Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Steven Delopoulos / The Ruin of the Beast

God sees the truth, but waits - Leo Tolstoy

 In the town of Vladimir lived a young merchant named Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov. He had two shops and a house of his own.

Aksionov was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed fellow, full of fun, and very fond of singing. When quite a young man he had been given to drink, and was riotous when he had had too much; but after he married he gave up drinking, except now and then.

One summer Aksionov was going to the Nizhny Fair, and as he bade good-bye to his family, his wife said to him, "Ivan Dmitrich, do not start to-day; I have had a bad dream about you."

Aksionov laughed, and said, "You are afraid that when I get to the fair I shall go on a spree."

His wife replied: "I do not know what I am afraid of; all I know is that I had a bad dream. I dreamt you returned from the town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your hair was quite grey."

Allen Ginsberg and George Grant: Howl and Lament for a Nation - Excerpt from Ron Dart's 'Spiders and Bees'

Introduction: It's 55 years this year (1955-2010) since Ginsberg's Howl was published, and 45 years (1965-2010) since Grant's Lament was published. This article on Ginsberg's Howl and Grant's Lament appears in print in Ron Dart's Spiders and Bees. In it, Dart brings to the forefront how two different 'jeremiads' are handled.

 It is fifty years this autumn since the Beat Movement was launched at Six Gallery in San Francisco (October 13, 1955). Some of the American Beats from the East Coast (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and the West Coast (Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) met and read together at this gathering. John Suiter rightly says, ‘The Six Gallery reading has sometimes been called the first synthesis of the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation’ (p.148).

The Sleepwalker - A Thought Experiment by Friedrich Jacobi

"Imagine a sleepwalker who has climbed to the highest point of a tower and is now dreaming, not that he stands on top of the tower and is being sustained by it, but that the tower is suspended from him, and the earth from the tower, and that he holds the whole thing hanging ..." 

Friedrich Jacobi (1743-1819).

[His critique of enlightenment rationality (Descartes-Leibnitz) AND romantic idealism (Kant-Fichte).

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

The following is both the written text and an animated adaptation of a short story by Mark Twain (see details at the bottom). 

For the Common Good by Brian Zahnd

For the Common Good

posted by Brian Zahnd on June 14, 2010 at 5:50 PM

I have drafted a statement which explains the friendship and cooperation I have with Ahmed El-Sherif (an Arab-American Muslim) and Samuel Nachum (an Israeli-American Jew) as we work together in the Let The Children Play for Peace project. It goes like this:

For the Common Good

We are Jews, Christians and Muslims.
And we are friends.
We seek to follow our respective religions faithfully.
We do not believe all religions are the same.
We recognize the reality of our religious differences.
But we are friends.
We are devout in our faith and respectful of our friendship.
Our faith and friendship need not be mutually exclusive.
We recognize that we share common space—the common space of a shared planet.
For the sake of the common good we seek common ground.
We do not share a common faith, but we share a common humanity.
In our different religions we do not practice the same rituals or pray the same prayers.
But in our shared humanity we hold to a common dream: Shalom, Salaam, Peace.
We hold to the dream that our children may play in peace without fear of violence.
And so...
We pledge not to hate.
We pledge not to dehumanize others.
We pledge to do no harm in the name of God.
As individuals we do not compromise the truth claims of our respective religions—
But we will not use truth claims to fuel hate or justify violence.
We will practice our respective faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
But we believe our faith can be practiced in the way of peace—
We believe our faith truly practiced need never be at odds with humanitarian ideals.
Our religions share a complex and intertwined history—
A history of interaction that has too often been tumultuous and bloody.
We believe there must be a better way and we seek that better way.
The way of peace.
We are Jews, Christians and Muslims.
And we are friends.
We seek common ground for the common good.
Shalom, Salaam, Peace.

Ahmed El-Sherif
Samuel Nachum
Brian Zahnd

Ron Dart: Reviews of 'My Journey with Father Alexander' (2006) by Juliana Schmemann and 'Warning to the West' (1975) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It was with much anticipation that I picked up and read through Juliana Schmemann’s My Journey with Father Alexander. Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) was surely one of the most significant Orthodox theologians in North America in the second half of the twentieth century. The Orthodox journey taken by Schmemann from Estonia (roots being in Russia) to France (St. Sergius Theological Institute) and finally to the USA in 1951 is a touching and telling tale. Juliana Schmemann has an eye for endearing details, and the life of Alexander and Juliana unfolds in an inviting manner. The missive is not long, but the text and many photographs enliven the gentle but committed life of Father Alexander in a way that few could. 

Peccatum Originus - poem by E. H. Janzen

Peccatum Originus 

Circling this tree we wondered

what mystery lay behind

the fruit of our question

We put distance between us

and the boughs heavy with temptation

branches reaching out like hands and talons

to gather us in like

fish fighting the shame baited barbed hooks

so brutally adorned with lures of light

that draws us without an chance to escape

And coming round again

we are surprised, feigning innocence

in the face of the partaking, the peeling,

of the cursed answer.

The Enough-ness of Jesus - a jail Bible study by Amy Muia

 ¹After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  ²Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.  ³In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters;  ⁴for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]  ⁵A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.  ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well?"  ⁷The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me."  ⁸Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” ⁹Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

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On Sunday, Sara and I met with the M&M pod (medical and medium security) in one of the little conference rooms in the Skagit County Jail.  Four women came—two trustees in bright orange uniforms, and two women with medical problems.  One had broken her back and neck in a car accident.  The other, a native woman, was six weeks into a high-risk pregnancy—at thirty years old, she has had five miscarriages, all drug-use and domestic violence related.

The Enough-ness of Jesus - a jail Bible study by Amy Muia

 ¹After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  ²Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.  ³In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters;  ⁴for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]  ⁵A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.  ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well?"  ⁷The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me."  ⁸Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” ⁹Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

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On Sunday, Sara and I met with the M&M pod (medical and medium security) in one of the little conference rooms in the Skagit County Jail.  Four women came—two trustees in bright orange uniforms, and two women with medical problems.  One had broken her back and neck in a car accident.  The other, a native woman, was six weeks into a high-risk pregnancy—at thirty years old, she has had five miscarriages, all drug-use and domestic violence related.