Mike Rusch

“…many who work for peace are not at peace. They have anger and frustration, and their work is not really peaceful. We cannot say that they are touching the Kingdom of God. To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brother and sisters.”

“There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first
task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.”

“A community has to be careful that it is not welcoming people
because this salves its conscience or gives it a sense of ‘saving’
others. It should welcome people because it wants to serve them
and to help them find their freedom.”

“Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper. But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the
evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?”

“If we are in community only to ‘do things’, its daily life will not nourish us; we will be constantly thinking ahead because we can always find something urgent to be done.”