The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
Socrates

It’s that simple.

We spend much time getting annoyed and frustrated, sometimes very sad, trying to change the old. Arguing with systems. Trying to change rules. Hoping that something, somewhere, will finally shift. And we get exhausted.

What if, instead, we left all this behind and put our energy into building the new? Into creating something that wasn’t there before. Into shaping a different way of living, caring, and being together.

Seeing it in small things first. In a silent smile breaking through a long silence. A family finding hope. A moment that says: there is still more here.

Change doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t need to shout. Sometimes it is just a small step — forward, sideways, or even back — but it opens up a space that wasn’t there before.

Trying to change the old has its place, but it rarely gives life. Building the new does. And that is where our energy, however little of it we may have, is best spent.

Sometimes, walking away would be easier. Anybody can do easy. We will stay.

God has no other hands than ours.

Last night we listened to a very unusual sermon. A catholic priest talking about a protestant theologian whose believe it was that we are “God’s hands” in alleviating pain, fighting oppression, and creating healing structures. That because God does not magically intervene, humans are called to resist suffering where it is caused by injustice. That we cannot say that we didn’t know. That it was of no concern to us. That we did not understand. That we could not change anything anyway.

In the face of suffering you cannot sit on the fence. You have to take sides. And you have to act. Otherwise, you become complicit.

The German theologian Dorothee Sölle (1929-2003) believed that confronting suffering leads to a deeper spirituality. That prayer and union with God empower us to act against suffering, not to escape from it.

In her book “Suffering”, or “Leiden“, she says that suffering should not lead to passivity or silent endurance and makes a case against resignation. She says suffering becomes bearable when it is shared. For her, suffering should not be glorified but transformed into action. Suffering should “become protest”. In other words, the good fight is to turn pain into resistance and hope.

For Sölle, love is an act of resistance — because to love in the face of suffering is already part of the struggle against it.

Not in a long, long time have I heard a call to action against suffering caused by injustice so convincingly and clearly.

Stay with us. Don’t walk away.

Join us.