9 Quotes by John Dear

To utter this prayer (the Lord’s Prayer) is to renounce our national identity and recognize our true identity as a son or daughter of the God of peace, our beloved Father (and Mother), and a brother or sister of every human being on earth. With this prayer, we breathe in and out our dependence of God and God’s Kingdom, and place our entire focus on the God of peace and God’s kingdom.

Everyone is called to live their lives right now in the kingdom of God, to practice now as if they were already in the fullness of the presence of the God of peace. As we do, we will reject every form of violence, from war and executions to racism and sexism to nuclear weapons and corporate greed to destructive behavior to the creatures and Mother Earth.

In Yosemite, we see how everyone can inherit the earth. But that gift requires a change of heart, a new intention, a deliberate turning. From now on, we must go forward, back into the world of violence and war, to do our part to end the killing, the suffering, and the ongoing destruction of Mother Earth. Yosemite, along with all of creation, calls us to wake up, stand up, and stop the insane destruction of the earth before it's too late.

Catastrophic climate change is the natural consequence of global systemic violence. That means, it is intimately connected with racism, sexism, classism, militarism, war, nuclear weapons, and every form of violence. If we want to deepen our nonviolence and our conscious oneness with the earth, we have to connect the various facets of systemic violence with environmental destruction so we know what we are up against, what we are resisting, and how broad out creative nonviolence needs to go.

For Jesus, we are merely stewards of Mother Earth, nonviolent people living in and tending the Creator's glorious vineyard. We are not to destroy it or one another, but live and work in peace in this glorious creation. it's time we learn the lesson, Jesus tells us, and do our part to car for the vineyard of creation.

Non-violence confronts systematic injustice with active love, but refuses to retaliate with further violence under any circumstances. In order to halt the vicious cycles of violence, it requires a willing acceptance of suffering and death rather than inflicting suffering or death on anyone else.

It’s strange how knowledge changes perception.

No matter where you are in the world the moon is never bigger than your thumb.

In Yosemite, we see how everyone can inherit the earth. But that gift requires a change of heart, a new intention, a deliberate turning. From now on, we must go forward, back into the world of violence and war, to do our part to end the killing, the suffering, and the ongoing destruction of Mother Earth. Yosemite, along with all of creation, calls us to wake up, stand up, and stop the insane destruction of the earth before it’s too late.