"Crazy, But Not Alone"

"I used to think that those of us who hope for things we cannot see and who believe that the world can be different than it is were the crazy ones. We are usually called that by people who spend their lives trying to convince everyone that the crazy things that they do actually make sense. Now more and more people are starting to imagine that maybe another world is possible and necessary and actually quite imaginable. I'm starting to wonder if, actually, we have gone sane in a mad world. In a world of smart bombs and military intelligence, we need more fools, holy fools who insist that the folly of the cross is wiser than any human power. And the world may call us crazy.

The good-humoured teacher and street-corner prophet Peter Maurin, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, put it this way: 'If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy.’ What’s crazy is a matter of perspective. After all, what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone? What is crazier: spending billions of dollars on a defense shield, or suggesting that we share our billions of dollars so we don’t need a defense shield? What is crazier: maintaining arms contracts with 154 countries while asking the world to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, or suggesting that we lead the world in disarmament by refusing to deal weapons with over half of the world and by emptying the world’s largest stockpile here at home?"

-Shane Claiborne in 'The Irresistible Revolution' pg. 344.