"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