On the wall of New Jerusalem is a sign that reads, "We cannot fully recover until we help the society that made us sick recover.

The tears we shed are not just for ourselves but for our world.

Being in proximity makes a difference. Relationships make issues real and complicated and personal. Relationships move us from ideology to compassion. We can't love our neighbor if we don't know them. And once we are proximate, love requires us to take action, to stand up for life in tangible ways.

As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?

Desmond Tutu, a South African bishop and leader in the movement to end apartheid, said, "I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

us stand up both to the demons that hide behind ungodly laws, and the false religion that props up injustice. Make us into a people who shine out your love so that the world might know another way is possible. Amen.

Imagine what would happen if the prayer movement and social justice movement converged, and we had Christians who prayed like they depend on God and lived like God depended on them? Hallelujah.

Mother Teresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta." I

To cling to the gift of life we've been given and scramble to protect our own interests is to cooperate in a culture of death that threatens to destroy us all.

Mother Teresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.

a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And

And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.