“The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: ‘You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that.’” Oscar A. Romero

“One cannot level one's moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything.” Daniel Berrigan

“Revolutions, we must remember, are always made by minorities.” Peter Kropotkin

“God has no religion.” —attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

“The social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens.” Antonio Gramsci

"The wicked become even worse when they are tolerated.” Leo Tolstoy

“Action is the antidote to despair.” Joan Baez

“We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” St Clare of Assisi

“Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” James 2:17

“Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:10

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” James 1:27

“Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.” 3 John 11

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power.” George Orwell, 1984

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” Karl Marx

“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.” Dorothy Day

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” Mahatma Gandhi

“Hope is the seed of liberation.” Jon Sobrino

“Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.” Peter Kropotkin

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” Brother Lawrence

“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received...but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage.” Francis of Assisi

“I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.” Ann Richards

“It is incumbent on us to think, to question, to be critical, and to recognize that if we do not interrogate that which we most take for granted, if we are not willing to question the anchoring grounds of our ideas, opinions, and attitudes, then we will never move forward.” Angela Davis

“The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.” Leo Tolstoy

“When a society is organized around that which is fitting in each realm, then peace, the fruit of justice, can flourish." Leonardo Boff

“Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.” Mikhail Bakhtin

"A child who plays and works thoroughly, with perseverance, until physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough, determined person, capable of self-sacrifice.” Friedrich Froebel

“Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.” Mikhail Bakhtin

“In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form…all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.” Lev S. Vygotsky

“Rejecting the notion that democracy and markets are the same, young people are calling for an end to the poverty, grotesque levels of economic inequality, the suppression of dissent and the permanent war state.” Henry Giroux

“We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be...a church...of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.” Menno Simons

“This is what we are about: We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.” attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero

Today is the 45th anniversary of the rape, torture and murder of four American missionaries in El Salvador by members of the El Salvador National Guard, as well as the subsequent attempts by the government to cover up the story. Watch the documentary Roses in December…the insanity continues

Several times I decided to leave El Salvador. I could except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine. Jean Donovan

“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness." Leo Tolstoy

“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” Hebrews 13:3

“Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers and foreigners, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:1-2

“The Lord watches over foreigners and immigrants; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” Psalm 146:9

“When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. You shall treat the strangers who sojourn with you as the native among you, and you shall love them as yourself.” Leviticus 19:33-34a

“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’” Deuteronomy 27:19

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” Exodus 23:9

Listening to my annual music piece…Alice’s Restaurant…amazing how many same/similar issues remain…we must continue on in hope

“Today social justice represents one of the most serious challenges to the conscience of the world. The abyss between those who are within the world 'order' and those who are excluded is widening day by day.” Leonardo Boff

“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.” Mahatma Gandhi

“The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.” Teresa of Avila

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” Brother Lawrence

“Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them - all of these further a child's brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months.” T. Berry Brazelton

The teacher must adopt the role of facilitator not content provider.” Lev S. Vygotsky

“Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.” Friedrich Frobel

“The discipline imposed on citizens by the bourgeois state makes them into subjects, people who delude themselves that they exert an influence on the course of events.” Antonio Gramsci

“The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind.” Antonio Gramsci