“All that is gold does not glitter / Not all those who wander are lost / The old that is strong does not wither / Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”  --J.R.R. Tolkien

"Ideas are like fish... if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper."  --David Lynch

"The world had no idea what it was in for."  --Neal Shusterman, Gleanings

"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."  --Virginia Woolf

"We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it."  --Eeyore

"Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind."  --Nikola Tesla

"The world is full of bigots. Only America gives them guns and excuses."  --Steven Woodrow

"I believe that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."  --Viola Davis

"The best way out is always through."  --Robert Frost

"You were once wild. Don't let them tame you."  --Isadora Duncan

"The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way."  --Keanu Reeves

"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."  --Mary Oliver

"You got a chance to go up and say something? Don’t be shy. No matter how it comes out, just let it come out."  --Fiona Apple

"It does not require many words to speak the truth."  --Chief Joseph

"You are never strong enough that you don't need help."  --Cesar Chavez

 "If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens."  --Fay Weldon

"It is well to fly towards the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of wings."  -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve."  --Ernest Hemingway

"If you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out."  --Stephen Hawking

"The heart is not like a box that gets filled up; it expands in size the more you love."  --Spike Jonze

 "The scariest moment is always just before you start."  --Stephen King

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."  --T,S. Eliot

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."  --Oscar Wilde

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future."  --Paul Lewis Boese

"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."  --John Wooden

"Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong."  --Ann Patchett

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”   --Bertrand Russell

"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls."  --Anaïs Nin

You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms.
--Anna Akhmatova

"You must believe that your past is not your future."  --Gayle Carson

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"  --Maya Angelou

"In times of strife, we have our imagination, we have our creative impulse."  --Patti Smith

"Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last."  --Samuel Johnson

"Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves."  --Etty Hillesum

 “The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”  --Henry David Thoreau

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."  --Gloria Steinem

"All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else."  --Isaac Asimov

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"  --Mary Oliver 

"Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion." Franklin D. Roosevelt 

"No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep."  --Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

“Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.”  --Jesse Owens

"The only thing we know for sure about Jesus are that he did not kill and he opposed violence of any kind. He rejected violence of both oppressor and oppressed. He taught a third way—active nonviolent resistance to evil. He urged his followers to love God, to love one's self, to love one's neighbors, and most radical of all, to love one's enemies."  --John Dear

Free to be Compassionate

"If you would ask the Desert Fathers why solitude gives birth to compassion, they would say, “Because it makes us die to our neighbor.” At first this answer seems quite disturbing to a modern mind. But when we give it a closer look we can see that in order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, that prevents us from really being with the other."  --Henri Nouwen

“Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you."  --Jim Rohn

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”  --James Dean

Compassionate Solidarity

"When we think about the people who have given us hope and have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that they were not advice givers, warners, or moralists, but the few who were able to articulate in words and actions the human condition in which we participate and who encouraged us to face the realities of life. . . . Those who do not run away from our pains but touch them with compassion bring healing and new strength. The paradox indeed is that the beginning of healing is in the solidarity with the pain. In our solution-oriented society it is more important than ever to realize that wanting to alleviate pain without sharing it is like wanting to save a child from a burning house without the risk of being hurt. It is in solitude that this compassionate solidarity takes its shape."  --Henri Nouwen

"I remember his love for the prodigal son, I have heard his words to Mary Magdalene, to the woman taken in adultery, to the woman of Samaria. No - there is no one who could frighten me, for I know too well what to believe concerning his mercy and his love."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

“If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”  --Charles Darwin

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."  --T.S. Eliot

"Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all a part of one another."  --Yuri Kochiyama, Passing It On (2004)

A Converted Heart

"Compassion born in solitude makes us very much aware of our own historicity. We are not called to respond to generalities but to the concrete facts with which we are confronted day after day. A compassionate man can no longer look at these manifestations of evil and death as disturbing interruptions of his life plan but rather has to confront them as an opportunity for the conversion of himself and his fellow human beings. Every time in history that men and women have been able to respond to the events of their world as an occasion to change their hearts, an inexhaustible source of generosity and new life has been opened, offering hope far beyond the limits of human prediction."  --Henri Nouwen

"There is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must become less and less."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place."  --Rumi

"Is this how it’s always been? / To exist in the face of suffering and death / And somehow still keep singing"  --Florence + the Machine, “Free”

"Dreams are hopeless aspirations, in hopes of coming true, believe in yourself, the rest is up to me and you."-- Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes from TLC, Waterfalls

"But where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."  --Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) 

“‘Telling the truth’ . . . is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. The more complex the actual situations of a person's life, the more responsible and the more difficult will be [their] task of ‘telling the truth.’"  --Parker J. Palmer

"Oh, and tell me, what’s a man with a rifle in his hand gonna do for a world that’s so sick and sad?"  -- Hurray for the Riff Raff, “The Body Electric”

"We sing because cruelty has no name / But we can name its destiny / We sing because the child because everything / Because the future because the people / We sing because the survivors / And our dead want us to sing"  --Mario Benedetti, translation of “Por Qué Cantamos”

“As I reflect on this latest American massacre, I keep returning to the questions: Who are we as a nation if we do not act to protect our children? What do we love more: our instruments of death or our future?”  --Cardinal Blase Cupich (Archdiocese of Chicago) Quote posted on Vatican News Twitter Feed May 25, 2022

"The Second Amendment did not come down from Sinai. The right to bear arms will never be more important than human life. Our children have rights too. And our elected officials have a moral duty to protect them.”  --Cardinal Blase Cupich (Archdiocese of Chicago) Quote posted on Vatican News Twitter Feed May 25, 2022

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."  --George Orwell

Be Alone with God

"Solitude and silence can never be separated from the call to unceasing prayer. If solitude were primarily an escape from a busy joy, and silence primarily an escape from a noisy milieu, they could easily become very self-centered forms of asceticism. But solitude and silence are for prayer. The Desert Fathers did not think of solitude as being alone, but as being alone with God. They did not think of silence as not speaking but as listening to God. Solitude and silence are the context within which prayer is practiced."--Henri Nouwen

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world . . . would do this, it would change the earth."  --William Faulkner

"For you, the gun-wounded, the gunned down, / and the loved ones who were left behind, / we speak in love / and we don’t go quietly."  --Da’Shawn Mosley, “In the Mourning”

"May we build a kinder land / where our children understand: / Every child here matters more / than the guns we clamor for."  --Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, “A Hymn For People Called To Do More Than Sing and Pray”

“Truth is something that is always new. Therefore the mind cannot come to it with a conclusion, an opinion or a judgment. The mind must be free for truth to be."  --Jiddu Krishnamurti

"I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with—the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being."  --Anthony Ray Hinton, The Sun Does Shine (2018)

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.”  -- Roald Dahl

"Whether you believe in autonomous ghosts and spirits or not, it is difficult not to at least think of the spectral echoes of those whose pasts we retrace as we move through the spaces we share. As such, paradoxically, it isn’t necessarily the presence of the spirits of place that haunt us but their absence, and as long as we have the clues with which to construct them, ghosts will always be ready, just waiting to emerge."  --Richard Maclean Smith, Unexplained, p. 227

“Love feels no burden,

thinks nothing of trouble,

attempts what is above its strength,

pleads no excuse of impossibility."

--Thomas à Kempis

Something Has Happened

"One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you stay with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. Isn’t this true of all really important events in life? When I am together with someone I love very much, we seldom talk about our relationship. The relationship, in fact, is too central to be a subject of talk. But later, after we have separated and write letters, we realize how much it all meant to us, and we even write about it."  --Henri Nouwen

“Unless you see an open bosom and show your own, you can have nothing worthy of confidence, nothing of which you can feel certain, not even the fact of your loving or being loved, since you are ignorant of what either really is."  --Cicero

“The holy man is he who takes your soul and will and makes them his. When you choose your holy man, you surrender your will. You give it to him in utter submission, in full renunciation.”  --Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"I, who am but a little grain of sand, wish to set to work, though I have neither courage nor strength. Now this very want of power will make my task easier, for I wish to work for love."   --St. Therese of Lisieux

"To live by love is to go through life sowing peace and joy in hearts!"   --St. Therese of Lisieux

“'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.' So said Thomas Paine many years ago. . . . We do have it in our power to change ourselves, to attempt to right past wrongs, and to repair our relationships with one another and with the planet we share. It's this work that is the bedrock of shock resistance."  --Naomi Klein, No is not Enough

"Contemplative life is a human response to the fundamental fact that the central things in life, although spiritually perceptible, remain invisible in large measure and can very easily be overlooked by the inattentive, busy, distracted person that each of us can so readily become. The contemplative looks not so much around things but through them into their center. Through their center he discovers the world of spiritual beauty that is more real, has more density, more mass, more energy, and greater intensity than physical matter. In effect, the beauty of physical matter is a reflection of its inner content."  --Henri Nouwen

"[D]enouncing evil is a far cry from doing good."  -- Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998)

"Nothing is sweeter than to think well of others."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

--Max Ehrmann

“If life is to be complete, it must include not only the dimension of length but also of breadth which the individual concerns [themselves] in the welfare of others. No [person] has learned to live until [they] can rise above the narrow confines of [their] individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."  --Martin Luther King, Strength to Love

"We have given corporations dominion over the sustaining of our lives. . . . They shape our thoughts and our language. They create the images and metaphors of our time, which our children use to define their world and their lives. In other words: what corporations do well, what corporations are designed to be, is the problem.”  --Richard Grossman

"There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."  --Toni Morrison

“The irony of our existence is this: We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites. We multiply, our hunger multiplies, and our insatiable craving accelerates. We believe in more, more possessions, more power, more war. Anywhere, everywhere our advance of aggression continues. Consumption is a progressive disease. My aggression towards myself is the first war. Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves."  --Terry Tempest Williams

“This is how we will heal the Earth, and ourselves—through deep love and intimate local knowledge of her waters and soils, her moods and changing conditions. When the Earth is sacred to us again, we will do what is required to mend our relationship with her, even if it means giving up certain habits or goals that once mattered: more money, a bigger house, or a way of life dependent on fossil fuels. When we remember that our bodies and the Earth-body are inseparable, we will hear her cry and feel her pain as our own. And we will not turn away."  Kosmos Newsletter, July 2018

"From the heart arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart, too, has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. Finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. Thus the heart is the central and unifying organ of our personal life. Our heart determines our personality, and is, therefore, not only the place where God dwells but also the place to which Satan directs his fiercest attacks. It is this heart that is the place of prayer. The prayer of the heart is a prayer that directs itself to God from the center of the person and thus affects the whole of our humanness."  --Henri Nouwen

“I believe that no tradition can remain a mere dead inheritance. It is a living inheritance which we must continue to offer to the living. Isn't it possible then to include in the law certain important questions of conscience, to include them nonetheless, and thereby to bring the tradition to life again for the sake of the people?”  --Daniel Berrigan to the Judge at the Catonsville Trial in At Play in the Lions Den by Jim Forest

“If I wait for someone else to validate my existence, it will mean that I’m shortchanging myself.”  Zanele Muholi

"I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in [their] own eyes. What matters is not what I think of [them]; it is what [they think of themselves]. To undermine a [person's] self-respect is a sin."  --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud."  --C.G. Jung, address to the Society for Psychical Research in England

"All animals, including people, organize around 'us vs them' until some brave souls venture out of their tiny sphere to broaden who counts as 'us.' To further complicate the aspiration of peace on earth, when the 'ways' taught to us by our group are based on God's Law . . . there is no earthly way to argue effectively."  --Susan L. Allen, The Tao of Nonviolence

"Peace. What is that? Something I have taken so much for granted in all my years on our planet. I have never had to endure the suffering experienced by millions and it intrigues me how I could have managed to avoid the implications of warfare so easily."  --Annie Lennox

"In a sense, nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would literally rather die than change."  --Eleanor Roosevelt 

"We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

and let our illusions die."

--WH Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly; who errs . . . and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."  --Theodore Roosevelt

“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  --Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”  --Sir Terry Pratchett

"The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put that drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you, same thing in your family, same thing in the community where you live. Just begin . . . one, one, one."  --Mother Teresa

"How powerless I am to express in human language the secrets of heaven."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

Take up Your Cross

Your pain is deep, and it won’t just go away. It is also uniquely yours, because it is linked to some of your earliest life experiences.

Your call is to bring that pain home. As long as your wounded part remains foreign to your adult self, your pain will injure you as well as others. Yes, you have to incorporate your pain into your self and let it bear fruit in your heart and the hearts of others.

This is what Jesus means when he asks you to take up your cross. He encourages you to recognize and embrace your unique suffering and to trust that your way to salvation lies therein. Taking up your cross means, first of all, befriending your wounds and letting them reveal to you your own truth.

There is great pain and suffering in the world. But the pain hardest to bear is your own. Once you have taken up that cross, you will be able to see clearly the crosses that others have to bear, and you will be able to reveal to them their own ways to joy, peace, and freedom.

--Henri Nouwen

"It is true that Our Lady is Queen of Heaven and earth, but at the same time she is more Mother than Queen."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"In a dialogue nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular point of view prevail. . . it is a common participation."  --David Bohm, On Dialogue

"Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say they have Ubuntu. Then you are generous, your are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’"  --Desmond Tutu

"There are just some kind of men who — who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."  --Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"  --Eleanor Roosevelt

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."  --Pope John Paul II

"Love ripples out through space and time. In a moment of positivity resonance, studies show, your awareness automatically expands, allowing you to appreciate more than you typically do. Also, quite automatically, your body leans in toward and affirms the other person, and begins a subtle synchronized dance that further enforces your connection. Over time, these powerful moments change who you are. They help expand your network of relationships and grow your resilience, wisdom, and physical health."  --Barbara L. Frederickson, Phd.

"One of the easiest human acts is also the most healing. Listening to someone. Simply listening. Not advising or coaching, but silently and fully listening... If we can speak our story, and know that others hear it, we are healed by that."  --Margaret J. Wheatley

"There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home."  --John Stuart Mill

"I have never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking."  --Albert Einstein

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."  --Daniel J. Boorstin

"Try to offer light in a world of darkness, peace in a world of war, love in a world of fear, hatred, and indifference."  --John Dear 

"What do you do when there's nowhere to turn? You drive straight ahead."  --Leslie Gordon

"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful."  --Malala Yousafzai

The Table is the Place of Intimacy

"The table is the place of intimacy. Around the table we discover each other. It’s the place where we pray. It’s the place where we ask: “How was your day?” It’s the place where we eat and drink together and say: “Come on, take some more!” It is the place of old and new stories. It is the place of smiles and tears. The table, too, is the place where distance is most painfully felt. It is the place where the children feel the tension between the parents, where brothers and sisters express their anger and jealousies, where accusations are made, and where plates and cups become instruments of violence. Around the table, we know whether there is friendship and community or hatred and division. Precisely because the table is the place of intimacy for all the members of the household, it is also the place where the absence of that intimacy is most painfully revealed."  --Henri Nouwen

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant."  --Joan Didion

"Since we see the way, let's run together."  St. Therese of Lisieux

"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."  --Virginia Woolf

Birthdays

Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory. Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you.” Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. On a birthday we do not say: “Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.” No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being among us.”

On birthdays we celebrate the present. We do not complain about what happened or speculate about what will happen, but we lift someone up and let everyone say: “We love you."

--Henri Nouwen

Being at Home

Creating space for the other is far from an easy task. It requires hard concentration and articulate work.... Indeed, more often than not, rivalry and competition, desire for power and immediate results, impatience and frustration, and most of all, plain fear make their forceful demands and tend to fill every possible empty corner of our life. Empty space tends to create fear. As long as our minds, hearts, and hands are occupied, we can avoid confronting the painful questions to which we never gave much attention and that we do not want to surface....

When we think back to the places where we felt most at home, we quickly see that it was where our hosts gave us the precious freedom to come and go on our own terms and did not claim us for their own needs. Only in a free space can re-creation take place and new life be found. The real host is the one who offers that space where we do not have to be afraid and where we can listen to our own inner voices and find our own personal way of being human. But to be such a host we have to first of all be at home in our own house.

--Henri Nouwen

Hospitality

"Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own."  --Henri Nouwen

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent."  --Victor Hugo

Create Space for the Stranger

"In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends, and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might say even most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people, anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm. But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest, and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced."  --Henri Nouwen

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."  --Dolly Parton

"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."  --James Baldwin

"True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have."  --Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

Lead a Loving Life

"Self-knowledge and self-love are the fruit of knowing and loving God. You can see better then what is intended by the great commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Laying our hearts totally open to God leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give wholehearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge we can lead a loving life."  --Henri Nouwen

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth."  --Albert Einstein

"You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything."  --Stephen Colbert

"Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence. The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for those who can tolerate its sweet pain."  --Henri Nouwen

"By slowly converting our loneliness into a deep solitude, we create that precious space where we can discover the voice telling us about our inner necessity—that is, our vocation. Unless our questions, problems, and concerns are tested and matured in solitude, it is not realistic to expect answers that are really our own. . . . This is a very difficult task, because in our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions. A lonely person has no inner time or inner rest to wait and listen. He wants answers and wants them here and now. But in solitude we can pay attention to the inner self. This has nothing to do with egocentrism or unhealthy introspection because in the words of [Rainer Maria] Rilke, “what is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.” In solitude we can become present to ourselves. . . . There we also can become present to others by reaching out to them, not greedy for attention and affection but offering our own selves to help build a community of love. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible."  --Henri Nouwen

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world . . . would do this, it would change the earth."  --William Faulkner

"We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves."  --Patti Smith

"The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention."  --Anon

Love Deeply

"Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love even more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds."  --Henri Nouwen

“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth. . . . This is the real message of love.”  --Thich Nhat Hahn

"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade."  --Leo Tolstoy

"The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life."  --Rabindranath Tagore

"Love alters the unseen activity within your body and brain. More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections. It extends beyond personal boundaries to even energize whole social networks or inspire a crowd to get up and dance."  --Barbara L. Fredrickson, PhD.

"What we have experienced and are still experiencing must surely convince us that the spirit is everything and that institutions count for very little. The best planned improvements in the organization of our society cannot help us at all until we have become at the same time capable of imparting a new spirit to our age."  --Albert Schweitzer

"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life flow no longer into our souls."  --Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"Do right and don’t look back, and things will turn out well."  --Vincent van Gogh

"Perhaps no psychologist has stressed the need of self-acceptance as the way to self-realization so much as Carl Jung. For Jung, self-realization meant the integration of the shadow. It is the growing ability to allow the dark side of our personality to enter into our awareness and thus prevent a one-sided life in which only that which is presentable to the outside world is considered as a real part of ourselves. To come to an inner unity, totality and wholeness, every part of our self should be accepted and integrated."  --Henri Nouwen

"If one has no sense of humor, one is in trouble."  --Betty White

 "The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer."  --Fridtjof Nansen

God Longs to Bring Me Home

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

--Henri Nouwen

"Don't plan it all. Let life surprise you a little."  --Julia Alvarez 

"There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them."  --Vicki Baum

"Walls turned sideways are bridges."  --Angela Davis

The “Ifs” That Enslave Me

"As long as I keep running about asking “Do you love me? Do you really love me?” I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with “ifs.” The world says: “Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much.” There are endless “ifs” hidden in the world’s love. These “ifs” enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them. The world’s love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain “hooked” to the world—trying, failing, and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart."  --Henri Nouwen

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it."  --William Shakespeare  As You Like It, Act II, scene 1, line 15

"If you realize how vital to your whole spirit — and being and character and mind and health — friendship actually is, you will take time for it… [But] for so many of us … we have to be in trouble before we remember what’s essential… It’s one of the lonelinesses of humans that you hold on desperately to things that make you miserable and … you only realize what you have when you’re almost about to lose it."  --John O’Donohue 

"It’s not you who should solve my problems, God,

but I yours, God of the asylum-seekers.

It’s not you who should feed the hungry,

but I who should protect your children

from the terror of the banks and armies.

It’s not you who should make room for the refugees,

but I who should receive you,

hardly hidden God of the desolate.

You dreamed me, God,

Practicing walking upright

and learning to kneel down,

more beautiful that I am now,

happier than I dare to be,

freer than our country allows.

Don’t stop dreaming me, God.

I don’t want to stop remembering

that I am your tree,

planted by the streams

of living water."

--Dorothee Soelle

"The only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough."  --Ted Hughes

God Needs Me as Much as I Need God

It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God. Yes, God needs me as much as I need God. God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn’t move, and expects his children to come to him, apologize for their aberrant behavior, beg for forgiveness, and promise to do better. To the contrary, he leaves the house, ignoring his dignity by running toward them, pays no heed to apologies and promises of change, and brings them to the table richly prepared for them.

I am beginning to now see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the One who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.

--Henri Nouwen

God is a Compassionate God

"The truly good news is that God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle. . . . God is a compassionate God. This means, first of all, that God is a God who has chosen to be God-with-us. . . . As soon as we call God “God-with-us,” we enter into a new relationship of intimacy with him. By calling God Emmanuel, we recognize God’s commitment to live in solidarity with us, to share our joys and pains, to defend and protect us, and to suffer all of life with us. The God-with-us is a close God, a God whom we call our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, and even, more intimately, our helper, our shepherd, our love. We will never really know God as a compassionate God if we do not understand with our heart and mind that “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14)."  --Henri Nouwen

“That's the thing with time, isn't it? It's not all the same. Some days - some years - some decades - are empty. There is nothing to them. It's just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”  --Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."  --Lin Yutang

"Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start."  --Jason Collins

"The difference between a nice person and an interesting one is the interesting person often has the slight aroma of sulfur to them."  --Jonathan Carroll

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."  --T.S. Eliot

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."  --Arthur Schopenhauer

"Fall in love with the ordinary. Fall in love with the everyday. Fall in love with brown eyes and small towns and a hand full of dandelions. Discover. Discover the crevices. Read the books that aren’t so popular, by little known authors who have a lot to offer. Listen to music that makes you think. Choose art that is buried in the corner of galleries, or on the street. Teach yourself to love the small things. The special but unnoticed things. Teach yourself how the ordinary is not so ordinary after all."  --S. Zhao

“If they miss you, they’ll call. If they want you, they’ll say it. If they care, they’ll show it. If not, they aren’t worth your time.”  --Anon

"And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms."  --Albert Einstein

A New Beginning!

We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!” Imagine.

Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: “You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.” There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: “There is nothing new under the sun... don’t let yourself be fooled.”

When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:2–5).

--Henri Nouwen