"Love is not feeling, child, nor even the passion of lovers, which always seeks only its own gratification. It is the act of caring, of giving, the act of protecting the weak, the helpless, the imprisoned and the desperate. Love is the hand raised in defence. You cannot love and keep your hands clean."  -- Patricia Dunker

[A] new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.  -- Nelson Mandela

“In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?”  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear God,

Speak gently in my silence.
When the loud outer noises of my surroundings
and the loud inner noises of my fears
keep pulling me away from you,
help me to trust that you are still there
even when I am unable to hear you.
Give me ears to listen to your small, soft voice saying:
“Come to me, you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest . . .
for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Let that loving voice be my guide.

Amen.

--Henri Nouwen

"And then all that divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again."

—Judy Chicago

"The simple act of being completely attentive and present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakable well-being."  —Sharon Salzberg

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."  -- Thomas Campbell

It seems there is no greater cauldron for change and transformation than some descent into darkness, a whale’s belly. Then after time - a period of incubation - being spewed out onto new shores; or like a newborn, struggle from the womb. Just when we think the end has come, a new day dawns.
-- Liz Milani

"Justice ceases to be just when it ceases to be human."  -- St. Katharine Drexel

The Pope on Judas

“Judas is a difficult character to understand; there have been so many interpretations of his personality. In the end, however, when he sees what he has done, he turns to the ‘righteous,’ to the priests: ‘I have sinned: I handed over an innocent man to be killed.’ They answer him: ‘What does that matter to us? That’s your affair.’ (Matthew 27:3-10) Then he goes away with that guilt that suffocates him … Perhaps if he had met the Virgin Mary, things would have gone differently, but the poor man goes away, doesn’t find a way out of his situation, and he went to hang himself.”

“But, there’s one thing that makes me think that Judas’ story doesn’t end there … Perhaps someone might think, ‘this pope is a heretic…’ But, no! They should go see a particular medieval capital of a column in the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalen in Vézelay, Burgundy [in France],” he said. “On that capital, on one side there is Judas, hanged; but on the other is the Good Shepherd who is carrying him on his shoulders and is carrying him away.” 

He revealed that he has a photograph of that two-part capital behind his desk, because it helps him meditate. “There is a smile on the lips of the Good Shepherd, which I wouldn’t say is ironic, but a little bit complicit,” he describes.



“There are many ways of reacting to shame; one is to despair, but we must try to help despairing people to find the true path of shame, so they don’t go down the path that put an end to Judas’ life … Shame is a grace,” the pope said.

(Ary Waldir Ramos Diaz, “Pope: What would have happened if Judas had met Our Lady on his way to kill himself?”, Aleteia, Nov. 24, 2017)

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."  —Rachel Carson

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”  
--D.H. Lawrence

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart."  —Helen Keller

"Nonviolence, Gandhi urges, is the spirit behind the action. . . . (Protesters) must ask themselves: Was the act intended to harm an opponent or alienate someone? Was it done out of fear instead of courage? Did it strive to maintain the dignity of all parties involved? These questions are not easy to answer. They require a lot of introspection and humility."  —Michael Nagler

"Until enough white people find the brutalizing and killing of black people by white people — including police — intolerable and unacceptable and necessary to change, it will go on and on and on."  --Jim Wallis

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.  - Audre Lorde

"The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind, but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day."  —Peter Matthiessen

"The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like a monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part."  —Annie Dillard

“To have a friend: to keep him. To follow him with your eyes. Still to see him when he is no longer there and to try to know, listen to, or read him when you know that you will see him no longer—and that is to cry.

“To have a friend, to look at him, to follow him with your eyes, to admire him in friendship, is to know in a more intense way, already injured, always insistent, and more and more unforgettable, that one of the two of you will inevitably see the other die. One of us, each says to himself, the day will come when one of the two of us will see himself no longer seeing the other and so will carry the other within him a while longer, his eyes following without seeing, the world suspended by some unique tear, each time unique, through which everything from then on, through which the world itself—and this day will come—will come to be reflected quivering, reflecting disappearance itself: the world, the whole world, the world itself, for death takes from us not only some particular life within the world, some moment that belongs to us, but, each time, without limit, someone through whom the world, and first of all our own world, will have opened up in a both finite and infinite—mortally infinite—way. That is the blurred and transparent testimony borne by this tear, this small, infinitely small, tear, which the mourning of friends passes through and endures even before death, and always singularly so, always irreplaceably."

--Jacques Derrida

"Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it." --Richard Rohr

“Waste” Your time with God

"John Eudes talked about that moment, that point, that lies before comparison, before the beginning of the vicious cycle or the self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the moment, point, or place where meditation can enter in. It is the moment to stop reading, speaking, socializing, and to “waste” your time in meditation. When you find your mind competing again, you might plan an “empty time” of meditation, in this way interrupting the vicious circle of your ruminations and entering into the depth of your own soul. There you can be with him who was before you came, who loved you before you could love, and has given you your own self before any comparison was possible. In meditation we can come to the affirmation that we are not created by other people but by God, that we are not judged by how we compare with others but by how we fulfill the will of God."
--Henri Nouwen