We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.

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.

When i ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel the Spirit whisper to me, 'you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.

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.

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.

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That's the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That's the Christianity I have fallen in love with. In

Jeanne de Chantal, seventeenth-century founder of the Order of the Visitation, said, "No matter what happens, be gentle with yourself.

Of all people, we Christians should be building friendships and protecting the dignity of human beings, even those of other faiths. I loved seeing Christians in Iraq stand guard as peacekeepers outside the mosques while Muslims gathered for prayer, and Muslims doing the same for Christians.

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. . . Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships.

When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.