The Irresistible Revolution

Excerpt by Shane Claiborne

...I remembered Gandhi's saying that what we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is most important that we do it. So we did.

While the temptation to do great things is always before us, in Khalighat I learned the discipline ofd oing small things with great deliberation. Mother Teresa used to say, "WE can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it."...

..."I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20), he means it. Over and over, the dying and the lepers would whisper the mystical word namaste in my ear. We really don't have a word like it in English (or even much of a Western concept of it). They explained to me that namaste means "I honor the Holy One who lives in you." I knew I could see God in their eyes. Was it possible that I was becoming a Christian, that in my eyes they could catch a glimpse of the image of my Lover?...

STARVE MAMMON WITH YOUR LOVE. I hope Mammon gets hungry around here.

...All the time, we look AT people - hot girls, beggars, pop stars, white folks, black folks, people with suits or dreadlocks. But over time, we can develope new eyes and look INTO people. Rather than looking at poeple as sex objects or work tools, we can see them as sacred. We can enter the Holies of Holies through their eyes. They can become a "Thou."...

...Dr. King was another one of our elders who spoke of God's love and grace amid hatred. King marked Ghandi as one of the great treachers of nonviolence and said this just before he died: "To our most bitter opponents we say: 'Thro us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.' "....

...What I love about Jesus is that he always has imagination. Author and professor Walter Wink does brilliant work demonstrationg Jesus' creativity in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Talking about the familiar "turn the other cheek" versus, Wink points out that Jesus is not suggesting that we masochistically let people step all over us. Instead, Jesus is pointing us toward something htat imaginatively disarms others. When hit on the cheek, turn and look the person in the eye. Do not cower and do not punch them back. Make sure they look into your eyes and see your sacred humanity, and it will be increasingly harder for them to hurt you. When someone tries to sue you for the coat on your back and drags you before the court, go ahead and take all of your clothes off and hand them over, exposing the sickness of their greed. When a soldier asks you to walk a mile with them and carry their pack (as was Roman law and custom), don't throw your fist in the air like the Zealots, just walk with them two miles instead of one, talk with them and woo them into our movement by your love....

...Mother Teresa offers us that brilliant glimpse of hope that lies in little things: "We can do not great things, only small things with great love. It is not how much you do but how much love you put into doing it." Above our front door, we have hung a sign that says, "Today...small things with great love (or don't open the door."....

Here's one of my favourite excerpts from the book:

..."If we are crazy, thsn it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy." What's crazy is a matter of perspective. After all, what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone? What is crazier: spending billions of dollars on a defense shield, or suggesting that we share our billions of dollars so we don't need a defense shield? What is crazier: maintaining arms contracts with 154 countries while asking the world to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, or suggesting that we lead the world in disarmament by refusing to deal weapons with over half of the world and by empting the world's largest stockpile here at home? What crazy is that the US [and Canada], less than 6% of the world population, consumes nearly hnalf of the world's resources, and that the average American consumes as much as 520 Ethiopians do, while obesity is declared a "national health crisis." Someday war and poverty will be crazy, and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist. Some of us have just caught a glimpse of the promised land, and it is so dazzling that our eyes are forever fixed on it, never ot look back at the ways of that old empire again....