Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
Reply to @TheBruderhof

@TheBruderhof Paradise begins where breath meets labor. This is not metaphor. It is action, not abstraction—the incarnation practiced at ground level. Dirt under fingernails. Jim Wallis: "Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are the peace-lovers.' He said, 'peacemakers.'" The labor of peace is handmade.

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3rd Way Thread. Transcending the distinction between ‘ora et labora’, work & prayer. Matthew Fox: “Clearly, work is at the center of adult living.” Rilke: “Somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life & the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.” 1/ @RevDrMatthewFox “How readily the idea of work as a role fits a new cosmology, that of work playing a role in making the cosmic wheel go around.” N.O.Brown: “Work is mystical.” 2/ “Our action in the world matters," notes @RichardRohrOFM, "because it contributes both to the deeper incarnation of God and to the redemptive gathering of the whole world.” @RevDrMatthewFox: “We are talking about resacralizing our work worlds and therefore our whole world." 3/ “Work is that which puts us in touch with others, not so much at the level of personal interaction, but at the level of service in the community. A spirituality of work is about bringing life and livelihood back together again. And Spirit with them.” - Fox /4 “The environmental crisis tells us much about our crisis in work today, furnishing us with an opportunity & a responsibility to ask deeper questions of work. To ask how a spirituality of work might assist us in redefining how, why, and for whom we do our work.” @RevDrMatthewFox What is it to heal the Earth and ourselves in the concomitant embrace of a single garment of destiny? Hundertwasser: “Paradises can only be made with our _own_ hands, with our _own_ creativity in harmony with the true creative spirit of nature.” /7 N. O. Brown: “To find meaning is to find work. In alchemy, the Great Work of Transformation; transform the nature of work. Labor is fertility. Instead of Gross Natural Product, reproduction. Reproduction of the eternal earth. Ecology instead of economy.” Brown: “And labor to be an act of love. Homo laborans, man in labor, is man amans amare, in love with loving, and seeking an object for his love. Return culture to the root; rediscover our roots, the radicalism. The Garden Project.” N. O. Brown: “Laborare est orare, to labor is to pray. Overcoming the distinction between the active and the contemplative. Overcoming the distinction between works and grace. The Garden Project.” The heaven of earth, made Real. The Third Way.

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Nick Routledge@nick_routledge · 11 Jun 2025

23/ “If you dream of Paradise, you must work for it,” Nund Rishi averred. The Kingdom isn't a theory. It's a method. Jesus the carpenter, Kabir the weaver, Nund Rishi the farmer. Their theology came with calluses. The praxis of the poor—one loaf, one coat, one sapling at a time.

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How beautiful is friendship forged in the infinitely penetrating natural intelligence of deep diversity work? My goodness, what delight and yes, sweet care, among pan-bioregional pals of the #AgrarianSharingNetwork at our first planning meeting for 2022, this eve. Find us on FB.

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“Diversity needs to be understood as a primary expression of beauty, and also, therefore, as one of the primary values of Spirit in an evolutionary universe." - Bruce Sanguin. Then, there’s grounding the realpolitik. Take the work of the #AgrarianSharingNetwork for example. x.com/nick_routledge…
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Copy of tweet here: How beautiful is friendship forged in the infinitely penetrating natural intelligence of deep diversity work? My goodness, what delight and yes, sweet care, among pan-bioregional pals of the #AgrarianSharingNetwork at our first planning meeting for 2022, this eve. Find us on FB. Image of description of Agrarian Sharing Network … [deletion for alt-text limit] Quote tweet: · “Diversity needs to be understood as a primary expression of beauty, and also, therefore, as one of the primary values of Spirit in an evolutionary universe." - Bruce Sanguin. Then, there’s grounding the realpolitik. Take the work of the #AgrarianSharingNetwork for example. x.com/nick_routledge…

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Quoted by@HaddenTurner @affinitytalks end\ It seems fitting that today is 'Plough Monday'—the year’s anointing: scent of turned earth and shared bread, sweat as prayer, hands as liturgy. Cross-shaped work, quietly faithful—Paradise and Kingdom collapsing into one incarnate Yes, refusing mastery, refusing escape.Quoted by@MutualSociology 3/ For them the Kingdom/messianic age isn’t postponed reward but present form: I–Thou relation, a common purse, shared work, communities as dialogical. Experiments like @TheBruderhof, Catholic Worker, @KoinoniaFarm and the Ark aver the Beatitudes name reality’s final structure.