Having trouble viewing this message? Click here to view as a webpage.

Richard's Daily Meditations

Building a One Room Family Home, Juarez, Mexico. Courtesy CAC archives.  

COMPASSIONATE ACTION

The terms “Right” and “Left” came from the Estates General in France. It’s interesting that we now use them as our basic political terms. On the left sat the ordinary people, on the right sat the nobility and the clergy! (What were the clergy doing over there?!) I think you see the pattern, despite Jesus’ clear and consistent identification with the outsiders and the poor.

In most of history you will invariably have these two movements, because we didn’t have the phenomenon of the middle class until very recently. The vast majority of people in all of human history have been poor, as it was in Jesus’ time. Yet the people who wrote books and controlled the institutions have almost always been on the Right. Much of history has been read and interpreted from the side of the “winners,” or the Right, except for the unique revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the enslaved, the dominated, the oppressed, and the poor, leading up to the totally scapegoated Jesus himself. He tries to put inside and outside together, but is killed by those entrapped and privileged on the inside.

Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action
(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer
(CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer:
Help me be compassionate in my action.