’s walking the razor’s edge of the sacred moment where you don’t know, you can’t count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, the radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage.
Joanna Macy. www.azquotes.com
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell. www.brainyquote.com
The other day while driving along a busy north London roadway I spotted a shopping cart full of someone's worldly goods. What I saw next broke my heart; on the ground was a man, motionless, lying beside his "house". I was in an inside lane of a busy four lane road, and somewhat distracted while driving. "Is this man okay, is he just sleeping or has he overdosed accidently?” I was unable to handle a moving vehicle and do some kind of physical assessment of the man. However, I did pray that someone would stop and help this person.
Still concerned, I checked my side view mirror and noticed that a woman, dressed in black, was moving toward the man. My heart-felt burden turned to peace. I witnessed a random act of kindness. I don’t know the outcome of their encounter but hoped that it might end in him finding a home.
This led me to reach out to Unity Project (a shelter helping homeless young people). I met Sylvia, a woman on a mission to assist the homeless. She embodies their Mission Statement, providing emergency shelter and transitional housing for youth and adults eighteen and older that is safe. The most powerful statement I heard from Sheila was “that a person during their first walk down the alley to Unity Project’s front door, feeling completely ashamed with very low self-esteem, to ask for help and then weeks or months later they walk away from Unity Project with their heads held high.” I made my donation, and though not much, I hoped it helped in some way.
To the woman who did stop to help this man, I say thank-you from my heart.
Guest Blogger: Monica Spilsbury (retired staff nurse of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada, London neighbourhood)
Unity Project | in Articles, Guest Bloggers Redemption means overcoming all forms of patriarchy …. Suffering is a factor in the liberation process, not as a means of redemption, but as the risk that one takes when one struggles to overcome unjust systems whose beneficiaries resist change. The means of redemption is conversion, opening up to one another, changing systems of distorted relations, creating loving and life-giving communities of people here and now…
Rosemary Radford Reuther. Christianity’s Dangerous Memory by Diarmuid O’Murchu.
We must regain the conviction that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty…. When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of genuine culture and care of the environment.
Pope Francis. Laudate Si, ’229. www.ncronline.org. June 17, 2017.
