Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals QUOTES

1 " W. E. B. DuBois, a co-founder of the NAACP, wrote, “Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

2 " Peace is not just about the absence of conflict; it’s also about the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr. even distinguished between “the devil’s peace” and God’s true peace. A counterfeit peace exists when people are pacified or distracted or so beat up and tired of fighting that all seems calm. But true peace does not exist until there is justice, restoration, forgiveness. Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

3 " Clarence Jordan, co-founder of Koinonia Farm, wrote, “The Good News of the resurrection is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

4 " Lord, free us from our self-deception and attune our hearts to your Spirit, that we might remember how you humbled yourself, and learn to serve one another, whatever our disagreements. Amen. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

5 " Jesus was Jewish. He went to synagogue “as was his tradition” and celebrated holy days such as Passover. But Jesus also healed on the Sabbath. Jesus points us to a God who is able to work within institutions and order, a God who is too big to be confined. God is constantly coloring outside the lines. Jesus challenges the structures that oppress and exclude, and busts through any traditions that put limitations on love. Love cannot be harnessed. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

6 " American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

7 " Lord, you call us out of captivity into the freedom of your beloved community. As we pass through the wilderness spaces of our lives, grant us ears to hear you, eyes to see you, and hearts that ache for you, that we might not turn away from the brothers and sisters who help us remember who we are. Amen. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

8 " Lord, keep us from following the gods of pride, stubbornness, vanity, sloth, greed, and comfort that beckon for our allegiance every day. You brought us through the night watches, you who neither slumber nor sleep. We pray to follow you along the path of generosity, humility, and love throughout this day. Amen. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

9 " The key element in beginning to learn to embody the love of God is not heroic faith and determination. It has to do with whether or not we can take hold of the love of God as a power that includes us within it. The difference is between seeing life from the inside of God versus seeing it from within my own sensibilities and capacities. From inside the love of God, suffering becomes not only bearable, but a privilege of participating with Christ in his love for the world. This cannot be rationally explained or justified, but it is the fruit of a life trustingly lived in and for God who is all love. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

10 " Frederick Douglass wrote in his autobiography, “Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

11 " Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

12 " Augustine of Hippo said, “Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

13 " The ancient Letter to Diognetus records these observations about the early church: “The Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor by language, nor by the customs that they observe; for they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. They marry, as do all others; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich; they are lacking all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are spoken of as evil, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

14 " Lord, we know that you will come again in glory to raise the living and the dead. Resurrect us now from the death of comfort, complacency, sloth, and shallowness that we might witness to your love in life and death. Amen. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

15 " Everything in our society teaches us to move away from suffering, to move out of neighborhoods where there is high crime, to move away from people who don’t look like us. But the gospel calls us to something altogether different. We are to laugh at fear, to lean into suffering, to open ourselves to the stranger. Advent is the season when we remember how Jesus put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. God getting born in a barn reminds us that God shows up in the most forsaken corners of the earth. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

16 " Irish rock star Bono has said, “Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

17 " Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

18 " But Jesus answered me with these words and said: Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

19 " Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sixteenth-century priest who was committed to reforming the church from within, said, “When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere, and that which is not voluntary cannot please Christ. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

20 " Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world; yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which God is to bless people now. "

― Shane Claiborne , Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals