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"So grateful for the work…Mike Schut has done forever and ever. That to me is some of the best work that has gone on." - Bill McKibben in a talk given at Seattle University
Welcome! My name is Mike Schut. I have worked to connect faith and spirituality with caring for the least of these in the field of faith-based eco-justice education and advocacy for almost 20 years. I especially enjoy opportunities to:
The following three phases do a pretty good job of summarizing what I hope to do in my work and life…and through the retreats and workshops I lead and the speaking and writing I do. |
Celebrating Beauty Nurturing Compassion Joining with Justice
Celebrating Beauty: This place where we all live is beyond beautiful. Let's become connoisseurs of that beauty--noticing it, appreciating it, protecting it.
Nurturing Compassion: Full-throated compassion is powerful and speaks to our capacity to "suffer with." The Dalai Lama has said it "seems to be the greatest power." Frederick Buechner writes that "Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another's skin, knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy finally for all." To me, compassion is felt as empathy and embodied in movement toward equity and justice.
Joining with Justice: Martin Luther King famously proclaimed, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." To believe that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, takes faith and courage. And it's not at all easy in this interconnected and complicated world to practice living justly, or know exactly what it means. I want to join with those working for justice wherever they may be found--those resisting the concentration of power in the hands of a few, those working for climate justice, those raising their own voices from the underside of history.
Nurturing Compassion: Full-throated compassion is powerful and speaks to our capacity to "suffer with." The Dalai Lama has said it "seems to be the greatest power." Frederick Buechner writes that "Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another's skin, knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy finally for all." To me, compassion is felt as empathy and embodied in movement toward equity and justice.
Joining with Justice: Martin Luther King famously proclaimed, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." To believe that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, takes faith and courage. And it's not at all easy in this interconnected and complicated world to practice living justly, or know exactly what it means. I want to join with those working for justice wherever they may be found--those resisting the concentration of power in the hands of a few, those working for climate justice, those raising their own voices from the underside of history.