Nonviolent Cow | DiaryOfAWorm / Hope Is Doing The Right Thing

The Good Samaritan

Someone asked me the other day if I ever get discouraged trying to change things in the Catholic Church like Marquette University Teaching War and Killing or the neglect of Catholic Church to use the 1.2 million dollars gain from closing of Catholic Churches in North Central Milwaukee to answer the cry of the poor. My answer was yes but I keep struggling for peace and justice and Catholic Church because I am not looking for ‘results’ but for ‘doing the right thing.’

I got this idea from a quote a letter the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote to a young activist. He said:

“Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no worth at all, if not perhaps, results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you will start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself…”

I know from experience that if I am looking for results I can become discouraged. Although we always seek results or good outcomes we need, to keep hope alive, to work for the “value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”

Results are good. For example, when all four basketball rims were finally restored on the courts in the nearby park I rejoiced. Ending ROTC, military training, at Marquette is desirable and worth fighting for with all our strength as is working for 1.2 million dollars being use for main mission of Jesus –to serve those in need and marginalized. I will continue to struggle for these goals and will not stop if ignored or marginalized. For my hope is in “doing the right thing”.

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From Nonviolent Cow

DiaryOfAWorm: Hope Is Doing The Right Thing

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