## Metadata - Author: [[Last accessed on]] - Full Title: Spiritual Activism - Category: #books ## Highlights - Dom Hélder Câmara, a Brazilian archbishop who practised liberation theology, said; “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” ([Location 203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=203)) - To be an activist is, at its most elementary, to be active, to be alive, to seek to use our lives to give life. ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=218)) - The rules of the competition allow us to harm one another in myriad ways, and this is called “freedom”. Cosmetics manufacturers make us feel ugly, banks trap us in debt and all of us buy prawns or mobile phones inextricably bound up in a web of interdependencies that has cost someone far away their land, livelihood or life. Thus alienated, we use our purchasing power to shore up our damaged egos in a further zero-sum competition for social status. Our basic human need for community is continually undermined, and the market provides a never-ending stream of surrogates, always promising that tomorrow, one day, just around the corner, all our problems will be solved by “progress”. ([Location 253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=253)) - We therefore describe healthy growth as the stimulation of a cycle of belonging – belonging to the fullness of community. Discovering our sense of place, a grounding in the physical reality of bodily existence on Earth, is usually the starting point in this cycle. A grounded sense of place contributes to a sense of identity. Identity encodes a sense of values or qualities of being that abide in the heart. These activate our sense of responsibility – the capacity to respond to others by being activists. ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=259)) - Whereas community degeneration comes about by damaging the cycle of belonging at any point, community regeneration comes from its reinforcement. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=265)) - Activism tests our convictions, demanding that we query our own basis for believing that we sense a better way in which the world can be. Spirituality brings such otherworldly ways of knowing, being and doing as music, poetry, art and prayer. These can hold us in ways that are bigger than just the cause for which we might be fighting. This can help us to see beyond the usual parameters of success or failure and friend or foe. It brings us to an awareness of the process by which we work and not just the tasks set as objectives. ([Location 342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=342)) - There will be times when we might feel that we are carrying the cause or the movement. Other times, we may find that it is carrying us, and that can be a very humbling but powerful experience. John Seed, the Australian rainforest activist, often says; “I thought that I was saving nature, but then I found that nature was saving me.” ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B013X8CKNU&location=356))