DECEMBER 2022
The Society of Urban Monks is an active worldwide community of people who are involved in encountering, elucidating, and ending social issues and injustices in the communities, cities, regions, and countries in which they live, work, worship, recreate, socialize, and/or serve.

Urban Monks share resources with community members as a means of supporting each other's efforts to help bring healing and transformation amidst injurious and ill-fated incidents that have suddenly created or exacerbated seemingly intractable social conditions.

The following posts were shared on the community's web site to increasingly enrich the efforts of Urban Monks to publicly work with others to help solve social issues and injustices.
RESOURCES
Urban Monks help each other further develop their efforts to help solve social struggles with others by sharing resources.
PRAYER

Mysticism is a passionate love affair between the mystic and God that fuels the hopes and dreams of a better society not just for oneself but for everyone. Such passion has been expressed in prayers by mystics that are known to us today. Their inclusive language is often intimate, sweet, and tender while in intercessory communion with a loving God.

In his "Nativity Prayer," St. Bernard of Clairvaux affectionately prays

Caress us with Your tiny hands,
embrace us with Your tiny arms and
pierce our hearts with Your soft, sweet cries.

Click here for the entire prayer.

St. Gertrude the Great, in her prayer entitled "Greetings to the Child Jesus," is equally sweet, tender, and intimate as she opens with

Hail, most loving little Jesus, sweetest love, far above all created love!
I greet Thee, and in the desires of all Christendom I embrace Thee.
Hail, most charming little Jesus, noble Child of Nazareth,
full rose of Jericho, blooming flower from Heaven!
Draw our hearts to Thyself and refresh
them with Thy sweetness.

Click here for the entire prayer.

You are encouraged to pray these prayers with the same tender, sweet, and intimate spirit expressed by these mystics while in intercessory communion with a loving and caring God whom you can ask to caress and embrace us and to pierce our hearts and draw our hearts to be refreshed with thy sweetness. 
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
 I will honor Christmas in my heart
and try to keep it all the year.
--Charles Dickens--

Submitted by Sandi Romero
Click here to comment.


Let our hearts be open like a cradle
so that Christ can be born in each soul tonight
and from there flood every heart with light.
--Oscar Romero--

Submitted by Cory Piña
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--Howard Thurman--

Submitted by Sofia Herrera
Click here to comment

MUSIC
Christmas Carols that Integrate the Spirit of Solving Social Struggles

Christmas Carols that integrate lyrics that express the spirit of solving social struggles include

O Holy Night

Minister and social activist John Sullivan Dwight (1813 – 1893) began the English version of O Holy Night with the opening stanza

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth

And in a following stanza the ardent abolitionist wrote that the King of Kings

Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother
And in his name all oppression shall cease

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Minister and Theologian Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810 – 1876) began It Came Upon a Midnight Clear with

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heav’n’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

And in a following stanza the pacifist preacher wrote that we need to hear the angels sing today because

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

Submitted by Joe Colletti
Click here to comment.
SHARE A RESOURCE
Share a resource that you feel would help Urban Monks further develop their efforts to help solve social struggles with others.

Your resource will be included in the following month’s Journal. Click here to share a resource. 
LEAVE A LEGACY
Urban Monks are encouraged to help build a legacy of spiritual principles, spiritual practices, and vignettes that help right social wrongs which will be promoted by the Society of Urban Monks for years to come.

SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES
Share a spiritual principle that you are integrating into your efforts to help solve a social struggle with others.

Your resource will be included in the following month’s Journal. Click here to share.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
Share a spiritual practice that you are integrating into your efforts to help solve a social struggle with others.

Your resource will be included in the following month’s Journal. Click here to share.
VIGNETTES
Share a vignette involving

  • a person, group of persons, a meeting, workshop, conference, art, movie, or television show that helped shape a spiritual principle or practice that you integrated into your efforts to help solve social problems with others;
  • a spiritual mystic or social reformer's spiritual principle(s) or practice(s) whose efforts to help solve a seemingly intractable social struggle(s) were inspirational; or
  • an ancient or contemporary spiritual principle or practice that you are using to help solve a contemporary social prejudice with others.

Your resource will be included in the following month’s Journal. Click here to share.

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