In Irresistible Revolution Shane Claiborne presents himself as an 'ordinary radical', suggesting that he is no-one special and that the way he lives and advocates is open to all. Even though he presents his case convincingly, I am not so sure. Certainly Claiborne is an ordinary human being - he eats, he drinks, he gets tired, he shits out of the same hole as the rest of us. But the direction he has taken in his life is quite extraordinary. I read about his life and I think "I couldn't do that". I feel the same when I experience this close to home. I have some friends who have spent most of the past two decades living in various slums in India. Their children have grown up living in one-room dwellings without sanitation or running water, surrounded by poverty and hardship. Of course many people have to live this way but they didn't, they chose it. I know for sure that they are ordinary people, a lot like me in many ways, and that their children don&
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson