View allAll Photos Tagged Humility
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
— Ray Bradbury
Seen in Lewes, Delaware. I loved the way these flowers were tipped over and spilling out onto the sidewalk. At church this past Sunday, we talked about humility. Of considering others before ourselves. Of being willing to go low. These flowers remind me of the beauty of humble hearts.
Door Of Humility Into The Church Of The Nativity In Bethlehem The Door of Humility is the main entrance into the Church of the Nativity and is only a little over four feet in height. Other churches have large grand entrances, but this was kept small to prevent people from driving their horses or carts […]
explore1stage.wpengine.com/church-nativity-bethlehem-israel/
"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."
– Philippians 2:1-4, which is today's 1st reading at Mass (31st week).
This carved panel is from the altar of St Charles Borromeo in Lancaster Cathedral. It shows the saintly Archbishop of Milan in prayer; the rope around his neck was worn as a sign of his penitence and his self-abasement in imitation of the Lord Crucified. St Charles' motto was 'Humilitas', humility.
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Metaphysical certainty is not God, though it contains something of Him. This is why Sufis accompany even their certainties with this formula: ''And God is more wise".
A cult of the intelligence and mental passion take man further from truth. Intelligence withdraws as soon as man puts his trust in it alone. Mental passion pursuing intellectual intuition is like the wind which blows out the light of a candle.
Monomania of the spirit, with the unconsious pretension, the prejudice, the insatiability and the haste which are its concomitants, is incompatible with sanctity.
Sanctity introduces in the flux of thoughts an element of humility and of charity, and so of calm and of generosity. This element, far from being hurtful to the spiritual impetus or the sometimes violent force of truth, delivers the spirit from the vexations of passions and thus guarantees both the integrity of thought and the purity of inspiration.
According to the Sufis mental passion must be ranked as one of the "associations" with Satan, like other forms of"idolatry" of the passions. It could not directly have God for its object, for, were God its direct object, it would lose its specifically negative characteristics.
Man must beware of two things: first of replacing God, in practice if not in theory, by the functions and products of the intellect, or of considering Him only in connection with this faculty; and, secondly, of putting the "mechanical" factors of spirituality in the place of the human values - the virtues - or only considering virtues in relation to their "technical" utility and not in relation to their beauty.
Intelligence has only one nature, that of being luminous. But it has diverse functions and different modes of working and these appear as so many particular intelligences. Intelligence with a "logical", "mathematical" or- one might say - "abstract" quality is not enough for attaining all aspects of the real.
It would be impossible to insist too often on the importance of the "visual" or "aesthetic" function of the intellective faculty.
Everything is in reality like a play of alternations between what is determined in advance - starting from principles - and what is incalculable and in some way unforeseeable, of which we have to get to know by concrete identification and not by abstract "discernment".
In speculations about formal elements it would be a handicap
to lack this aesthetic function of intellect. A religion is revealed, not only by its doctrine, but also by its general form, and this has its own characteristic beauty, which is reflected in its every aspect from its "mythology" to its art.
Sacred art expresses Reality in relation to a particular spiritual vision. And aesthetic intelligence sees the manifestations of the Spirit even as the eye sees flowers or playthings.
Thus, for example, in order to understand Buddhism profoundly, if one is not a Buddhist born, it is not enough to study its doctrine; it is also necessary to penetrate into the language of Buddhist beauty as it appears in the sacramental image of the Buddha or in such features as the "sermon on the flower".
The aesthetic function of the intelligence - if you may call it
that for lack of a better term - enters not only into the form of every spiritual manifestation but also into the process of its manifestation.
Truth must be enunciated, not only in conformity with certain proportions, but also according to a certain rhythm. One cannot speak of sacred things 'just anyhow", nor can one speak of them without limitations.
Every manifestation has laws and these intelligence must observe in manifesting itself, or otherwise truth will suffer.
Intellect is not something cerebral, nor is it specifically human
or angelic. All beings "possess" it. If gold is not lead, that is because it "knows" the Divine better. Its "knowledge" is in its very form, and this amounts to saying that it does not belong to it itself, for matter could not know. None the less one can say that the rose differs from the water-lily by its intellectual particularity, by its "way of knowing" and so by its mode of intelligence.
Beings possess intelligence in their form to the extent that they are "peripheric" or "passive" and in their essence to the extent that they are "central", "active" and "conscious".
A noble animal or a lovely flower is "intellectually" superior to a base man.
God reveals himself to the plant in the form of the light of the
sun. The plant irresistibly turns itself towards the light; it could not be atheistical or impious.
The infallible "instinct" of animals is a lesser "intellect", and man's intellect may be called a higher "instinct". Between instinct and intellect there stands in some sense the reason, which owes its troubles to the fact that it constitutes a sort of "luciferian" duplication of the Divine Intelligence - the only intelligence there is.
Knowledge of facts depends on contingencies which could not enter into principial knowledge. The level of facts is, in certain respects, inverse in relation to that of principles in the sense that it includes modes and imponderables that are the extreme opposite of the wholly mathematical rigour of universal laws. At least this is so in appearance, for it goes without saying that universal principles are not contradicted.
Even beneath the veil of the inexhaustible diversity of what is possible their immutability can always be discerned, provided that the intelligence is in the requisite condition for being able to discern it.
If the intellect is, so to speak, sovereign and infallible on its own ground, it cannot exercise its discernment on the level of facts otherwise than conditionally. Moreover God may intervene on the level of facts with particular things willed by Himself that are at times unpredictable, and of such things principial knowledge could only take account a posteriori.
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Frithjof Schuon
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Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
Its a Hot ! and humility is near 90 and were along the Milwaukee Roads Iowa division Council Bluff's line with train 107 leaving the Delmar Iowa station heading to Marion Iowa in the finest green grass and mud holding the main line together in Aug 1979
In Gatchina, the former residence of the Russian emperors in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, on the shore of the "Black Lake", stands a small palace which bears the name "Priory Palace". Although it was originally intended to serve for only twenty years, it is already in its third century of existence. The Priory Palace is so exceptional that it surely ought to be in the "Guinness Book of Records". Everything about this building is unusual: its name, its architectural appearance, the materials and techniques of its construction, as well as the legends which are bound up with it.
Constructed for a prior of the Maltese Order, the palace never actually became a priory, although it was presented to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem by a decree of Paul I dated 23 August 1799. In the 19th century, the Priory was occupied first by the Court choristers, then by the master of the royal hunt; in Soviet times it became a place for outings, a "house of rest", a Pioneers' house, then a museum of local history. Then the palace was closed, being by now in a state of such disrepair that it seemed about to collapse into the Black Lake. At that time the palace bore a new name - people called it the "Crumbling Castle".
A romantic page of Russian history is bound up with the knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. The year 1999 was the 900th anniversary of the founding of the order, which today numbers about 12,000 members, as well as the 200th year since the election of Tsar Paul I as the order's Grand Master.
It is in Jerusalem, the "city of cities", that the tomb of Our Lord is located. Thousands of Christian pilgrims made their way to the Holy Land to visit it. In the pilgrims' refuge attached to the church of St. John the Baptist, not far from Jerusalem, monks tended the pilgrims and received donations from them as a mark of their gratitude. The emblem of the order is a white eight-pointed cross, symbolising the eight virtues - faith, charity, truth, justice, innocence, humility, sincerity and patience. The monks were bound by their rules not only to provide help for the injured, but also to defend Christianity against the followers of Islam. Thus the order became an order of warrior-monks, who were known as "Knights of St. John" or "Knights Hospitallers". But the crusades undertaken by the order ended in failure and they were forced to flee to the island of Rhodes, which was their home for two centuries. In the year 1522 the forces of the Turkish sultan Suleiman the Magnificent attempted to capture Rhodes. After a six-month siege the Grand Master of the order, Philippe de l'Isle-Adam, surrendered the island. Full of admiration for the knights' courage, Suleiman allowed them to leave the island by ship.
A new place of refuge for the knights was found in 1530, when Charles V, king of Spain and Sicily, gave the island of Malta to the order in return for a symbolic annual payment of one hunting falcon. During the years of its residence in Malta the order of St. John developed into a very powerful and wealthy community; its knights combined a high degree of monasticism with a code of knightly honour. In the north-east of the island they built a fortress which, during the 400 years of its history, no-one has ever succeeded in taking by storm. The name of its builder - Grand Master Jean de La Vallette - has been immortalised in the name of Malta's capital, Valletta.
The French Revolution drove the knights from Malta and deprived the order of its wealth; its estates were confiscated for the benefit of the people. On 6 June 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte, on the way to Egypt, raided Malta. The order allowed the general's forces to enter the harbour, and the invulnerable fortress of Valletta fell without a shot being fired. By Napoleon's decree, all the silver from the churches built by the Hospitallers was melted down. The Grand Master von Gompesch was exiled, and the knights were compelled to leave the island within 72 hours.
Relations between the Russian state and the Maltese order were first established in 1698, when Peter I's ambassador Boris Petrovich Sheremetev was received with honour in Valletta by the head of the order Grand Master Raymond de Pereylos, and, though he was not a Catholic, became the first Russian knight of this Catholic order. During the reign of Catherine II an alliance was formed between Russia and Malta against Turkey. In the Turkish war several officers of the order fought on Russia's side. One of these was Count Yuliy Pompeevich Litta, who received a golden sword "for valour" and the third degree of the Order of St. George. And it was Litta who brought the insignia of the order to Russia for Paul I, with the request that he should take the order under his patronage. On the 29th November 1798 the solemn ceremony took place by which the Russian emperor assumed the title of Grand Master. From Malta certain holy relics were brought to Gatchina - a piece of Christ's cross, the icon of the Mother of God from Philerma, the right hand of John the Baptist.
Paul I was a great admirer of the order. From childhood he had read and re-read the Abbot Vertot's "History of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem". He was shaken by the fate of Malta and came to the aid of the order. An agreement was signed by which the Polish priorate became the Great Russian priorate. Two priorates were established - a Polish, Catholic priorate and a Russian, Orthodox priorate. The Maltese knights came to Russia, where they were granted lands and high office. The residence of the order was transferred to St. Petersburg. Paul judged that this powerful knightly order would be of assistance in the struggle against the revolutionary ideas which were then spreading in Europe. An institute of honorary commanders was established, admission to which was not dependent on proof of noble origin. The cross of the order was awarded for services to the state, either military or civil.
Paul gave to the knights of the Russian priorate the church of St. John the Baptist on St. Petersburg's Stone Island, and the Vorontsov Palace (now the Suvorov Military Academy). Next to the Vorontsov Palace the architect Giovanni Quarenghi built a Maltese chapel, and in Gatchina the architect N. A. Lvov created the Priory Palace for the French emigre Prince Conde, a former prior of the order. (A "prior" is one of the main officials of the order, and "priory" is the designation of a prior's residence.) Before succeeding to the throne, during his travels in Europe Paul had visited the country residence of Prince Conde at Chantilly. He recalled that in Paris Louis XVI had received him as a friend, but that in Chantilly Prince Conde had received him as a king. Mindful of the prince's hospitality, Paul wanted to construct a palace for him in his beloved Gatchina. But Conde never came to Gatchina, and the palace was used by the Maltese knights for meetings of the order under the presidency of their Grand Master, and as a "spare" palace.
Madonna of humility
c. 1470
Ferrara, ITALY
Painted wood (Italian poplar)
Located at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=89667&PICTAUS=True
Coachwork by Vanden Plas
Chassis n° LM1342
Registration n° F8689
Les Grandes Marques du Monde au Grand Palais
Bonhams
Estimated : € 650.000 - 850.000
Sold for € 701.500
Parijs - Paris
Frankrijk - France
February 2018
- One of 513 Speed Models built
- Rare original aluminium body
- Full matching numbers
- Exceptionally original
- Well documented history
- Restored by Graham Moss
- Pebble Beach 2015 Class Award
With characteristic humility 'W O' was constantly amazed by the enthusiasm of later generations for the products of Bentley Motors Limited, and it is testimony to the soundness of his engineering design skills that so many of his products have survived. From the humblest of beginnings in a mews garage off Baker Street, London in 1919 the Bentley rapidly achieved fame as an exciting fast touring car, well able to compete with the best of European and American sports cars in the tough world of motor sport in the 1920s. Bentley's domination at Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930 is legendary, and one can only admire the Herculean efforts of such giants as Woolf Barnato, Jack Dunfee, Tim Birkin and Sammy Davis, consistently wrestling the British Racing Green sports cars to victory.
W O Bentley proudly unveiled the new 3-litre car bearing his name on Stand 126 at the 1919 Olympia Motor Exhibition, the prototype engine having fired up for the first time just a few weeks earlier. Bentley's four-cylinder 'fixed head' engine incorporated a single overhead camshaft, four-valves per cylinder and a bore/stroke of 80x149mm. Twin ML magnetos provided the ignition and power was transmitted via a four-speed gearbox with right-hand change. The pressed-steel chassis started off with a wheelbase of 9' 9½" (the 'short standard') then adopted dimensions of 10' 10" ('standard long') in 1923, the shorter frame being reserved for the TT Replica and subsequent Speed Model. Rear wheel brakes only were employed up to 1924 when four-wheel Perrot-type brakes were introduced.
In only mildly developed form, this was the model that was to become a legend in motor racing history and which, with its leather-strapped bonnet, classical radiator design and British Racing Green livery, has become the archetypal Vintage sports car.
Early success in the 1922 Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, when Bentleys finished second, fourth, and fifth to take the Team Prize, led to the introduction of the TT Replica (later known as the Speed Model) on the existing 9' 9½" wheelbase, short standard chassis. Identified by the Red Label on its radiator, the Speed Model differed by having twin SU 'sloper' carburettors, a higher compression ratio, different camshaft and the close-ratio A-type gearbox, the latter being standard equipment prior to 1927 when the C-type 'box was adopted. These engine changes increased maximum power from the standard 70 to 80bhp and raised top speed to an impressive 90mph. Other enhancements included the larger (11-gallon) fuel tank and (usually) André Hartford shock absorbers. Bentley made 1,613 3-Litre models, the majority of which was bodied by Vanden Plas with either open tourer or saloon coachwork, 513 of which were to Speed Model specification.
Vanden Plas had been founded in Belgium in the 19th Century, gaining a British offshoot when Warwick Wright obtained the UK rights to the name in 1913. After an uncertain start and numerous changes of ownership, the British firm went on to forge its not inconsiderable reputation by a most fortuitous alliance with Bentley, bodying some 700-or-so of the latter's chassis during the 1920s, including the Le Mans team cars.
A 1927-specification Speed Model on the 9' 9½" wheelbase chassis, 'LM1342' is a late example and thus represents the best and most sought-after 3-Litre variant, having the 'big sump' engine with its stronger crankshaft, two-bolt direct-metal con-rods, and Duralumin rockers in separate boxes. Numbered 'LM1348SS', the engine is original to the chassis and would have been built with the Speed Model's high-compression pistons, BM1800 camshaft, and drilled valve caps. When new, these 'SS' engines were said to produce around 86bhp.
'LM1342' was bodied by Vanden Plas with its standard open four-seater sports coachwork (body number '1306', still fitted). This particular body is unusual in being panelled in aluminium (most were fabric-covered), and has an unusually low windscreen (around 1" shorter than normal) giving it more pleasing proportions. The car was ordered new by Gilbert & Sons Ltd of Pelham Street, Lincoln, and given a Lincolnshire registration, 'FE 8689', which it carries to this day. Subsequent owners listed in the Service Record are A C Scott (1928), A Staveley Hill (1929), Major G E L Pardington (1930), and J Shakespeare (1936). The Service Record is continuous through to December 1936, with only minor works carried out (no replacement of major components or accident repairs).
Correspondence on file indicates that by 1945 the Bentley was owned by a Captain M E Webbe, while an old-style continuation logbook lists two subsequent owners: Thomas Walker (from June 1946) and Frank Wood, who purchased the Bentley in January 1967 from a local farmer who wanted to buy a new Ford. There is a charming photograph in the file depicting Mr Wood's two daughters sitting in the car. After Frank Wood's passing, the family offered the Bentley for sale at a UK auction in March 2012 where it was purchased by the present owner.
The Bentley was then despatched to renowned marque specialist Graham Moss for total restoration with no expense spared. Examination revealed the 3-Litre to be exceptionally original - unlike so many of its ilk - retaining the original Supersports engine, A-type gearbox, front axle, steering box, differential casing, the correct number, 'LM1342', being found stamped on all of these components. Graham went to extraordinary lengths to maintain authenticity, even going so far as to reproduce the lead seals for the steering box, magneto turret, and crankcase; these were routinely fitted by Bentley Motors and removing them would void the guarantee.
As the car had been re-upholstered, the owner researched the original colour scheme and leatherwork, enabling the original manufacturer – Connolly – to reproduce the correct material. Many more such instances of this admirably fastidious approach are detailed in the vendor's wonderful illustrated book documenting the history and restoration of 'LM1342'. The car also comes with a copy of Bentley authority Dr Clare Hay's typically thorough - and very favourable - illustrated report on its specification, originality, and 'as purchased' condition, concluding: 'Overall this is a very original chassis with few minor changes from new, with all its original numbered parts and with its original Vanden Plas sports four-seater body'. Perusal of both is highly recommended.
In addition, the car comes with an original owner's instruction manual, a selection of accessory manuals, and a full set of genuine 3-Litre tools. There is also a letter from the first owner, and even a (replica) list of 'Don'ts', which would be hung on the starter switch to help new Bentley owners care for their cars correctly!
The extensive restoration works, carried out over a period of three years, are detailed by Graham's bills totalling some £475,000, while a further £25,000 was spent on obtaining correct parts such as the lights, correct magnetos, etc. Since completion, 'FE 8689' has covered around 2,000 miles and is fully sorted, having recently been serviced by Graham Moss.
Nobody seeing this magnificent Bentley today would question that the cost of its restoration was money well spent. Indeed, if proof were needed, in 2015 'LM1342' received a richly deserved 2nd-in-class award at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d'Élégance. There can be no better way to enjoy the many celebrations planned for Bentley's 100th anniversary in 2019.
Devotees entering Golden Temple do total surrender, which is called "Matha Tekna". Humility is one of the virtues of Sikhism.
"Tan Man Dhan Sab Saunp Gur Ko,
Hukam Maniey Paiey" - Sri Guru Granth Sahib Page 918
Two Kinds of Wisdom
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
[James 3:13-18 NIV]
5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)
2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)
Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!
"Preserve in the midst of your people, we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo, that your Church may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Painting of St Charles in humility dedicating himself to Our Lady. It is in the chapel assigned to the Anglo-Bavarian Langue in St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta.
BEST VIEWED LARGE
Practice radical humility when it comes to your accomplishments, & give credit everywhere except to your ego.............Dr. Dyer
Decided to go out for a bit to do this shot which have wanted to do for a while......but living in southeastexas we have mosquitos bigger than chickens and my legs couldnt loose any more blood. I did get to snap a few before getting run off......I am feeling a bit better but taking the brace of 50% of time was ruff and was in more pain than after the surgery since neck muscles are so weak.
Thes are the twin bridges that go across the Neches river the original bridge is called the rainbow bridge and one of the highest in the south. The newer bridge on left is much wider and glad they left the old on there they dont make them like it anymore......lol.....This pic pretty much sooc with exception of cropping. and minor brush ups......hope yall have a wonderful week and thanks for all the vistis, notes and kind words
”The marigold, that goes to bed wi' th' sun.
And with him rises weeping.”
(William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale - Perdita at IV, iv)
I often display pictures shot at the flower market which is located in the chowk of Varanasi (Benaras) but I almost never show its flowers.
The courtyard is mostly over-powered by the fragrance of fresh marigolds.
It is one of the traditional flowers used in garlands, offerings and social functions.
In India, the common Hindi name used for marigold is Gendha and it is Sthulapushpa in Sanskrit.
It symbolizes a trust in the divine and a will to overcome obstacles
The saffron/orange colour signifies renunciation and hence is offered to God as a symbol of surrender.
It is said to be in bloom on the calends of every month, this would be why the Romans named the flower Calendula and one of the names by which it is known in Italy, “fiore d'ogni mese”, countenances this derivation.
However it was not named after the Virgin even if the flower is offered to Mother Mary on the Feast of the Annunciation, in fact its name is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon merso-meargealla, the Marsh Marigold.
Old English authors called it Golds or Ruddes.
Being an edible flower marigolds were used in cookery and medicine and in the old times they were used to color hair yellow
Magical lore tells that putting marigolds under the matress will induce prophetic dreams.
The herb is also said to have the power to make dreams come true.
The marigold was also believed to be protective and was used in wreathes to keep a home safe.
Similar to St. John's Wort, it was thought that marigold could strip a witch of her will.
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“If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals,or the storm bruised its stem, if it knew that such were not the case.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
Flame My Life
Teach me the humility of knowing that nothing I can do can grasp the love that is Your one and ever hidden work, and let me in my darkness come to see this nothing as the radiance that burns until it finally blinds me, and so flame my life with the radiance of love until I finally see.
-Mark Burrows and Jon Sweeney ,Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart
“Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
Where there is patience and humility,
there is neither anger nor vexation.
Where there is poverty and joy,
there is neither greed nor avarice.
Where there is peace and meditation,
there is neither anxiety nor doubt.
For it is in giving that we receive." ~ St. Francis of Assisi ~
A 15-second exposure of an unidentified man waits with a wheelchair among thousands of pilgrims circumambulating the Holy Kaabah in Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on April 24, 2010.
"Dan (ingatlah peristiwa) ketika Kami tentukan bagi Nabi Ibrahim tempat Kaabah (untuk membinanya , lalu Kami berfirman kepadanya): Janganlah engkau sekutukan sesuatu pun denganKu dan bersihkanlah rumahKu (Kaabah ini) bagi orang orang yang tawaf dan oran orang yang berdiri dan yang rukuk serta yang sujud (mengerjakankan sembahyang)."
And (remember) when We showed Ibrahim (Abraham) the site of the (Sacred) House (the Ka'bah at Makkah) (saying): "Associate not anything (in worship) with Me, [La ilaha illallah (none has the right to be worshipped but Allah) - Islamic Monotheism], and sanctify My House (Kaabah) for those who circumambulate (tawaf) it, and those who stand up (for prayer), and those who bow (submit themselves with humility and obedience to Allah), and make prostration (in prayer);"
Surah Al Hajj (22) ayat 26.
Psalm 37:8 "Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil." "But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly."
My comment:
Pride works against us, we won't walk away from a fight at 18! at that age we're bullet proof
Turning the other cheek takes religious training, understanding, humility and concern for the enemy who's at war with "himself" not us
Why are our churches empty? where are God's helpers? why are we teaching our kids to stand their ground with AR 15? shouldn't we arm them with "the Holy Bible"? or any other "Sacred Scriptures" from their own faith?
Wasn't America God's Country once upon a time? when every home was built without locks? when we could trust one another with our lives!
Nobody wins in a gun fight! do Republicans hope that guns will outlive belligerents & trigger happy thrill seekers? many, way too many innocent children, women & other bystanders get killed in the crossfire resulting in way too many broken lives affecting us all
April 4, 2007.
This particular flickr-blurp marks the occasion of Dr. King's famous speech at the Riverside Church, here in NYC, 40 years ago tonight. I call it famous because it's famous to me. But in fact virtually none of you will be familiar with it, because its message - even four decades later - is one that Americans remain unwilling to hear.
I'll attach the very long text of his speech below, which I think you would all do well to read, but first, an obligatory musical intermission, to set the tone.
....
Riverside Church Address: Beyond Vietnam
By Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.
April 4, 1967
To the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam Riverside Church, April 4, 1967, New York City, New York
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it's always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people? "they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church-the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate-leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.
Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath- America will be! Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that "America will be" are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954.* And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.
But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men-for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
Finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place, I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. Because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954-in 1945 rather-after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China-for whom the Vietnamese have no great love-but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all of this was presided over by United States influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.
Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of a new violence? Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred, or rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:
Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.
Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing [applause continues], part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Meanwhile [applause], meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. [sustained applause] I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. [applause] Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. [applause] These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. [sustained applause] So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. [applause] War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low [Audience:] (Yes); the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word." Unquote.
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message-of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide, In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
ORIGINAL PHOTO: unknown, found here.
IMAGE ALTERATION: /anomalous
INSPIRATION: counterpunch
"Let us then follow Christ’s paths which he has revealed to us, above all the path of humility, which he himself became for us. He showed us that path by his precepts, and he himself followed it by his suffering on our behalf. In order to die for us – because as God he could not die – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The immortal One took on mortality that he might die for us, and by dying put to death our death. This is what the Lord did, this the gift he granted to us. The mighty one was brought low, the lowly one was slain, and after he was slain, he rose again and was exalted. For he did not intend to leave us dead in hell, but to exalt in himself at the resurrection of the dead those whom he had already exalted and made just by the faith and praise they gave him. Yes, he gave us the path of humility."
– from a sermon of St Augustine, read today (22nd Sunday). Today, (28 August) is also the feast of St Augustine.
The cloister of San Agustin in Intramuros, Manila (the Philippines). Construction began in 1586, based on a design by Juan Macías. The structure was built using hewn adobe stones quarried from Meycauayan, Binangonan and San Mateo, Rizal.
My natural modesty and humility prohibits me from any form of self-promotion, and therefore it is only in the interest of providing information that I mention here that my new book “London, Portrait of a City, 1950-1962” (author Allan Hailstone, published by Amberley Publishing), based on my old London photos, has just come out. Were it not for this same humility, I would have mentioned that it is available online from many outlets worldwide.
Peter 5:5-9
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
Copyright © 2012 Child of the King Photography
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"We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility."
(Rabindranath Tagore - Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)
Sadanand Patil shaving in order to become Zohrawar, his character in "Zangoora, the Gypsy Prince".
This picture was shot in his green room at "Kingdom of Dreams".
Sadanand is a well-known Indian theatre actor who was trained at the National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi, one of the foremost theatre institutions in the world.
This brilliant actor is also one of the kindest and humblest person I met.
His attitude is a genuine lesson of modesty...
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Wonder at reality demands the humility to sit at the foot of a dandelion....
Chesterton once observed that “a mediocre and mild modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland.”
-THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. THE EVIDENTIAL POWER OF BEAUTY
Pope Honorius III (1216-27) was the pope who approved the Order of Preachers in 1216. He also asked the Doge of Venice to send mosaicists to Rome to decorate the apse of the basilica of St Paul outside the Walls. This is a copy of that Byzantine-style original which was destroyed in the fire of 1823. It shows a tiny figure of Pope Honorius III making obeisance before at the giant foot of Jesus Christ. This is a splendid detail, which shows the papal vestments (alb, stole, dalmatic, chausble and pallium), and it is a rather touching gesture.