A Monastic Revolution

Shane Claiborne Interview [Excerpts from July 1, 2010 interview with Krista Tippett]

MR. CLAIBORNE: And I love when Dorothy Day said, ‘Don’t call us saints because we don’t want to be dismissed that easily.’

MS. TIPPETT: How would you respond to someone who said, ‘Well, you know, these stories you tell about good things happening are beautiful in these communities, but it’s anecdotal and it’s just one person here, one person there, one small group of people here, one small group of people there. Why, you’re not going to really change the world.’ And how would you — how do you respond to that?

MR. CLAIBORNE: Well, I’d say if we looked a little closer at history, we see that that’s the only way it’s ever been done, you know, and that these groups of people begin to come together and ripple new imagination and ideas that are very contagious. And I especially look at the story of my faith, you know. And Jesus’ chooses this little group of people where, what a bunch of, you know, goofballs. I mean, one of them denies him, another betrays him, and another doubts him. And yet, it’s that little group of people that, even in the midst of that brokenness, I think, is a testimony of God’s goodness, and that the movement builds. And the Christian mystics know that so well because they say that ‘God’s spirit comes through the cracks and not through the togetherness.’

And

MR. CLAIBORNE: Yeah. They’re so young. They’ll hitchhike across the country and end up at our door, you know. We’re, like, well, we’re not taking visitors right now, except we did have a visitor that showed up the other day that had hitchhiked up from Liberty University, which is where Jerry Falwell …

MS. TIPPETT: All right.

MR. CLAIBORNE: … you know, that’s his school. We’re like, ‘Well, we’ll make an exception. Come on in,’ you know. But we — it’s so encouraging that there are people that are out there asking that. I think the world’s a little smaller and folks are, they want to know where their clothes are made. They want to know, you know, where their food comes from. And there are people that, over and over, where I — I go places that folks have seen the emptiness of the dream that their parents have settled for, where we’ve been sold this idea of the American Dream, that they’ve seen just can end up being loneliness, you know. And can rob us of community and joy and life.

And so, they are looking for something more. They want to volunteer. They want to do something bigger than that. And I think that’s why you have, like, folks joining the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps and all these programs, you know. But you also have folks that I think are asking great questions about who, not just what they’re going to do when they grow up, but who they are becoming. And I think that’s a much more important question. It’s not whether or not we’re going to be a lawyer or a doctor but what kind of lawyer or doctor we’re going to be.

MS. TIPPETT: Shane Claiborne is a founding member of The Simple Way community in North Philadelphia. His books include The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.

Additional Shane Claiborne Quotes

“But initially, when we started the [The Simple Way] community, we were just responding to crisis, you know. And then there comes a point, as Dr. Martin Luther King said so well, where we’re called to be the Good Samaritan and lift our neighbor out of the ditch. But after you lift so many people out of the ditch, you start to say, Maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be transformed.”

–Shane Claiborne [A Monastic Revolution (On Being with Krista Tippet Interview)]

“Everywhere I go, I am so encouraged by the questions that people are asking, especially even within the Evangelical church that’s been so scared of a lot of those questions. Most people my age that I see, even within the Evangelical church, transcend categories of left and right, and really are wanting to know how to create a better world. And they know that the world we’ve been handed is very fragile. They say, we need to figure out how to live differently ourselves and how to live with some imagination and some creativity, and give ourselves to something bigger than just our own little circle of friends.”

–Shane Claiborne [A Monastic Revolution (On Being with Krista Tippet Interview)]

“I’m reminded of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said: “These are extreme times. And the question isn’t whether or not we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will you be extremists for love or for hatred?””

–Shane Claiborne [A Monastic Revolution (On Being with Krista Tippet Interview)]