Challenges
From Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu
Poem by Nelson Mandela
“If you want to help, share something of yourself--not from your abundance--but until it hurts. Give what costs you--make a sacrifice--do without something you like, so you may share what you have saved thus with those who do not even have what they need. Then your giving will be true giving--loving until it hurts....Be God’s hands to serve the poor in your spare time, and be His heart to love the poorest of the poor all the time.”
Mother Teresa
“There is no neutrality in a situation of injustice and oppression. If you say you are neutral you are a liar, for you have already taken sides with the powerful....All over the world you see God’s children treated as if they were rubbish...the situation between the haves and the have-nots, between the powerful and the powerless, is a form of global apartheid.”
Desmond Tutu, 2005
How can we respond to injustice in a way that does not take sides with the powerful, but which also does not adopt their tactic of using force (even if it is for a good cause)? See the Discussion forum on the humanitynews.net website, and our Challenge on page 1.
Expected Obviousness
all inspirations run dry,
hell falls into place,
nothing remains of what we dreamt of,
all humanity is abandoned,
isolation is abundant again,
pain recedes like an old widow’s hairline,
feeble jokes replace conversations,
no one is looking at much,
no one is hearing much,
not much remains, not much remains....
Nelson Mandela, 2004