QUOTABLE QUOTES

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" St..Luke

"There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others". John Ruskin, Unto This Last

"Money is human happiness in the abstract: and so, the person who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete sets his whole heart on money" Arthur Schopenauer

"Those who swallow usury cannot rise except as one whom Satan has prostrate by his touch" The Koran

"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

The God Thing: Ecumenical' derives from roots meaning something akin to 'one inhabited earth' : thus this noble offering on a word that can be closely linked with the intention of the God thing, the Tao, spirituality and all attempts in good faith to sense, if not ever fully to find, the ultimate context for a dynamic economic system based on just living and shalom.......

A CONTRIBUTION TO 'INSTINCTIVE' ECUMENISM' ...... SELF-TRANSCENDENCE - A VITAL VALUE IN COMPLEXITY AND IN LIVING SYSTEMS AND THE SEARCH FOR INCLUSIVE JUSTICE

'In today's multi-cultural world, the truly reliable party to co-existence, to peace ful co-existence and creative co-operation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinions, convictions, antipathies and sympathies : it must be rooted in self-transcendence.

Transcendence as a hand reaching out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe: transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant form us in time and space, but which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world. Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction." Vaclav Havel

"Inclusive justice requires learning to slay giants without slaying or flaying people; to alter mindsets without affronting the dignity of those who differ on the fundamental flaws in our economic system."