THIS YEAR’S BIRDS

Joan Chittister, American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, wrote:

“Creativity, it is too often forgotten, comes out of differences. It is the ability to function outside the lines, beyond the dots, despite the boxes and the mental chains by which we have forever been constrained, that fits us to be the architects of the future. Instead, we want everyone to think alike when what we really need are people who are thinking newly – about theology, about God, about faith, about morality, about science, about life. “You won’t find this year’s birds in last year’s nests,” the proverb teaches, but we so easily miss the meaning of it entirely. Life is meant for moving on, the observation implies…

Being able to think differently from those around us and being able to function lovingly with people who think otherwise is the ultimate in human endeavor. It requires three things: a heart large enough to deal with conflict positively, enduringly, and kindly; a keen sense of personal purpose, the notion that there is something on the horizon that is worth debating; and a soul sensitive enough to transcend the tensions of the immediate for the sake of the quality of the future.”

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” Jesus