WORDS HAVE POWER

Bro John Anthony

If you can recall words that hurt you, you can probably also recall words that sustained you, encouraged you, lifted you up. Words have power, power to create and power to destroy, power to bless and power to curse, power to heal and power to hurt.

-Br. David Vryhof
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Bro John Anthony posted in St. Cuthbert's Cottage

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON ON POWER

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws."

John Adams, letter to Jefferson, 1816

H/T to Rmj at Adventus, who also quotes Reinhold Niebuhr:

In any event we have to deal with a vast religious-political movement which generates more extravagant forms of political injustice and cruelty out of the pretensions of innocency than we have ever known in human history.

Rmj notes that Niebuhr wrote the words in 1959, and says, "Good to know there's been some progress....."

How sad to see it spelled out plainly that, on certain issues, such as economic justice and equality, we have not come a long way, baby. Rmj's entire post is surely worth a read.