When referring to those aiding Haitian relief efforts, President Obama in a speech to the National Prayer Breakfast today, said,

“Evangelicals at World Relief. By the American Jewish World Service. By Hindu temples, and mainline Protestants, Catholic Relief Services, African American churches, the United Sikhs. By Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose.”

Some folks are getting their shorts in knots because President Obama made reference to those who don't declare a belief in God. This is not the first time the President has made reference in a public speech to those who hold no belief, he also did this was in his Inaugural Address a year ago.

Those who hold to a strict understanding of the Christian roots of the United States believe that the President's inclusion of atheists when speaking about religious belief systems are out of order.

First of all, the corollary of the freedom to believe is to not believe. The opposite of the freedom of believe is coercion which is what the Pilgrims were fleeing when they sailed on the Mayflower to these shores in 1621.

Second, I believe that if I don't defend your right not to believe then my right to believe is in great danger.

Third, my faith isn't undermined or challenged by your decision not to have a faith in God. If it is, it isn't much of a faith and my God is not worthy of worship.

What do you think?

Inspired by a fellow blogger, gnotix, I wrote this:

Travelers through life’s journey
Who we meet as we move along
Gifts of joy and pleasure

Quickly departing as they came
Yet we are not unchanged
By this unplanned encounter.

Unbeknown to these visitors
We are forever changed
Through this serendipity

We are new and renewing
By the residual effect
Of the present of their presence.

© 2010 Ronald Friesen

June and I are going to help our friend celebrate her birthday tonight. After dinner at one of her favorite restaurants we are going to go and see Riverdance.

You Were Made for This

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. A soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these--to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this in one of the strongest things you can do.

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

n.lynn suggested a few days ago that since I didn't go to the annual men's retreat, I should sit with Merton.

I found this quote by Merton:

"But if you try to escape from this world merely by leaving the city and hiding yourself in solitude, you will only take the city with you into solitude; and yet you can be entirely out of the world while remaining in the midst of it, if you let God set you free from your own selfishness and if you live for love alone."

(Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 78-79)

This is interesting in light of the plan to retreat to a quiet spot beside Oak Creek in Cornville, AZ.

Solitude is a state of mind, it is not a place. If solitude is a place at all it is in the deepest recesses of the soul, far from the noise of our culture.

What do you think?