Jackie Pullinger has spent her life working with the poor and destitute, triad gang members, heroin and opium addicts. She has helped thousands to come off drugs through the power of the Holy Spirit. She has seen transformation in numerous lives and has made a huge impact on the city of Hong Kong. Jackie wrote, 'I have spent over half my life in a dark, foul smelling place because I had a "vision" of another city ablaze with light, it was my dream. There was no more crying, no more death or pain. The sick were healed, addicts set free, the hungry filled. There were families for orphans, homes for the homeless, and new dignity for those who lived in shame. I had no idea how to bring this about but with "visionary zeal" imagined introducing the Walled City people to the one who could change it all: Jesus.' Vision is a 'holy discontent' - a deep dissatisfaction with what is,combined with a clear grasp of what could be. It is a picture - 'a mental sight' - of the future that inspires hope. Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare! But vision combined with action can change the world.
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Excerpts from theologian Sallie McFague and her book, Blessed Are the Consumers: Climate Change and the Practice of Restraint. Sallie invites us into practical methods of self-emptying--kenosis--that we need if humans and so many other species are to survive. [W]hile other fields contributing to solving our planetary crises often end their studies with the despairing remark, “Of course, it is a spiritual, an ethical problem,” the religions of the world should offer their distinctive answer: “Yes, it is, and let us look at the process of change from belief to action.” The fourfold process from belief to action contains the following steps.
. . . [I]f one understands God to be not a “substance” but the active, creative love at work in the entire universe, then “loving God” is not something in addition to loving the world, but is rather the acknowledgement that in loving the world, one is participating in the planetary process (which some identify as “God”) of self-emptying love at all levels. By understanding both “God” and the world in this way—that is, as radically kenotic—this essay can be read as both Christian and interfaith. Thus all can participate in the kenotic paradigm as a way of loving the neighbor, a process in which God’s own self may also be seen at work. Sallie McFague, Blessed Are the Consumers: Climate Change and the Practice of Restraint(Fortress Press: 2013), xii-xiv. |
Ian MacdonaldAn ex-copywriter turned punk rock pastor and peacemaker who dedicates his life to making the world a better place for all humanity. "that they all might be one" ~John 17:21“Prius vita quam doctrina.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) * “Life is more important than doctrine.”
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