"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door."  --Emily Dickinson

"Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope."  --Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark (2004)

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."  --Mary Tyler Moore

Born to Reconcile

"If you dare to believe that you are beloved before you are born, you may suddenly realize that your life is very, very special. You become conscious that you were sent here just for a short time, for twenty, forty, or eighty years, to discover and believe that you are a beloved child of God. The length of time doesn’t matter. You are sent into this world to believe in yourself as God’s chosen one and then to help your brothers and sisters know that they are also Beloved Sons and Daughters of God who belong together. You’re sent into this world to be a people of reconciliation. You are sent to heal, to break down the walls between you and your neighbors, locally, nationally, and globally. Before all distinctions, the separations, and the walls built on foundations of fear, there was a unity in the mind and heart of God. Out of that unity, you are sent into this world for a little while to claim that you and every other human being belongs to the same God of Love who lives from eternity to eternity."  --Henri Nouwen

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When one loves, one does not calculate."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."  --Carrie Fisher

"After years of seeking the truth, Gandhi began to trust everyone, forgive everyone, believe in the potential for goodness within everyone, and see God in everyone. He urged people to seek the truth as a way of life, to work at it daily, so that we move closer to truth and goodness."  --John Dear

Christmas is not a magical event, a Cinderella story without midnight. Rather its very centre speaks of humiliation, pain, and forced fleeing which is not unlike that being experienced by millions of refugees and victims of injustice on our planet today. The Christmas story mirrors the struggle that’s being experienced within our own world and within our own tired hearts ... 

The incarnate God is called Emmanuel, a name which means God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Our world remains wounded, and wars, strikes, selfishness, and bitterness linger. Our hearts too remain wounded. Pain lingers. For a Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be incompleteness, illness, death, senseless hurt, broken dreams, cold, hungry, lonely days of bitterness and a lifetime of inconsummation. Reality can be harsh and Christmas does not ask us to make make-believe. The incarnation does not promise heaven on earth. It promises heaven in heaven. Here, on earth, it promises us something else – God’s presence in our lives. This presence redeems because knowing that God is with us is what ultimately empowers us to give up bitterness, to forgive, and to move beyond cynicism and bitterness. When God is with us then pain and happiness are not mutually exclusive and the agonies and riddles of life do not exclude deep meaning and deep joy.

In the words of Avery Dulles: “The incarnation does not provide us with a ladder by which to escape from the ambiguities of life and scale the heights of heaven. Rather, it enables us to burrow deep into the heart of planet earth and find it shimmering with divinity.”

--Ron Rolheiser, OMI

"Once they saw a star that pointed to a promised land, to a land of peace. Peacemakers set out to follow that star. It is both a joyful and arduous journey. Sometimes the star shines brightly, the promise seems certain, and, the pilgrims can sing. ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring God's peace.’ Often the star disappears, clouded over, hidden from view, and the pilgrims grope blindly, grow discouraged, get weary, give thought to settling down, to forgetting the promise of peace. . . . An occasional oasis for the spirit is essential, a time to feast on the refreshing waters, the rich food of the spirit in order to get strength to continue the pilgrimage through darkness, star-shine or not."  --Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB

"Death looms large I guess because it should. It's the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It's the only thing we've really got, and I don't mean to sound bleak about this, but it's a unifying factor amongst us all."  --Nick Cave

"All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas.."  --Nick Cave

"People often can't separate, or can't understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it's a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there's a deep anxiety going on."  --Nick Cave

 "I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become."  --Nick Cave

“Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.”  --Nick Cave

"I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point."  --Nick Cave

Who has not found the Heaven – below – Will fail of it above."  -- Emily Dickinson

"Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are."  --Nick Cave

“I don’t want anything from you, at all. I just want to be the person you choose to sit next to in a room full with all the people you have known.”  --Anon

"Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited."  --Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (1966)

Be Free

"The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world—free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless; free also to receive love from people and to be grateful for all the signs of God’s presence in the world. I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries."  --Henri Nouwen

"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."  --Gore Vidal

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”  --Rainer Maria Rilke

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive."  --Anaïs Nin

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."  --Robert F Kennedy

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."  --Haile Selassie

"It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks."  --Dina Nayeri

"Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance."  --Martha Graham

"The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder."  --Richard Bach

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference."  --Elie Wiesel

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."  --Bertrand Russell

The Christ Child Within

"I think that we have hardly thought through the immense implications of the mystery of the incarnation. Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless. How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power? I increasingly believe that our faithfulness will depend on our willingness to go where there is brokenness, loneliness, and human need. . . . Each one of us is very seriously searching to live and grow in this belief, and by friendship we can support each other. I realize that the only way for us to stay well in the midst of the many “worlds” is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being. Often we do not know that the Christ child is within us. When we discover him we can truly rejoice."  --Henri Nouwen

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."  --Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle."  --Fred Rogers, Wisdom from the World According to Mister Rogers (2003)

"If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be."  --Maya Angelou

Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed

To live in a land

Where justice is a game.
--Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

"If I can do no more, let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.  --Louisa May Alcott

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."  --Ludwig van Beethoven

"Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."  --Pericles

"Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value."  --Desmond Tutu

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing 

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

--e.e. cummings

“To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.” --Dostoyevsky

"Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. . . . We need to focus on equity, and if the solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself."  --Greta Thunberg

Six interrelated layers of knowing and learning

"Six interrelated layers of knowing and learning

1) information;

2) knowledge (where direct experience brings information to the level of mastery and skill);

3) intelligence (integrating intuitive and analytic),

4) understanding (seeing with the eye of the heart);

5) wisdom (blending truth with an ethic of what is right);

6) and finally transformation."

--Tobin Hart

"No one is useless in this world... who lightens the burden of it for any one else."  --Charles Dickens “Our Mutual Friend”

"I also like to think that after the slight shock of separation you will not feel any sorrow … and that if you should sometimes happen to think of me you will do so as one thinks of a book one read in childhood. I do not want ever to occupy a different place from that in the hearts of those I love, because then I can be sure of never causing them any unhappiness."  --Simone Weil 

“You are the author of your story ... Own your weird, your truth, your good and bad. We are the sum of all our pieces. Pursue your happiness, spread love, lift each other up…and Rock on."  --Lzzy Hale

100 years ago Jesus protected Our Lady of Guadalupe in a bomb attack

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249660/our-lady-of-guadalupe-bomb-attack?

100 years ago Jesus protected Our Lady of Guadalupe in a bomb attack

 

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Mexico. | David Ramos/CNA Staff
By CNA Staff
Mexico City Newsroom, Nov 20, 2021 / 09:22 am

A century ago, in 1921, there was an attack perpetrated against Our Lady of Guadalupe in the old basilica in Mexico City, in which the Marian image was protected by a crucifix.

“Nov. 14 marks the 100th anniversary of the terrible attack against the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe. They wanted to destroy her blessed image,” Father Eduardo Chávez, doctor in Church history and general director of the Institute of Guadalupan Studies, told CNA's sister agency ACI Prensa.

"We also commemorate 100 years of the wonderful testimony of Jesus, since it was he who covered, cared for and protected his mother and our mother Saint Mary of Guadalupe," said Chávez, who is also postulator of the cause of canonization of St. Juan Diego, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared.

On Nov. 14, 1921, a bomb exploded that a man had hidden in some flowers that he placed in the basilica.

“Around 10:30 in the morning, a dynamite bomb went off hidden among the flowers. The damages were at the steps of the altar, which are made of marble, the brass candlesticks, and the Sacred Image of our Crucified Lord, that fell to the ground and was left bent,” indicates the story that is in the back of the current basilica, with the crucifix and the photos that were taken after the attack.

The explosion bent the crucifix, which is now is ​​known as "Santo Cristo del Atentado," or "Holy Christ of the Attack.”

"Testimony of this is the Christ who is bent and that we have here in the Basilica of Guadalupe itself as a testimony of the immense love of God, of the marvelous love of God for her and for all of us who still have her here,” Chávez said.

The story recalls that the glass of the painting that protected the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe "did not even crash" after the explosion.

The attack was the prelude to what years later would be religious persecution in Mexico, during the government of Plutarco Elías Calles.

Chávez told ACI Prensa that the Virgin of Guadalupe "takes away our fear" and "gives us the faith and hope to live in love."

The priest recalled that “the most holy image of Guadalupe carries Jesus in her womb, in her immaculate womb. It is the center of the same image and that is why it is a sign of the Church.”
In this sense, he explained, "when trying to destroy the image, they tried to destroy the Church itself and they could not because this comes from God."

“Just as Saint Mary of Guadalupe, in her marvelous image, is the work of God, so the Church is also the work of God. Christ is the head of this blessed church that proclaims truth, justice, love, forgiveness, mercy, what our people need so much today,” Chávez said.

"Since they could not destroy the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, we must never destroy it in our hearts, in our family, our community, our Church," Chávez said. "The Virgin of Guadalupe is here to give us Jesus Christ our Lord, her beloved Son, He who is the center of the Church."

 

THE WEIGHING

THE WEIGHING

by Jane Hirshfield

The heart’s reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

LOVE AFTER LOVE

LOVE AFTER LOVE

by Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

THE TRUELOVE

THE TRUELOVE

by David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely

the one who is rightfully yours,

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on the grey stones

to the shore of baying seals,

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water,

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them

and how we are all

preparing for that

abrupt waking,

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly

so Biblically

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love

so that when

we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and everything confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don’t

because finally

after all this struggle

and all these years

you simply don’t want to

any more

you’ve simply had enough

of drowning

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness

however fluid and however

dangerous to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

FOR WHAT BINDS US

FOR WHAT BINDS US
by Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down —
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest —

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

--Rachael Carson

"I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love — then we wish for knowledge about the subject of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate."  --Rachel Carson

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."  --Martin Luther King

The Blessing Hidden in Grief

"What to do with our losses? . . . We must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply. To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth of our brokenness. Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything is constantly shifting and changing. . . . But in the midst of all this pain, there is a strange, shocking, yet very surprising voice. It is the voice of the One who says: “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.” That’s the unexpected news: there is a blessing hidden in our grief. Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn! Somehow, in the midst of our tears, a gift is hidden. Somehow, in the midst of our mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. Somehow, the cries that well up from our losses belong to our songs of gratitude."  --Henri Nouwen

"French novelist Honore’ de Balzac, “Man has a horror of aloneness, and of all kinds of aloneness, moral aloneness is the most terrible.” Author Ron Rolheiser expands on this: 

“Our deepest aloneness is moral. Where we feel most alone is, precisely, in the deepest part of our being, our moral soul, the place where we feel most strongly about the right and wrong of things and where what is most precious to us is cherished, guarded, and feels violated when it is attacked.”

This loneliness is not satisfied by being around people or participating in activities with others, it is a longing to be truly understood by those around us; for others to see the deep passions and convictions that animate our dreams of how the world should be."  --Kevin Jane 

"All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment so that you get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm, and clarity in your life."  --Andy Puddicombe

"Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon… maybe we will always be asking questions and never be able to fully answer them."  --Brian Greene

"I’ve learned about the poetry and the wisdom and the grace that can be found in the words of people all around us when we simply take the time to listen."  --Dave Isay

"A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed."  --Henrik Ibsen

"Toni Morrison said, ‘The function of freedom is to free someone else,’ and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh well, what are you going to do?"  --Anne Lamott

Love Remembers

It is possible to have intimate relationships with loved ones who have died. Death sometimes deepens the intimacy. . . . [I believe] that after separation certain people continue to be very significant for us in our hearts and through our memories. Remembering them is much more than just thinking of them, because we are making them part of our members, part of our whole being.

Knowing this experience allows me to live from the deep belief that I have love to offer to people, not only here, but also beyond my short, little life. I am a human being who was loved by God before I was born and whom God will love after I die. This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love. When I die love continues to be active, and from full communion with God I am present by love to those I leave behind.

--Henri Nouwen

"Turn your life toward what you love. . . . Become like a tree that shelters other lovers, roots finding secrets beneath, crown top waving in the sunlight no one sees. Be true to that love, not to ownership. Be like wind pouring through forests and clearings, circling mountains, running along rivers. Turn your life to that big love you have always suspected is the country you come from, sing the way they sing there, be that light-hearted and warm-hearted and easy-going even into your death, your sails full of love’s assurance."  --Elias Amidon

Alain de Botton about Reading to a Young Reader

Dear Reader,

We wouldn’t need books quite so much if everyone around us understood us well. But they don’t. Even those who love us get us wrong. They tell us who we are but miss things out. They claim to know what we need, but forget to ask us properly first. They can’t understand what we feel — and sometimes, we’re unable to tell them, because we don’t really understand it ourselves. That’s where books come in. They explain us to ourselves and to others, and make us feel less strange, less isolated and less alone. We might have lots of good friends, but even with the best friends in the world, there are things that no one quite gets. That’s the moment to turn to books. They are friends waiting for us any time we want them, and they will always speak honestly to us about what really matters. They are the perfect cure for loneliness. They can be our very closest friends.

Yours,

Alain [de Botton]

Blessing for Sound

BLESSING FOR SOUND

from The Bell and the Blackbird by David Whyte

I thank you,

for the smallest sound,

for the way my ears open

even before my eyes,

as if to remember

the way everything began

with an original, vibrant, note,

and I thank you for this

everyday original music,

always being rehearsed,

always being played,

always being remembered

as something new

and arriving, a tram line

below in the city street,

gull cries, or a ship’s horn

in the distant harbour,

so that in waking I hear voices

even where there is no voice

and invitations where

there is no invitation

so that I can wake with you

by the ocean, in summer

or in the deepest seemingly

quietest winter,

and be with you

so that I can hear you

even with my eyes closed,

even with my heart closed,

even before I fully wake.

Moments

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.  

Like, telling someone you love them. 

Or giving your money away, all of it.  

Your heart is beating, isn’t it? 

You’re not in chains, are you? 

There is nothing more pathetic than caution 

when headlong might save a life, 

even, possibly, your own.” (Felicity, p. 9)

--Mary Oliver

"We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than just observes. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve."  --Dorothee Sölle, translated by David L. Scheidt, The Inward Road and the Way Back

"In the end, we’ll all become stories."  --Margaret Atwood

"There's a metaphor in that somewhere - like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn't expect, and learning to just be happy with it."  --Lauren Oliver

"Death is not an ending, but a symbol of movement along the path upon which we are all traveling. As it may be painful to lose contact with the physical aspect of one we love, the Spirit can never be lost. We have been and always will be a part of each other."  --John Denver

"It's life, that's all. There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there's not a thing you can do about it."  --Jonathan Tropper

"The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it ... some stories just don't have a happy ending."  --Jodi Picoult

"I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one's breath before the next disaster."  --Robin Hobb

"I'm alive and capable of love, and love is a fucking river. It's never ending and it flows through us, all around us, keeps us alive and decadent, fierce from struggle and genuine in our vulnerability."  --Daniel Jose Older

"I still want to believe that somewhere, somehow, there is a happy ending for every story. It all depends on how thoroughly you look for it and how badly you need it."  --John Pielmeier

"Beginning a new habit, or ending an old one can feel like letting go of a rope that swings a mile above the ground. So we feel reluctant to let go, after all, we've survived so far doing what we've done, why risk it."  --Philippa Perry

"Just because something is over doesn't mean it wasn't incredibly beautiful. Because another lesson I've learned is not all stories have a happy ending and you have to learn how to deal with that."  --Taylor Swift

"I believe with all my heart God's Story has a happy ending ... But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise."  --Elisabeth Elliot

"And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside me.

And i fall back into it."  --Patrick Ness

"Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers."  --Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Pain of Others” (2003)

"What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?"  --Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (2017)

Life Is Precious

"The beauty and preciousness of life is intimately linked with its fragility and mortality. We can experience that every day—when we take a flower in our hands, when we see a butterfly dance in the air, when we caress a little baby. Fragility and giftedness are both there, and our joy is connected with both."  --Henri Nouwen

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."  --Colleen Wilcox

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."  --Elie Wiesel

"It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world."  --Mary Oliver, “Invitation”

"The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love[.]"  --bell hooks, “Building a Community of Love”

"The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate we ask ourselves, ‘Are these words true?’

If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate we ask, ‘Are they necessary?’

At the last gate we ask, ‘Are they kind?’"

--Eknath Easwaran

"I want to say to you that most of our brokenness cannot be simply taken away. It’s there. And the deepest pain that you and I suffer is often the pain that stays with us all our lives. It cannot be simply solved, fixed, done away with. . . . What are we then told to do with that pain, with that brokenness, that anguish, that agony that continually rises up in our heart? We are called to embrace it, to befriend it. To not just push it away . . . to walk right over it, to ignore it. No, to embrace it, to befriend it, and say that is my pain and I claim my pain as the way God is willing to show me his love."  --Henri Nouwen

"God grant that evolution may proceed quickly enough for each of us to pick up our own dark side, combine it with our hard-earned light, and make something better of it all than the opposition of the two. This would be true holiness."  --Robert A. Johnson

"Peace where: despair and divisiveness no longer threaten the human race, ignorance and injustice find no friendly place, vision and striving strengthen and thread human destiny, diversity of thoughts and ideas is a cherished treasure.

Peace where: reason and truths herald triumphs, dignity and justice are sacred rights, love transcends all colors and separating walls, hope and freedom are an eternal flame."

--excerpt of Sikh Prayer for Peace

Live Your Wounds

"You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are ... The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down to your heart. Then you can live through them and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds."  --Henri Nouwen

"Open unto me—light for my darkness.

Open unto me—courage for my fear.

Open unto me—hope for my despair.

Open unto me—peace for my turmoil.

Open unto me—joy for my sorrow.

Open unto me— strength for my weakness.

Open unto me—wisdom for my confusion.

Open unto me—forgiveness for my sins.

Open unto me—love for my hates.

Open unto me—thy Self for my self.

Lord, Lord, open unto me!"

--Howard Thurman

"Learn to look behind your judgments to the need at the root of them. Learn from your limitations without losing self-respect. Learn to mourn your actions without blame, without guilt."  --Marshall B. Rosenberg

"I think part of Gandhi's greatness was that he didn't want to be a servant; he wanted to be of service. It is very easy to be a servant, but very difficult to be of service. When you are of service, you're there whether you like it or not, whether it's Sunday, Monday or a holiday. You're whenever you are needed."  --Cesar Chavez

“What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious.”  --Lisel Mueller

 ROMANTICS

      Johannes Brahms and

            Clara Schumann

The modern biographers worry

“how far it went,” their tender friendship.

They wonder just what it means

when he writes he thinks of her constantly,

his guardian angel, beloved friend.

The modern biographers ask

the rude, irrelevant question

of our age, as if the event

of two bodies meshing together

establishes the degree of love,

forgetting how softly Eros walked

in the nineteenth-century, how a hand

held overlong or a gaze anchored

in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,

and nuances of address not known

in our egalitarian language

could make the redolent air

tremble and shimmer with the heat

of possibility. Each time I hear

the Intermezzi, sad

and lavish in their tenderness,

I imagine the two of them

sitting in a garden

among late-blooming roses

and dark cascades of leaves,

letting the landscape speak for them,

leaving us nothing to overhear.

Lisel Mueller

"It’s more important to concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness."  --Allen Ginsberg’s advice for aspiring writers.

"If you have a choice of two things and can't decide, take both."  --Gregory Corso, a Beat poet who was embraced by the movement after meeting Allen Ginsberg in a bar in Greenwich Village in 1950.

"I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness."  --Allen Ginsberg in a letter to Jack Kerouac. The two men wrote many letters to each other, in which they discussed their lives and their literary visions with passion and, at times, brutal honesty.

"There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve."  --William S. Burroughs in a letter to Jack Kerouac. Burroughs was a major figure of the Beat Generation, most famous for his 1959 novel, "Naked Lunch."

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."  --Audre Lorde

"Be like a headland: the waves beat against it continuously, but it stands fast and around it the boiling water dies down. “It’s my rotten luck that this has happened to me.” On the contrary, “It’s my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I still feel no distress, since I’m unbruised by the present and unconcerned about the future.” What happened could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have carried on without letting it distress him. So why regard the incident as a piece of bad luck rather than seeing your avoidance of distress as a piece of good luck?"  --Marcus Aurelius

Real Human Grief

"Real human grief means allowing the illusion of immortality to die in us. When those whom we love with an “endless love” die, something also has to die within us. If we do not allow this to happen, we will lose touch with reality, our lives will become increasingly artificial, and we will lose our human capacity for compassion."  --Henri Nouwen

"Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again."  --Pablo Casals

The Most Important Choice

"If I die with much anger and bitterness, I will leave my family and friends behind in confusion, guilt, shame, or weakness. When I felt my death approaching, I suddenly realized how much I could influence the hearts of those whom I would leave behind. If I could truly say that I was grateful for what I had lived, eager to forgive and be forgiven, full of hope that those who loved me would continue their lives of joy and peace, and confident that Jesus who calls me would guide all who somehow belonged to my life—if I could do that—I would, in the hour of my death, reveal more true spiritual freedom than I had been able to reveal during all the years of my life. I realize on a very deep level that dying is the most important act of living. It involves a choice to bind others with guilt or to set them free with gratitude."  --Henri Nouwen

“Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.”  --Viktor Frankl

NOT ANYONE WHO SAYS

Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be

  careful and smart in matters of love,”

who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”

but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all

but were, as it were, chosen

by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable

and beautiful and possibly even

unsuitable —

only those know what I’m talking about

in this talking about love

--Mary Oliver

One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.

[…]

This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.

[…]

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

--James Baldwin

"Love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, because it is a construction. The enigma in thinking about love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isn’t the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable. The latter are clearly ecstatic, but love is above all a construction that lasts. We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."  --Alain Badiou

“Love is a tenacious adventure… Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”  --Alain Badiou

[The Art of Love] wants to show that love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement."  --Erich Fromm

“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”  --Erich Fromm

Suddenly a Wall Becomes a Gate

"Death is part of a much greater and much deeper event, the fullness of which we cannot comprehend, but of which we know that it is a life-bringing event. . . . What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning; what seemed to be a cause for fear proved to be a cause for courage; what seemed to be defeat proved to be victory; and what seemed to be the basis for despair proved to be the basis for hope. Suddenly a wall becomes a gate, and although we are not able to say with much clarity or precision what lies beyond the gate, the tone of all that we do and say on our way to the gate changes drastically."  --Henri Nouwen

"I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."  --Albert Einstein 

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music."  --Albert Einstein

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measles-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t wasn’t to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we’ve lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."  --Nelson Mandela

Franz Marc's Blue Horses

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.

I am not even surprised that I can do this.

One of the horses walks toward me.

His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm

over his blue mane, not holding on, just

     commingling.

He allows me my pleasure.

Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.

I would rather die than explain to the blue horses

     what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply

     find it impossible to believe.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

     is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Now all four horses have come closer,

     are bending their faces toward me

           as if they have secrets to tell.

I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.

If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what

     could they possibly say?

--Mary Oliver

“I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people, they exist, and that they dance.”  --Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

"Today my forest is dark. The trees are sad and all the butterflies have broken wings."

"The person that tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest."

“When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.”  --Fiona Apple

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”  --Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“The sun stopped shining for me is all. The whole story is: I am sad. I am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can’t get away from it. Not ever."  --Nina LaCour

“Whether an illness affects your heart, your arm, or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there shouldn’t be any distinction. We would never tell someone with a broken leg that they should stop wallowing and get it together. We don’t consider taking medication for an ear infection something to be ashamed of. We shouldn’t treat mental health conditions any differently. Instead, we should make it clear that getting help isn’t a sign of weakness — it’s a sign of strength  —  and we should ensure that people can get the treatment they need.”  --Michelle Obama

"I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim…”  --Frida Kahlo

“It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.”  --Matt Haig

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”  --James Branch Cabell

“I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep."  --Ursula K. Le Guin

“Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”  --Philip K. Dick

“If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.”  --Elizabeth Wurtzel

“You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective — it just means you're human.”  --  David Mitchell

“I'm guilty of giving people more chances than they deserve but when I'm done, I'm done.”  --Turcois Ominek

"We may not know what each day has in store for us. We could be gone tomorrow. Any minute could be our goodbye. But we do have this moment. This time. Today. Right now. It takes way more effort to shell out hate than it does to allow love to flow freely in our lives. After all, it is what we were born to do."  --Grace Gealey

"There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough."  --Joanne Reed

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.”  --Robert Southey

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

“[T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and [the fact] that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”  --George Eliot, Middlemarch

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"  --George Eliot, Middlemarch

 Full souls are double mirrors, making still
 An endless vista of fair things before,
 Repeating things behind.

--George Eliot: Middlemarch, Book VIII. Sunset and Sunset. Chapter 72

The Ghost on the Stairs

Whether we admit it or not, how many times have we had conversations with our ghosts long after they are ‘dead’ and gone from our lives — old lovers, old teachers, bosses, family members, coaches, early enemies, schoolmates… Settling scores, setting things right, making essential points we failed to do with them in now-ancient conversations and situations.

The French have a nice phrase — “esprit déscalier” — which could be translated as the spirit of the staircase, or wit of the staircase. In other words, “the perfect comeback or witty remark that one frustratingly comes up with only when the moment for doing so has passed.” I believe we have whole conversations with our ghosts that extend the spirit of esprit d’escalier throughout our lives.

--Jonathan Carroll

Rude Lightning

A huge crack of thunder woke me at 5 this morning. A rude awakening but kind of a wonderful one as well. Later while watching manic lightning bolts and bruised purple clouds own the sky followed by more booms, the line came to me “Thunderstorms don’t care if you’re sleeping.” That made me smile. Then I thought it could be a good metaphor for the people and events that enter our lives totally unexpectedly and turn everything normal upside down for both good and bad reasons. The lover who appears out of the blue, the bad news from a doctor you never saw coming… Everything that was a moment ago isn’t anymore.

“Thunderstorms don’t care if you’re sleeping.”

--Jonathan Carroll

Thousands of days later

Not having seen each other in years, they met one day by chance and had a nice but superficial conversation on the street. Both knew there was so much more that could have been said, but it wasn’t because once those floodgates were opened, who knows what might have happened.

When they were saying good bye, he reached in his pocket and brought out a roller ball pen. Taking her hand, he turned it over and writing something on her palm, told her not to look until later. When he was finished he closed her fingers over what he’d written, kissed her on the cheek and walked away.

Of course, he must have known she would look immediately at her hand. There were seven numbers, seven very familiar numbers. Yet it took her a moment to realize why they were familiar: it was her old telephone number from back when they were together. These thousands of days later, he still remembered.

--Jonathan Carroll

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally."  --Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979)

"Be careful not to despise one of the least of these who are scorned and sick in this world. For this contempt and affront of yours doesn’t stop at those unfortunate fellows, but ascends through them to the presence of the Creator and Fashioner, whose image they bear. You will be greatly astonished in that day, if you see the Holy Spirit of God resting in them more than in your heart."  --St. Joseph the Hesychast, Monastic Wisdom, Seventh Letter

"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."  --Mother Teresa

Your Inner Community

"Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. . . . The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you."  --Henri Nouwen

"Detached observers always ask in such cases: “So what does she (he) see in him (her)?” Such questions are best left in peace: great love is never justified. It’s like the little tree that springs up in some inexplicable fashion on the side of a cliff: where are its roots, what does it feed on, what miracle produces those green leaves? But it does exist and it really is green — clearly, then, it’s getting whatever it needs to survive."  --Wisława Szymborska

“For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.”  --Leo Tolstoy

“Whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done!”  --Vincent Van Gogh

"Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil."  --Vincent Van Gogh

I am a modern man, A man for the millennium, Digital and smoke free.

A diversified, multi-cultural, Post-modern deconstructionist; Politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect.

I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced.

I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.

I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art,

Bi-coastal multi-tasker, And I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

I’m new-wave, but I’m old school; And my inner child is outward bound.

I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, Warm-hearted cool customer; Voice activated and bio-degradable.

I interface with my database; My database is in cyberspace;

So I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive, And from time to time I’m radioactive.

Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, Ridin' the wave, dodgin' the bullet, Pushin' the envelope.

I’m on point, on task, on message, And off drugs.

I’ve got no need for coke and speed; I've got no urge to binge and purge.

I’m in the moment, on the edge, Over the top, but under the radar.

A high-concept, low-profile, Medium-range ballistic missionary.

A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom-feeder.

I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps.

I’m a totally ongoing, big-foot, slam-dunk, Rainmaker with a pro-active outreach.

A raging workaholic, a working rageaholic; Out of rehab and in denial.

I’ve got a personal trainer, A personal shopper, A personal assistant, And a personal agenda.

You can’t shut me up; You can’t dumb me down.

Cause I’m tireless and I’m wireless. I’m an alpha-male on beta-blockers.

I’m a non-believer, An over-achiever; Laid-back and fashion-forward.

Up-front, down-home; Low-rent, high-maintenance.

I'm super-sized, long-lasting, High-definition, fast-acting,

Oven-ready and built to last.

A hands-on, footloose, knee-jerk head case;

Prematurely post-traumatic, And I have a love child that sends me hate-mail.

But I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing.

A supportive, bonding, nurturing, Primary care-giver.

My output is down, but my income is up.

I take a short position on the long bond,

And my revenue stream has its own cash flow.

I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds, and I watch trash sports.

I’m gender-specific, capital-intensive, User-friendly and lactose-intolerant.

I like rough sex; I like tough love. I use the f-word in my email.

And the software on my hard drive. Is hard-core -- no soft porn.

I bought a microwave at a mini-mall. I bought a mini-van at a mega-store.

I eat fast food in the slow lane.

I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear, And I come in all sizes.

A fully equipped, factory-authorized, Hospital-tested, clinically proven,

Scientifically formulated medical miracle.

I’ve been pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated, Pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged,

Post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, And vacuum-packed.

And... I have an unlimited broadband capacity.

I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal.

Lean and mean. Cocked, locked and ready to rock;

Rough, tough and hard to bluff.

I take it slow, I go with the flow; I ride with the tide, I’ve got glide in my stride.

Drivin' and movin', sailin' and spinnin', Jivin' and groovin', wailin' and winnin'.

I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal

And the rubber on the road.

I party hearty and lunchtime is crunch time.

I’m hangin' in, there ain’t no doubt; And I’m hangin' tough.

Over and out!

-- George Carlin "I am a Modern Man" was released January 10, 2006 on Life Is Worth Losing. He was 341 days sober at the time of the recording, and that 2006 would be his 50th year in show business. 

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we do about living."  --Omar Bradley

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

No Hiding

"Why do we keep hiding our deepest feelings from each other? We suffer much, but we also have great gifts of healing for each other. The mystery is that by hiding our pain we also hide our ability to heal. . . . We are called to confess to each other and forgive each other, and thus to discover the abundant mercy of God. But at the same time, we are so terribly afraid of being hurt more than we already are. This fear keeps us prisoners, even when the prison has no walls! I see better every day how radical Jesus’ message of love really is."  --Henri Nouwen

Spiritual Freedom

"Freedom belongs to the core of the spiritual life; not just the freedom that releases us from forces that want to oppress us, but the freedom also to forgive others, to serve them, and to form a new bond of fellowship with them. In short, the freedom to love and to work for a free world."  --Henri Nouwen

we are all born

so beautiful

the greatest tragedy is

being convinced we are not

--Rupi Kaur, milk and honey (2015)

Writing Reveals What is Alive in Us

"Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: “I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.” Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches."  --Henri Nouwen

"Jesus does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

Recipe for Joy

To reach satisfaction in all

desire its possession in nothing.

To come to possess all

desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all

desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all

desire the knowledge of nothing.

To come to the pleasure you have not

you must go by the way in which you enjoy not.

To come to the knowledge you have not

you must go by a way in which you know not.

To come to the possession you have not

you must go by a way in which you possess not.

To come to be what you are not

you must go by a way in which you are not.

St. John of the Cross

"Whether or not we will be honest with each other, whether or not we will let ourselves be truly known, determines everything."  --N. Gordon Cosby, Seized By the Power of a Great Affection (2013)

"When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated."  --Eduardo Galeano

"I understood that love encompasses all vocations and that love is everything. Love encompasses all times and places."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

 “Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”  --Jack Kerouac

"Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering."  --Steve Maraboli

Poverty is a Quality of the Heart

"Poverty is the quality of the heart that makes us relate to life, not as a property to be defended but as a gift to be shared. Poverty is the constant willingness to say good-bye to yesterday and move forward to new, unknown experiences. Poverty is the inner understanding that the hours, days, weeks, and years do not belong to us but are the gentle reminders of our call to give, not only love and work, but life itself, to those who follow us and will take our place. He or she who cares is invited to be poor, to strip himself or herself from the illusions of ownership, and to create some room for the person looking for a place to rest. The paradox of care is that poverty makes a good host. When our hands, heads, and hearts are filled with worries, concerns, and preoccupations, there can hardly be any place left for the stranger to feel at home."  --Henri Nouwen

Receiving the Gifts of Others

"A gift only becomes a gift when it is received; and nothing we have to give—wealth, talents, competence, or just beauty— will ever be recognized as true gifts until someone is open to accept them. This all suggests that if we want others to grow— that is, to discover their potential and capacities, to experience that they have something to live and work for—we should first of all be able to recognize their gifts and be willing to receive them. For we only become fully human when we are received and accepted."  --Henri Nouwen

"More important than our talents are our gifts. We may have only a few talents, but we have many gifts. Our gifts are the many ways in which we express our humanity. They are part of who we are: friendship, kindness, patience, joy, peace, forgiveness, gentleness, love, hope, trust, and many others. These are the true gifts we have to offer to each other."  --Henri Nouwen

"The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be."  --Pete Seeger

"I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music."  --Billy Joel

“We're like . . . like dinosaurs bedazzled by all the pretty lights in the sky, too fucking stupid to realise it's a comet getting closer and closer.”  --Philip Ridley, Shivered

“When we were kids the coolest dinosaur in world was the brontosaurus, which means 'THUNDERLIZARD'. But it turns out brontosaurs isn't even a thing, it's just an apatosaurus which means 'deceptive lizard', which isn't nearly as cool. I don't want my gigantic lizards to bring the lies. I want them to bring the thunder.”  --John Green

We Are Seen by God’s Loving Eyes

"The greatest spiritual battle begins—and never ends—with the reclaiming of our chosenness. Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes. Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love."  --Henri Nouwen

"Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common."  --Sarah Dessen

Nothing Human is Alien

"Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate man nothing human is alien; no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying."  --Henri Nouwen

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.”  --Jackson Pollock

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? …people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”  --Pablo Picasso

Compassion

"Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human."  --Henri Nouwen

"The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life."  --Marian Wright Edelman, “Standing Up for Children” (2003)

“In past wars only homes burnt, but this time

Don't be surprised if even loneliness ignites.

In past wars only bodys burnt, but this time

Don't be surprised if even shadows ignite.”

--Sahir Ludhianvi

“I cannot conceive that the man who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a machine. He also had a heart, just like you. He also had his wife and children, his old mother and father. He was as much a human being as you are—with a difference. He was trained to follow orders without questioning, and when the order was given, he simply followed it.”  --Osho, Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other

“Do-oh died on March 14, 2007, just as the buds of her beloved drooping cherry trees behind her house were ready to burst. Having surpassed by two years her goal to live until seventy-five, she had, by her own measure, defeated the atomic bomb. "What I mean is - I mean, they dropped the bombs thinking everyone will die, right? But not everyone was killed. I think it takes great emotional strength and force of will to triumph over nuclear weapons.”  --Susan Southard

"I happen to love America. I love this freedom and democracy. The fact is we are the ones who killed innocent people, men, women and children, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, weapons that should have never been used, should have never been developed in the first place, you know?"  --Robert Scheer 

"Everybody says, "Well, if it's a democracy, let them have nuclear weapons." America is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons. We're the only ones, this democracy, our great democracy."  --Robert Scheer

"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."  --Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy

"Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima."  --Pablo Picasso

[Remark to Françoise Gilot in 1946, in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake Life With Picasso (1964) pt. 2]

"We cannot and must not allow ourselves to have the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade completely from our minds, and we cannot allow our vision or ideals to fade, either. For if we do, we have but one course left for us. And that flash of light will not only rob us of our vision, but it will rob us of our lives, our progeny, and our very existence."  --Tadatoshi Akiba

"The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."  --Dwight D. Eisenhower  [Newsweek, p. 107, November 11, 1963]

"If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905."  --Albert Einstein   — p. 112  Einstein and the Poet (1983)

 

If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...

I am become Death,

The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]

― J. Robert Oppenheimer

War is a terribly fraught business. War always runs the risk of clouding our judgement and engenders emotions that can run sky-high at times. War is a crucible where nationalism speeds forever onwards to the fore of our minds squeezing out and eclipsing our values, locking out a swathe of important issues. Apart from truth being its first casualty, war and nationalism colours a proper consideration of the laws of war and the hope of their eventual enforcement.

War can loosen and minimise our commitment to legal principles such as the rule of law itself, how war is properly prosecuted, not employing war indiscriminately and disproportionately, the protection of non-combatants, to not use prohibited weapons such as landmines, biological or chemical agents, to eschew any form of torture, to not stymie or attack any hospitals or persons employed in attending the sick and injured, and to treat any prisoners of war humanely, amongst many other considerations. Moral conduct, human rights, civility and the rule of law, are what democratic societies live and die for. During war, all of these things can be considered ‘the pejorative pastime of intellectuals and oddballs who probably have too much time on their hands’.

The facts of the matter are that the rule of international law cannot be expunged, demeaned, pilloried or considered optional by any side of a conflict, except through dirty politics, self-interest and expediency. 

-- John Candido

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything."  --Plato

A Cry of Thanksgiving

"For me, prayer is a burst from my heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."  --Penn Jillette    — p. 129 (God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011))

"If Darwin 's discovery had been made in a Taoist or Shinto, Hindu or animist culture it would very likely have become just one more strand in its intertwining mythologies. In these faiths humans and other animals are kin. By contrast, arising among Christians who set humans beyond all other living things, it triggered a bitter controversy that rages on to this day."  --John N. Gray   — The Human: Science versus Humanism (p. 3-4)

"I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself."  --Rod Serling     — Interview Los Angeles Times (1967)

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."  --Oscar Wilde

"... And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other."  --Fernando Pessoa

"You don't always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that's plenty."  --Alice Walker

"At every stage in human history, music has been a catalyst for change, challenging conventions and conveying coded messages—or, not infrequently, delivering blunt, unambiguous ones. It has given voice to individuals and groups denied access to other platforms for expression, so much so that, in many times and places, freedom of song has been as important as freedom of speech, and far more controversial."  --Ted Gioia

"A small act is worth a million thoughts."  --Ai Weiwei

Where to Put Our Attention

"Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life and should, therefore, be the subject of our most personal attention."  --Henri Nouwen

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."  --Maya Angelou

"I understand above all that charity must not remain hidden in the bottom of the heart."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light."  --Frida Kahlo

The Sacred and the Holy

"Something very deep and mysterious, very holy and sacred, is taking place in our lives right where we are, and the more attentive we become the more we will begin to see and hear it. The more our spiritual sensitivities come to the surface of our daily lives, the more we will discover—uncover—a new presence in our lives."  --Henri Nouwen

"You must give birth to your images.

They are the future waiting to be born.

Fear not the strangeness you feel.

The future must enter you

long before it happens.

Just wait for the birth,

for the hour of new clarity."

--Rainer Maria Rilke

"Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and the deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment."  --Arthur Jersild

"Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim, or diminish your light."  John Lewis

The Rowing Endeth

The Rowing Endeth

I’m mooring my rowboat

at the dock of the island called God.

This dock is made in the shape of a fish

and there are many boats moored

at  many different docks.

“It’s okay.” I say to myself,

with blisters that broke and healed

and broke and healed –

saving themselves over and over.

And salt sticking to my face and arms like

a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.

I empty myself from my wooden boat

and onto the flesh of The Island.

“On with it!” He says and thus

we squat on the rocks by the sea

and play – can it be true –

a game of poker.

He calls me.

I win because I hold a royal straight flush.

He wins because He holds five aces,

wild card had been announced

but I had not heard it

being in such a state of awe

when He took out the cards and dealt.

As he plunks down His five aces

and I am still grinning at my royal flush,

He starts to laugh,

and laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth

and into mine,

and such laughter that He doubles right over me

laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.

Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs

the sea laughs. The Island laughs.

The Absurd laughs.

Dearest dealer,

I with my royal straight flush,

love you so for your wild card,

that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha

and lucky love.

--Anne Sexton, An Awful Rowing toward God