Giving Tuesday is coming up soon.

Will you stand up with us? ... See MoreSee Less

2 days ago

Feels good, doesn't it?

To participate in politics, which is all about figuring out how to live together in our beloved American family.

We are taking time to pause and be mindful of the new beginning we find ourselves at. To replenish our bodies, clarify our thinking, and let our new prayers emerge, we ask ourselves...

1. What happened?

2. What does it mean?

3. What have we learned?

4. What should we do next?

We would love to learn from you. Feel free to drop us a line here, write an essay, or anything in between! Or send us a direct FB message. ... See MoreSee Less

6 days ago

As we all take a short breather to restore our energy and discern our next steps in pursuing common good, it is worth reminding ourselves that our illusion of permanent progress inflicts a particularly damning strain of despair.

Republic, Democracy, and Common Good that it protects, advance in fits and starts, in leaps and backward steps. But they advance nonetheless, on timelines exceeding our individual lifetimes. Our presentism bias, aided and exacerbated by digital rectangles staring into our faces, is not merely difficult but downright countercultural to resist.

Instead of our ahistorical panic, we want to turn to lucid optimism, to the joy of life, to faith in hard-won human values, and to divine sustenance. These are our most unassailable forms of resistance to the corruptions and malfunctions of democracy.

Let's take a moment here and turn to the American poet Walt Withman for replenishment...

On the courage of our souls:
"Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul."

On protecting democracy:
"I can conceive of no better service in the United States ... than boldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy."

On optimism about ourselves:
"Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through society in our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the subject which I find possessing many good people."

On futility on progress without morality and beauty:
"In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind. Soon, it will be fully realized that ostensible wealth and money-making, show, luxury, &c., imperatively necessitate something beyond — namely, the sane, eternal moral and spiritual-esthetic attributes, elements… Soon, it will be understood clearly, that the State cannot flourish, (nay, cannot exist,) without those elements. They will gradually enter into the chyle of sociology and literature. They will finally make the blood and brawn of the best American individualities of both sexes."

On the primacy of the environment:
"I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part — to be its health-element and beauty-element — to really underlie the whole politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World."

Hey, Vote Coomon Good friends, stay lucid, joyful, grounded, and patient!

(adapted from and thankful to Brain Pickings and www.commongoodchristians.us) ... See MoreSee Less

1 week ago