Blogs

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.

- John Green -

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at the sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

Zora Neale Hurston
Dust Tracks on a Road

Serendipity is the faculty of finding things we did not know we were looking for.

- Glauco Ortolano –

Each of our relationships has a trajectory that death doesn't destroy. We see its arc in the inner changes we undergo when we remember deceased loved ones, and even in outward changes as we continue to mold our lives in response to theirs.

Patricia Campbell Carlson

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

- Basho -

All the children who are held and loved...will know how to love others. Spread these virtues in the world. Nothing more need be done.

Meng Zi, c. 300 BCE

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

- Albert Einstein –

O Great Spirit, I awake to another sun, grateful for gifts bestowed, granted one by one.

Twylah Nitsch
Seneca Medicine Woman

A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.

- Saint Basil –

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas

"The Bright Field," from Laboratories of the Spirit

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

- Rumi -

The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.

Heda Bejar

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates -

To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less.

Ronald Rolheiser
The Holy Longing; New York/NY; Doubleday; 2011. (p.66)

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears. And how else can it be?

- Kahlil Gibran -

Alan Watts

All works of love are works of peace.

- Mother Teresa -

When one leaves for the stars, that person will be the one to blink at you in the night-sky and show you the way. While s/he will no longer be able to touch your hands s/he will forever be able to touch your heart.

Karla A. Claeys, M.A

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

- Pearl S. Buck –

The greatest surprise is that there is anything at all -- that we are here.

David Steindl-Rast

Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer

We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

- Anais Nin –

The louder our world today is, the deeper God seems to remain in silence. Silence is the language of eternity; noise passes.

Gertrud von Le Fort

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

William Bruce Cameron

True compassion is not just an emotional response, but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change, even if they behave negatively. Through universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

All of the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

- Blaise Pascal -

When we come upon beautiful things . . . they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.

Elaine Scarry
On Beauty and Being Just

Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

- Maya Angelou –

Gradually one's mastery in contemplation extends from the primal atom to the greatest magnitude.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1.40

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

- Peace Pilgrim –

Wherever I go - only Thou! Wherever I stand - only Thou! Just Thou, again Thou! Always Thou! Thou, Thou, Thou! When things are good, Thou! When things are bad, Thou! Thou, Thou, Thou!

Hasidic Song

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

- Oscar Wilde –

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Blessed Mother Teresa

Being rich of heart makes you wealthy beyond compare

- Rodney Williams –

Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Many things - such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them.

- C.S. Lewis –

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.

A life practice from Br. David Steindl-Rast

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

- C.S. Lewis –

When all your desires are distilled you will cast just two votes: To love more and be happy.

Hafiz

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.

- Albert Einstein –

Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.

- Kenyan Proverb –

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer.

Maya Angelou

Deliberately dare to slow down your life when everything in you — or around you — is screaming “rush!”

Your success and happiness lie in you....Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Helen Keller

Connecting the mind and body is not just a health strategy. It is a movement of consciousness that can change the world.

- Matthew Sanford –

there is only one side to every story:
that is EQUANIMITY.

What we need is not the will to believe but the will to find out.

- Bertrand Russell -

Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.

Florida Scott-Maxwell
The Measure of My Days