“Every checkbook is a theological document."

“Every checkbook is a theological document. It tells you where your treasure is—and thus where your heart is.”

~ Brian Kluth, president of the Christian Stewardship Association (CSA)

“Our budget is a moral document"

“Our budget is a moral document and it is either going to reflect the best of who we are or the worst”.  

~ Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners

“Obey the laws, wear the gauze. Protect your jaws from septic paws.”

Masks were common in some Western cities during the 1918 flu pandemic and mandatory in San Francisco. There was even a jingle:
“Obey the laws, wear the gauze.
Protect your jaws from septic paws.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/health/coronavirus-future-america.html

"the way to overcome these tensions is to entrust oneself to the Holy Spirit"

Cardinal Scola calls out Pope Francis’ critics: ‘The pope is the pope’
Gerard O’Connell
July 21, 2020
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/07/21/cardinal-scola-calls-out-pope-francis-critics-pope-pope

selected quotes:
Cardinal Angelo Scola, the runner-up in the last papal conclave, has twice in recent weeks come out strongly against those, especially within the church, who frequently and increasingly attack Pope Francis. “It’s a very strong sign of contradiction and denotes a certain weakening of the people of God, above all of the intellectual class,” he said. “It is a profoundly wrong attitude because it forgets that ‘the pope is the pope.’”
“It is not by affinity of temperament, of culture, of sensibility, or for friendship, or because one shares or does not share his affirmations that one acknowledges the meaning of the pope in the church,” the cardinal said in an interview published on the Archdiocese of Milan’s website on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination on July 18.
“[The pope] is the ultimate, radical and formal guarantor—certainly, through a synodal exercise of the Petrine ministry—of the unity of the church,” the cardinal, theologian and former rector of the Pontifical Lateran University stated. . . .

Both in the interview and in a new introduction to the second edition of his autobiography, Ho scommesso sulla libertà (“I Bet on Freedom”), written with the Italian journalist Luigi Geninazzi and released on June 13, the Italian cardinal emphasized that one has “to learn the Pope” (“imparare il papa”), an expression he said he got from St. John Paul II.
“It means to have the humility and the patience to empathize with his personal history, the way he expresses his faith, addresses us, and makes choices of leadership and governance,” Cardinal Scola said. He added that this is “even more necessary in relation to a Latin-American pope, who has a mentality and a different kind of approach than we Europeans.” He recalled that “something similar also happened with John Paul II.”
Cardinal Scola declared, “I truly consider admirable and moving the extraordinary capacity of Pope Francis to make himself close to everyone, and especially to the excluded, to those who are subjected to ‘the throw-away culture’ as he so often reminds [us] in his keenness to communicate the Gospel to the world.” . . .

In the introduction to his autobiography, the 78-year-old cardinal, who enjoyed a very close relationship with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, wrote, “Pope Francis seeks to shake up consciences by calling into question consolidated habits and customs in the church, each time raising the bar, so to speak.”
“This can cause some bewilderment and upset,” he said, “but the ever harder and more insolent attacks against his person, especially those that come from within the church, are wrong.” . . .

Concluding his strong critique of attacks against Pope Francis, the cardinal went on to express concern over “the polemics and divisions that are becoming ever more bitter, also at the expense of truth and of charity.” But, he stated, “I do not see the risk of a schism; I fear instead a journey backward” to “the postconciliar debate between conservatives and progressives” over the legacy of Vatican II.
He sees the return of this in “the re-emergence in agitated tones” of “the sterile contraposition” between “the guardians of Tradition rigidly understood” and “the proponents of what is intended to be the adaptation of practice and doctrine to worldly demands.” But like Pope Francis, Cardinal Scola believes the way to overcome these tensions is to entrust oneself to the Holy Spirit, “who does not allow himself to be harnessed by the logic of the opposing camps.”   (emphasis mine)

He that cannot forgive others

"He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for every one has need to be forgiven."—Herbert
The New Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Quotations, Rev. Tryon Edwards, 1908, 2012

Attributed to George Herbert, British poet, 1593-1633, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_herbert_397815

“He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.”

 Attributed to George Herbert, British poet, 1593-1633,
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/214213-he-who-cannot-forgive-breaks-the-bridge-over-which-he

"He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself, for every man hath need to be forgiven." —Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1583-1648

Sidney Lee (ed.) The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1906). P. 34
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) was a British soldier, diplomat, historian, poet, autobiographer and metaphysician, sometimes called "the father of deism". 
The poet George Herbert was his brother.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Herbert,_1st_Baron_Herbert_of_Cherbury

the prudent wife

"The modest virgin, the prudent wife; or the careful matron are much more serviceable in life than petticotted philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes."

~ Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).

rejoice if God found a use for your efforts

"I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone --or Something --and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."

"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."

“We act in faith—and miracles occur.”

“Your own efforts ‘did not bring it to pass,’ only God—but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in his work. Rejoice if you feel that what you did was 'necessary,' but remember, even so, that you were simply the instrument by means of which He added one tiny grain to the Universe He has created for His own purposes."
(written Christmas Eve, 1956, Markings)

~ Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 - 1961,
Swedish economist and diplomat,
second Secretary-General of the United Nations

Can't we just . . .

"Do we have to know who's gay and who's straight? Can't we just love everybody and judge them by the car they drive?"

~ Ellen Degeneres

Hold onto each other

"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."

~ Audrey Hepburn

Love recognizes no barriers

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope."

~ Maya Angelou

Only love can drive out hate

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness."

quotes from Google on love and forgiveness:

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
~ Peter Ustinov, English actor, 1921-2004

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me."
~ Beyoncé

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. Forgiveness is the Final Act of Love."
~ Beyoncé, 2014

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness."
~ Jan Karon

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness."
~ Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, 2015

(may be in chronological order)

In Tragedy, Robert Kennedy Quoted Aeschylus

https://bigthink.com/Think-See-Feel/in-tragedy-kennedy-quoted-aeschylus
In Tragedy, Kennedy Quoted Aeschylus
Lea Carpenter
11 January, 2011
On the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy had to give a speech. In a world before blogs, Kennedy was in the awkward, yet history-making position of having to break news to his audience; this was the first the Indiana crowd had heard of King’s death. The speech is exceptional, even when considered within the canon of Kennedy’s often classic, and often literary, brilliance.
What was extraordinary was how frankly, and calmly, Kennedy addressed the anger and hate that underlies irrational acts. He told what had happened, and he went right into calm. He was not angry, or even emotional. The audience followed this lead.
RFK was in a position to empathize. In one of the most memorable moments in the speech, he connects to his audience by reminding them that his brother was also killed—“by a white man.” Implicit in this is another irrationality—the irrationality of generalizations, whether about race, or religion, or any other pat demographic stat. He urged understanding.
And then he referenced something—some words—that had helped him.
Kennedy said:
"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote,
'And even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.'

What we need in the United States is not division. what we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice to those who still suffer in our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

We are not hearing a lot about Aeschylus today. Aeschylus knew tragedy. “Wisdom through the awful grace of God” is an amazing line, one that not only subverts an idea, but also an emotion.

Kennedy only spoke briefly, but by the end of his talk the crowd was cheering. Also famously, Indianapolis was peaceful that night, while all around the country there were fires in the streets.

Kennedy pointed out that moments like these are times for us to look inward and ask “what kind of nation we are.” This is one of those moments. We will watch how many in positions of power and visibility adopt a position of peace.

Lea Carpenter was a Founding Editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope. She graduated from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. Her Harvard University Commencement Address, “Auden and The Little Things,” was about the need for poetry in our lives. She lives in New York with her husband and son where she produces programming for the New York Public Library. She formerly wrote the Think, See, Feel blog for BigThink.
© Copyright 2007-2019 BigThink.com

accept it and realize it and deal with it

'From worst to first': These states have tamed coronavirus, even after reopening. Here's how they're doing it, and why they can't let up
By Holly Yan, CNN
Wed July 15, 2020
quote:
On March 20, as Covid-19 was spiraling out of control in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced all employees of nonessential businesses must stay home. It was one of the earliest shutdown mandates in the country.
"If someone is unhappy, if somebody wants to blame someone, or complain about someone, blame me. There is no one else who is responsible for this decision," Cuomo said that day. "This is not life as usual. And accept it and realize it and deal with it."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/health/coronavirus-under-control-states/index.html  (emphasis mine)