Quotes from Shane Claiborne

Sometimes folks ask this question about giving to beggars and panhandlers with suspicion, speculating that homeless folks will just use their money for drugs or alcohol, which happens sometimes. But we don't always ask what CEOs are doing with our money when we give it to their companies, and they may also be buying drugs or pornography (or yachts) with our money! In

We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet.

When our theology gets in the way of loving our neighbors, it's time to rethink our theology.

God, you alone are the judge of humankind, yet you call us to work toward justice. Help us make the judgments necessary for faithful living without becoming judgmental, that we may celebrate the mystery by which your justice is your mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

But liturgy is meant to be an interruption. It disrupts our reality and refocuses it on God. It reshapes our perceptions and lives with new rhythms, new holy days, a whole new story.

The Christian life — and especially the contemplative life — is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has your country lost its imagination?

Christendom seems unprepared for people who take the gospel that seriously.

We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.

Lord, you have appointed some to be prophets; give us ears to hear and mouths to speak. You have appointed some to sing of your goodness in the streets; make us bold to celebrate you. You have called some to be still, listen, and act; give us steadiness of mind and singularity of purpose. Amen.

My concern is, How do we deal with evil without becoming it? If we aren't careful, our "justice" can be as bad as the crime itself. Yet

thank you that we are unable to save ourselves and that each time we try, we fail. Have mercy on us. Be the strength in our weakness. Clear our heads of the foolishness of believing we can be our own gods. Steer our hearts to utter dependence on you. Amen.

Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen.

Frederick Buechner said, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

We really do see the pattern Jesus warns us about: "Pick up the sword and you will die by the sword." Not only do innocent children suffer as collateral damage, but the one who picks up the sword also suffers. We've learned that lesson all too well. We are not made to kill. So when we do, it kills a part of us.

But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: "I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

de Chardin said, "Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.

If we remove the cross, we are in danger of promoting a very cheap grace. Perhaps it should make us uncomfortable.

That's the beautiful mystery: we have a God who chooses to need us. We have a God who doesn't want to change the world without us. We have a God who longs to cooperate with us, to allow us to fail and flounder and who promises to make up for our shortcomings, but nonetheless wants us.

written, "A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross — the way he carries me.

When we see the crucifixion as a legal transaction in which Jesus "paid the bill," we run the risk of cheapening the work of restoration at the heart of the cross. After

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That's the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That's the Christianity I have fallen in love with. In

Jeanne de Chantal, seventeenth-century founder of the Order of the Visitation, said, "No matter what happens, be gentle with yourself.