Reflection
In this troubled and troubling world we are continually forced to choose sides or else risk indifference or complicity by virtue of inaction. But taking sides also perpetuates a society of winners and losers, of “us vs. them.” How can one seek peace and inclusivity and at the same time work for justice when working for justice means choosing sides and standing in opposition? How can one love one’s enemies and fight against their actions without fighting against them? We need a world characterized by tolerance and respect toward all whether they are our faith or not, whether they are our gender or not, whether they are our color or heritage or ethnicity or not, whether they are our nationality or background or not, and also whether they are in our political camp or not. We need to be a people that will not be governed by hate ~ either from within ourselves or from without. To accomplish that we will need to learn how to fuse love and compassion with nonviolent action.
Linda DeGraf
Prayer
That all may be one.
Action
What inner change has to happen before we can work toward a world characterized by love and tolerance? Where do you see intolerance in your own sphere? How can we fuse love and compassion with nonviolent action? Do you see this happening anywhere? Can you join in?
Suggested Reading
But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.…Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Luke 6:26-35
May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.
Pope Francis
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King Jr
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.
Voltaire
A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘universe’ – a part limited in time and space. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
Anne McCaffrey.
Compassion begins at home, and it is not how much we do but how much love we put in that action. Do not think that love has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.
Mother Teresa
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
George Eliot
We want the world our children inherit to be defined by the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance, and solidarity.
Antonio Guterres
There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Only the brave men and women can bring peace to the world, not by practicing war but by practicing nonviolence.
Amit Ray
Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
Thomas Merton