1/5/2003
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another....
 -Zechariah 7:9

1/12/2003
"The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling."
 -Hugh Latimer

1/19/2003
"Awaken my senses to the goodness that can still spring forth in me and in all that has life."
 -Unknown

1/26/2003
"I feel like the 'dimly burning wick' that Isaiah talks about. But he says it won't be quenched, so we can't give up! But my energy wanes, so one thing I can do is to encourage you young and energetic folks to hold fast. We are with you, and we do a lot of praying!"
 -Mary Ellen Meyer

2/2/2003
To "do peace, you must get up off your apathy."
 -Yolanda King

2/9/2003
"Do not depend on the hope of results...concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.
 -Thomas Merton, Catholic Worker

2/16/2003
"Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Victory is ours through him who loves us."
(View Poster)
 -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2/23/2003
"Granted, it takes courage to be 'extension agents' for hope during these days of distrust and fear. It takes courage to hope when the newspaper headlines speak of inevitable violence. It takes courage to hope when tens of thousands of soldiers pack their bags and march off to the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, hope remains a necessary condition for any kind of peacemaking activity because without hope we are left alone and vulnerable to our fears. Especially in this situation, I would rather be vulnerable to the transformative power of God than the hopelessness of
fear."
 -Matthew Bailey-Dick, CPTer on the way to Iraq

3/2/2003
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
 -Hebrews 11:1

3/9/2003
"Hope starts small...but it feeds on outrageous possibilities. It beckons us to step out with the belief that the action we take will not only bear fruit but that in taking it, we have already made difference in the World. God invites us, like Mary, to open to God's radical leading, to step out with sometimes inexplicable faith, trusting that we will find sustenance. 'Hope,' writes W. Paul Jones in 'Trumpet at Full Moon', 'is the simple trust that God has not forgotten the recipe for manna.' The hope of God contains the promise that we will be fed, even if we never see the fruit of our hope-filled actions."
 -Jan L. Richardson "Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas"

3/16/2003
Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.
 -Helen Keller

3/23/2003
Nonviolence, when it becomes active, travels with extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle.
 -Gandhi

3/30/2003
He said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."
 -Luke 13:18-20

4/6/2003
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience...Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring"
 -Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

4/13/2003
"Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have seen and ask yourself if the next step you contemplate is going to be of any use to that person."
 -Mohandas Gandhi

4/20/2003
"The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis"
 -Edmund Burke

4/27/2003
"Miracles are watered by our action."
 -Cliff Kindy, Christian Peacemaker Teams core member

5/4/2003
"Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold."
 -Peace Pilgrim

5/11/2003
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better"
 -Daniel Berrigan

1/4/2004
Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.
 -Oscar Aria Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner

1/11/2004
The greatest peace, I believe, is the peace which we derive from our faith in God Almighty; from certainty about our relationship with our Creator. Crises might beset us, battles might rage about us--but if we have faith and the certainty it brings, we will enjoy peace--the peace that surpasses all understanding.
 -Frederik W. deKlerk, 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner

1/18/2004
Prayer is the basis of all peacemaking precisely because in prayer we come to the realization that we do not belong to the world in which conflicts and wars take place, but to him who offers us his peace.
 -Henri Nouwen

1/25/2004
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
 -Psalm 46

2/1/2004
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
 -Eleanor Roosevelt

3/28/2004
History was not written by men who predicted failure, who gave up their dreams, who abandoned their principles, who allowed their laziness to put their intelligence to sleep.
 -Oscar Aria Sanchez, Nobel Peace Prize winner

4/4/2004
It all began with the Resurrection. If only he had stayed put.
 -Daniel Berrigan, SJ

4/11/2004
I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.
 -Martin Luther King, Jr

4/18/2004
Time and patience will turn the mulberry leaf into silk.
 -Eastern Proverb

4/25/2004
We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
 -Andre Gide

5/2/2004
And then there is the question of prayer, which consists for the most part in insisting that God do for us what we are unwilling to do for one another. Resolve: Let's do for one another what we would have God do for all. This is known as God-like activity.
 -Daniel Berrigan, SJ

5/9/2004
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
 -Dag Hammarskjold

1/2/2005
God has chosen the weak things to overcome the strong, foolish things to confound the wise, lowly things to humble the haughty.

That is God's way, and it ought to be a reminder for us when we wish to know where to look for God or to know what God wants us to do in the world.
 -Richard Groves

1/9/2005
Peace Crane, I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.
 -Sadako Sasaki, age 12

1/16/2005
The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole. If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others. Thus the way from Bethlehem leads inevitably to Golgotha, from the crib to the cross. When the blessed virgin brought the child to the temple, Simeon prophesied that her soul would be pierced by a sword, that this child was set for the fall and the resurrection of many, for a sign that would be contradicted. His prophecy announced the passion, the fight between light and darkness that already showed itself before the crib.
 -Edith Stein

1/23/2005
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
 -Luke 1:79

1/30/2005
If you think your actions are too small to make a difference, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.
 -Anonymous

3/6/2005
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
 -Martin Luther King, Jr.

3/13/2005
Don't postpone joy.
 -

3/20/2005
"Let us not become the evil that we deplore."
 -Barbara Lee, House of Representatives 9/14/01

3/27/2005
"Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places."
 -Hannah Senesh

4/3/2005
"...(I)n the final analysis, the future is not prepared by the 'movers and shakers' who occupy the foreground of our TV screens, but rather by the hidden multitudes who work humbly and tirelessly for what they believe in."
 -Brother John of Taize in "One More Missed Opportunity"

4/10/2005
The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order . . . Most people despair that [it] is possible. They cling to old ways and prefer the security of their misery to the insecurity of their joy. But the few who dare to sing a new song of peace are the new St. Francises of our time, offering a glimpse of a new order that is being born out of the ruin of the old.
 -Henri Nouwen

4/17/2005
To be truly Christian, we must make hope possible, not despair convincing.
 -Unknown

4/24/2005
The spiral of responding to violence with violence is like a whirlpool in a river. As the water pours in, it whirls faster and faster.

The only way to stop the whirlpool is to place a solid rock in the middle. Peacemakers are the called to be rocks in the whirlpool of violence.
 -Susan Classen and Vernard Eller

5/1/2005
"Let us not be disheartened, as though human realities made impossible the accomplishments of God's plans"
 -Oscar Romero

5/8/2005
God of the Bible, God in the Gospel,
Hope seen in Jesus, hope yet to come.
You are our center, daylight or darkness,
Freedom or prison, you are our home.
Fresh as the morning, sure as the sunrise,
God always faithful, you do not change.
 -From the upcoming hymnal supplement, "Sing the Journey", to be released at Charlotte 2005

1/8/2006
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
 -Mahatma Gandhi

1/15/2006
When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision--then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
 -Audre Lorde

1/22/2006
When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.
 -Rudolf Bahro

1/29/2006
When I was younger, I acted because I hoped to achieve a certain something. Now I'm path oriented. I act to get in contact with the best part of who I am. I do the work whether we win or lose.
 -87-year-old activist

2/5/2006
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
 -Vaclav Havel

2/12/2006
“Contemplation leads to action and reflection gives birth to revolution and prayer gives way to a shattering power that cannot be grasped but can only be received” (p. 10).
 -Jan Richardson, "In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season"

2/19/2006
Live as children of the light - for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.... Everything that is exposed by the light becomes visible.
 -St. Paul, Ephesians

2/26/2006
. . .if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms . . .
 -Lisel Mueller, "monet refuses the operation"

3/5/2006
"How are we going to get through this craziness?" I asked. There was silence for a moment.

"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said.
 -Anne Lamott, "Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith"

3/12/2006
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
 -grandmother in the film "Strictly Ballroom"

3/19/2006
Prayer is not a substitute for action;
prayer is an action
for which there is no substitute.
 -Jane Edwards

3/26/2006
Hope is the radical refusal to calculate the limits of the possible.
 -WS Coffin

4/2/2006
The story of God becoming man is incomprehensible. Only fools would dare to believe it. And the idea that God loves us enough to die for us? Preposterous. I’m staggered at the thought of the world-whisperer speaking my name, of the almighty breaking into song at the thought of me or coming to earth to die for me. Yet that is the truth, that is the mystery of Jesus.
 -Steven James, from STORY: RECAPTURE THE MYSTERY

4/9/2006
I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood. Those who can attune themselves to these forces - to God's purpose - can become special instruments of his will.

 -Coretta Scott King

4/16/2006
Blessed be the ones who dance in the corridors of death,
Who sing in the hallways of terror,
Who laugh in the prisons of fear,
Who shout across the silencing walls,
Who love beyond the borders of hatred,
Who live to welcome home freedom,
Who die never turning their heads,
Who return as the rising of hope.
 -Jan Richardson, "In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season"

4/23/2006
When I was younger, I acted because I hoped to achieve a certain something. Now I'm path oriented. I act to get in contact with the best part of who I am. I do the work whether we win or lose.
 -87-year-old activist who fought in the Spanish Civil War

4/30/2006
The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing--for the sheer fun and joy of it--to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.
 -journalist I.F. Stone

5/7/2006
When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.
 -East German dissident Rudolf Bahro

5/14/2006
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
 -Vaclav Havel

1/7/2007
We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
 -Mother Teresa

1/14/2007
hope
does not grow on
trees
to be plucked when
hunger presses

hope
is found in
crevices of life
waiting to be
remembered
 -Eileen Klassen Hamm

1/21/2007
We're the first to admit that our God isn't logical, our religion isn't reasonable, and our Savior isn't realistic. Here is our message: we're fools for God; come join us under the big top.
 -Steven James, Sailing Between the Stars (Revell Books, 2006)

1/28/2007
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
 -Ephesians 3:18-19

2/4/2007
"Sire the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart I know not how, I can go no longer / Mark my footsteps my good page. Tread now in them boldly. You shall find the winters rage. Freeze your blood less coldly".
 -a verse from the old carol, "Good King Wencaslas"

2/11/2007
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
 -Isaiah 30:18-18

2/18/2007
People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.
 -Walter Brueggemann

2/25/2007
You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment--really live it, not just endure it--because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.
 -Walter J. Burghardt

3/4/2007
Where would we be today if certain women, men, young people, and also children had not arisen at moments when the human family seemed destined for the worst? They did not say: "Let things take their course!" Beyond the confrontations between persons, peoples, and spiritual families, they prepared a way of trusting. Their lives bear witness to the fact that human beings have not been created for hopelessness.
 -Brother Roger of Taize

3/11/2007
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
 -Martin Luther King Jr.

3/18/2007
Whoever is on a journey towards God goes from one beginning to another beginning. Will you be among those who dare to tell themselves: "Begin again! Leave discouragement behind! Let your soul live!"
 -Brother Roger of Taize

3/25/2007
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire from God.
But only she who sees takes off her shoes
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

 -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

4/1/2007
Ultimately, we are reborn to love because in this expanding, gracious space within us, we arrive at the astonishing presence of God at the core of our life. We blunder into the heart of God and find our own.
 --Sue Monk Kidd

4/8/2007
“The strange thing about Christianity was…it transformed the lives of [humans] not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event…Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds; the lives of [humans] are transformed by a piece of news.”
 -– Machen, quoted in THE PEACEMAKING PASTOR by Alfred Poirier (Baker Books, 2006)

4/15/2007
I pray that these things never end: the sand and the sea, the rush of the waters, the crash of the heavens, the prayer of humankind.
 -Hannah Senesh

4/22/2007
...[W]hatever we do counts. If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.
 -Wendell Berry

4/29/2007
Whatever may be the tensions
and the stresses of a particular day,
there is always lurking close at hand
the trailing beauty
of forgotten joy
or unremembered peace.
 -- Howard Thurman

5/6/2007
We can be reconciled to life
in its severest aspects
if we are confident
that the disasters
are not meaningless,
and that the valley
can be made a place of springs.
 -Charles Allen Dinsmore

5/13/2007
Without faith, hope, and love nothing sinful is totally abolished, nor is anything good fully attained.
 -St. Maixmos the Confessor

1/6/2008
Blessings on our year
Giving us time for the task
Peace for the pathway
Wisdom for the work
Friends for the fireside
Love to the last.
 -FOR card by Judy Richardson

1/27/2008
"Going home" is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity.


 -Jean Vanier

2/24/2008
Our compassionate efforts toward justice guarantee a deepened faith and prayer life. They will lead us to disciplines of the spirit and of the heart. By engaging with suffering, we learn true joy. By touching despair, we discover what it means to embrace hope. By coming to know Christ crucified, we participate in his resurrection. By pouring ourselves out, we gain our lives.
 -Joyce Hollyday

3/23/2008
Though it hardly seems possible now, we cling to the hope that God’s City will be established in the gift of the new heavens and the new earth. Our work is to live by the customs of the new City before it has fully come to be. In this way, the church draws the world to God. We hold forth not a condemning, but a welcoming word. All nations are invited to come to this City. And the quality of our interactions as a community will be a stronger witness than our words. The vibrancy of our worship will be a beacon of light that draws people home from the long darkness they have endured.
 -Gerrit Scott Dawson, "Called by a New Name"

4/6/2008
Living as we do in a world that suffers so much, two opposing possibilities can easily tempt us: either to turn our backs and live oblivious to the pain or to allow the pain to overwhelm us and despair to take up residence in our hearts. The truly faithful option is to face the pain and live joyfully in the midst of it. Those who suffer most remind us of how tragic and arrogant it would be for us to lose hope on behalf of people who have not lost theirs. They are teachers of joy.
 - Joyce Hollyday