Quotations

The Fountain

Don't say, don't say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don't say, don't say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

~ Denise Levertov, "The Fountain" in THE JACOB'S LADDER

Denise Levertov THE JACOB'S LADDER surrender

Courage changes things

Courage changes things and courage changes us. It's how we become. I have found that there is a "right-sized" fear inside any vision for change, and in taking courageous action we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead... The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay... The courage to exit the safety of our dying delusions... The courage to surrender... The courage to love and be loved.

~ Prentis Hemphill in WHAT IT TAKES TO HEAL: HOW TRANSFORMING OURSELVES CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

Prentis Hemphill WHAT IT TAKES TO HEAL: HOW TRANSFORMING OURSELVES CAN CHANGE THE WORLD surrender

Psalm 119

Abandon yourself to the Beloved,
draw closer and closer to Love.
For when you dwell in peace within
Love's heart,
and know the Divine Spirit in
your own heart,
You become as nothing, yet
all things are yours.
As you radiate the healing love of
your inmost Being
into a suffering, scarred, yet
ever-sacred world,
Offer grateful praise from the Chalice
of your heart
to the One who loves through you.

~ Nan Merrill, from her interpretation of "Psalm 119" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING: AN INVITATION TO WHOLENESS

Nan Merrill PSALMS FOR PRAYING: AN INVITATION TO WHOLENESS surrender

This is what it means to be resilient

I tried to explain how, through so many endings, this young forest is just beginning to deepen itself, just beginning to rediscover what it truly is: a natural community enriched by change and defined by scars... Over millennia, this forest has weathered storms, beyond counting, each time responding by becoming something new. This one will be no different...

I wonder how many times the world will change before we learn that the world IS change. I wonder how long we will struggle against change like a fish on a line, rail against it like children, build fortresses of sand around ourselves only to see the waves of change dissolve them again and again. I wonder how long it will take for us to learn that stability is vulnerability, that resilience is strength...

This is what it means to be resilient: to mourn a thousand endings and celebrate a thousand beginnings, to be as strong as steel and as soft as warm butter, to practice both resilience and acceptance, to cradle both life and death in our arms.

~ Ethan Tapper in HOW TO LOVE A FOREST: THE BITTERSWEET WORK OF TENDING A CHANGING WORLD

Ethan Tapper HOW TO LOVE A FOREST: THE BITTERSWEET WORK OF TENDING A CHANGING WORLD surrender

Gravity's Law

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees...

~ Rainer Maria Rilke from "Gravity's Law" in RILKE'S BOOK OF HOURS: LOVE POEMS TO GOD

Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke's Book Of Hours: Love Poems To God surrender

A crisis can also be a calling

It is our collective fate to live amidst the hard times we're experiencing today, with culture and nature in upheaval around the world. Yet, whatever shatters the outer patterns of our lives can also open us up to psychological and mythical levels of unusual depth and meaning. During times of crisis, certain archetypal energies and shapes... arise and assist us in navigating radical transformation. In this way, a crisis can also be a calling, a crucible of transformation, and a collective rite of passage.

~ Michael Meade from "Wisdom of the Threshold" on michaeljmeade.substack.com, March 2026

Michael Meade surrender

...with thanks to James Crews

My friend James calls it the rough blessing,
the blessing that rubs, that chafes,
that scrapes. Perhaps I wanted blessings
to only feel good, to be gentle. But the word itself
comes from the practice of sprinkling blood
on an altar. Why should I be surprised when
the blood for the rite is my own? I am thinking
of how today when I was hemorrhaging fear,
my friend comforted me when I called her in tears.
I felt so loved when she listened and soothed.
Such luminous intimacy grew from my wound.
Oh, ache of being human. Oh, the blessing.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, "...with thanks to James Crews" on her blog A HUNDRED FALLING VEILS

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer surrender

Both soulful and revolutionary

The question is no longer just how to succeed in the world. It is how to remain human in a time of unraveling, and how to become, in the deepest sense, both soulful and revolutionary: ruthless in understanding the material conditions of the age, yet still capable of love, grief, reverence, and fidelity to life. That task may require discipline and strength, yes, but also the harder, slower, less glamorous work of entering the landscape of the soul.

~ Brad Hornick from "Masculinity and the Landscape of the Soul" on resilience.org

Brad Hornick surrender

She Told Me the Earth Loves Us

...Today I learned that trees can't sleep
with our lights on. That they knit

a forest in the"ir language, their feelings.
This is not a metaphor.
Like seeing a face across a crowd,
we are learning all the old things,
newly shined and numbered.
I'm always looking

for a place to lie down
and cry. Green, mossed, shaded.
Or rock-quiet, empty. Somewhere

to hush and start over.
I put on my antlers in the sun.
I walk through the dark gates of the trees.

Grief waters my footsteps, leaving
a trail that glistens.

~ Anne Haven McDonnell from "She Told Me the Earth Loves Us" in ALL WE CAN SAVE: TRUTH, COURAGE AND SOLUTIONS FOR THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Anne Haven McDonnell ALL WE CAN SAVE: TRUTH, COURAGE AND SOLUTIONS FOR THE CLIMATE CRISIS surrender

Greater capacity to hold more

...there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about—a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity—a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.

~ Parker Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS: THE JOURNEY TOWARD AN UNDIVIDED LIFE

Parker Palmer A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life surrender

The times are urgent

...The times are urgent, let us go slowly down into sanctuary. The times are urgent, let us be slowed down by the beings that exceed us. The times are urgent, let us be defeated by things that we cannot understand. The times are urgent, let us defract our ways of knowing. The times are urgent, let us be released from the traps of the things we already know.

~ Bayo Akomolafe; read more at bayoakomolafe.net

Bayo Akomolafe surrender

In a time of drastic change

In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.

~ Thomas Merton in CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER

Thomas Merton Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander kindness

I bow

I bow, hoping to become a person who does not settle for familiarity, but always takes on new challenges.

~ Monk Jeongmok, the 53rd prostration of the "108 Prostrations for Buddhists"

Monk Jeongmok kindness

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness...

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye from "Kindness," in WORDS UNDER THE WORDS: SELECTED POEMS

Naomi Shihab Nye WORDS UNDER THE WORDS: SELECTED POEMS kindness

Power, used well

Power, used well, should be empowering, contagious, and creative. It should be collaborative, enabling, and protective. It should be self-critical, curious, and brave. It should know its own limits and be prepared to risk its own reputation. This kind of power asks questions to which it does not know the answers and listens because in listening is learning, and in learning is life.

~ Padraig O'Tuama in IN THE SHELTER: FINDING A HOME IN THE WORLD

Padraig O'Tuama IN THE SHELTER: FINDING A HOME IN THE WORLD kindness

The Function of Art

[Art] is necessary so that we can be challenged out of our siloed ways of thinking and working, and by extension our understanding of how change occurs...

We can understand art as a process of bringing something into the world that was not there before, it can be an artifact but it can also be an idea. That process, Professor Elaine Scarry calls a fragment of world alteration, and so if we can alter the world in fragments, she says, "just think what can be imagined together, what might be possible in community: a total reinvention of the world."

~ Veronica Yates from "The Function of Art," on the Rights Studio online journal

Veronica Yates kindness

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.

~ Ada Limón, "Instructions on Not Giving Up," in THE CARRYING

Ada Limon The Carrying kindness

For things to reveal themselves

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh in BEING PEACE

Thich Nhat Hanh BEING PEACE kindness

When my son asks me what happened to everyone else as Noah built his ark

I say...

The water rises steady below them
but never overtakes them-

When they reach the mountaintop
they collapse breathless,
laying on the rain-soaked rock.

A child tugs at his parent's shirt.
Through the exhaustion
she barely opens her eyes enough
to see a miraculous prism of light
arcing from the mountaintop
to the floodlands underneath.

That's when they see the ark
drifting below
its occupant so convinced
of his uprightness
that he lays claim
to all the promises of goodness.
The children begin to run and dance
as the mountaintop dries.

The women begin to look around,
assessing what can be used for
a celebratory feast-
a blessing that their worst isn't an end.

The daughter picks an olive branch,
gives it to the dove on her shoulder
and instructs it to fly,
offering it to the lonely man below,
inviting him to the feast.

~ Michelle Scully from "When my son asks me what happened to everyone else as Noah built his ark," on michelleescully.substack.com, January 2025

Michelle Scully kindness

Telling stories

...I am telling stories, not writing prescriptions.

~ Kathleen Norris in ACEDIA & ME: A MARRIAGE, MONKS, AND A WRITER'S LIFE

Kathleen Norris ACEDIA & ME: A MARRIAGE, MONKS, AND A WRITER'S LIFE kindness

Learn to love and answer the questions

But you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. You must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.

~ Elizabeth McCracken in THE GIANT'S HOUSE

Elizabeth McCracken THE GIANT'S HOUSE kindness

You have possibility

What do you have when you don't have a shared name for a place? You have possibility.

~ Padraig O'Tuama in IN THE SHELTER: FINDING A HOME IN THE WORLD

Padraig O'Tuama IN THE SHELTER: FINDING A HOME IN THE WORLD kindness

Bathe my soul in colours

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.

~ Khalil Gibran

Khalil Gibran rainbows

A map that will guide us

There are mountains for climbing, journeys to take, dreams that are hopeful, decisions to make. Dark days may shake us, and worries creep in. With dragons to duel and battles to win. Thunder will rumble. Lightning will flash. The wind will start blowing, and tall waves will crash. But...there are footsteps to follow and words that are wise. There's a map thact will guide us when troubles arise.

~ Smriti Prasadam-Halls in RAIN BEFORE RAINBOWS

Smriti Prasadam-Halls RAIN BEFORE RAINBOWS rainbows

All rainstorms must end

Let's paint a big rainbow to put on display. When people pass by it they'll see it and say, "All rainstorms must end, and this rainstorm will, too."

~ Michelle Robinson in THE WORLD MADE A RAINBOW

Michelle Robinson THE WORLD MADE A RAINBOW rainbows

Cardinal

Be someone's cardinal glimpsed between leaf-shadows,
flit of brightness so startling they have to blink
to believe their eyes. Be the reason someone looks up
from the cracked blankness of concrete and remembers
the world is so much larger than what's locked inside
head and heart. Be the red swoop from free to tree,
the thread that stitches one uncertain moment to the next.

~ James Crews, "Cardinal"

James Crews rainbows

There is no amount of darkness

There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us.

~ Joan Chittister

Joan Chittister rainbows

Colorful once again

The Sun said to the Clouds, "Remember when we used to be together all the time and make rainbows?"

The Clouds nodded. "I'm sorry for going clap bang boom! at you," said the Clouds.

"I'm sorry for going sizzle sizzle sizzle! at you," said the Sun.

"It's better being friends!" said the Sun, and the Clouds agreed. They hugged. The Sun shined brightly and the Clouds misted happy rain. Ever so slowly, rainbows reappeared near and far, turning the world colorful once again.

~ Monica Sweeney in HOW THE CRAYONS SAVED THE RAINBOW

Monica Sweeney HOW THE CRAYONS SAVED THE RAINBOW rainbows

Two miles into the sky

Two miles into
the sky, the snow
builds a mountain
unto itself.

Some drifts can be
thirty feet high.
Picture a house.
Then bury it.

Plows come from both
ends of the road,
foot by foot, month
by month. This year

they didn't meet
in the middle
until mid-June.
Maybe I'm not

expressing this
well. Every year,
snow erases
the highest road.

We must start near
the bottom and
plow toward each
other again.

~ Camille T. Dungy, "In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence"

Camille T. Dungy rainbows

Loneliness

I too have known loneliness.
I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly
not at all beautiful.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.
Oh, motions of tenderness!

~ Mary Oliver, "Loneliness," in BLUE HORSES: POEMS

Mary Oliver BLUE HORSES: POEMS rainbows

Try to be a Rainbow in Someone's Cloud

I've had so many rainbows in my clouds
I had a lot of clouds
So I don't ever feel
I have no help

I've had rainbows in my clouds

And the thing to do it seems to me
Is to prepare yourself
So that you can be a rainbow
In somebody else's cloud

~ Maya Angelou from "Try to be a Rainbow in Someone's Cloud," in RAINBOW IN THE CLOUD: THE WISDOM AND SPIRIT OF MAYA ANGELOU

Maya Angelou RAINBOW IN THE CLOUD: THE WISDOM AND SPIRIT OF MAYA ANGELOU rainbows

We call it color

What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.

~ Anthony Doerr in ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Anthony Doerr ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE rainbows

Your days pass like rainbows

Your days pass like rainbows, like a flash of lightning, like a star at dawn. Your life is short. How can you quarrel?

~ Jack Kornfield in A LAMP IN THE DARKNESS: ILLUMINATING THE PATH THROUGH DIFFICULT TIMES

Jack Kornfield A LAMP IN THE DARKNESS: ILLUMINATING THE PATH THROUGH DIFFICULT TIMES rainbows

Give ourselves to each other

We do not become fully human until we give ourselves to each other in love.

~ Thomas Merton in LOVE AND LIVING

Thomas Merton Love And Living rainbows

A relationship of exchange

Food is rarely in short supply for Saskatoons but mobility is rare. Movement is a gift of the pollinators, but the energy needed to support the buzzing around is scarce. So the trees and the insects create a relationship of exchange that benefits both.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer in THE SERVICEBERRY: ABUNDANCE AND RECIPROCITY IN THE NATURAL WORLD

Robin Wall Kimmerer THE SERVICEBERRY: ABUNDANCE AND RECIPROCITY IN THE NATURAL WORLD rainbows

To help them grow

One little bee peeks out to see
A world of grey and snow.
She's looking for bright colors.
And she needs you to help them grow.

~ Christie Matheson in THE HIDDEN RAINBOW: A SPRINGTIME BOOK FOR KIDS

Christie Matheson THE HIDDEN RAINBOW: A SPRINGTIME BOOK FOR KIDS rainbows

To give happiness to others

To give happiness to others is a great happiness, too.

~ Marcus Pfister in THE RAINBOW FISH

Marcus Pfister THE RAINBOW FISH rainbows

Hope and Love

All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the custom of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one-
not knowing even
that was what he did-
in the blowing
sounds in the dark.
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.

~ Jane Hirshfield, "Hope and Love," in THE LIVES OF THE HEART

Jane Hirshfield The Lives Of The Heart hope

To teach you that life is a journey

Grandfather says this: in life there is sadness as well as joy, losing as well as winning, falling as well as standing. I do not say this to make you despair, but to teach you that life is a journey sometimes walked in light and sometimes walked in shadow.

~ Joseph Marshall III in KEEP GOING

Joseph Marshall III Keep Going hope

The challenge of hopelessness

Clearly hopelessness has at least as much to do with what we bring to life as it does with what life brings to us... The challenge of hopelessness is the challenge to re-enter the human race, to take our part in it knowing that it is as much our responsibility to shape life as it is for life to shape us...Hopelessness calls us beyond quitting what we cannot quit, to learn how to do what we have been born to do. Even if this means doing one thing while waiting to do another.

~ Joan Chittister in SCARRED BY STRUGGLE, TRANSFORMED BY HOPE

Joan Chittister Scarred By Struggle, Transformed By Hope hope

What to do in the Darkness

Go slowly
Consent to it
But don't wallow in it
Know it as a place of germination
And growth
Remember the light
Take an outstretched hand if you find one
Exercise unused senses
Find the path by walking it
Practice trust
Watch for dawn.

~ Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, "What to do in the Darkness," in MIDWINTER LIGHT

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre MIDWINTER LIGHT hope

Hope's home

Hope's home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life — a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.

~ Cynthia Bourgeault in MYSTICAL HOPE: TRUSTING IN THE MERCY OF GOD

Cynthia Bourgeault MYSTICAL HOPE: TRUSTING IN THE MERCY OF GOD hope

Amazed forever

What do you want to be? People always ask. They don't ask who or how you want to be?

I might have said, amazed forever. I wanted to be curious, interested, interesting, hopeful – and a little bit odd was okay too. I did not know if I wanted to run a bakery, be a postal worker, play a violin or the timpani drum in an orchestra. That part was unknown.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye in A MAZE ME: POEMS FOR GIRLS

Naomi Shihab Nye A MAZE ME: POEMS FOR GIRLS hope

To condition circumstance

To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy ... is to condition circumstance instead of being conditioned by them.

~ Ralph Waldo Trine in WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING

Ralph Waldo Trine WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING hope

The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

~ Seamus Heaney,"The Cure at Troy," in THE CURE AT TROY

Seamus Heaney THE CURE AT TROY hope

The light of one small candle

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of one small candle... In moments of discouragement, defeat or even despair, there are always certain things to cling to. Little things usually: remembered laughter, the face of a sleeping child, a tree in the wind – in fact, any reminder of something deeply felt or dearly loved. None is so poor as not to have many of these small candles. When they are lighted, darkness goes away and a touch of wonder remains.

~ Arthur Gordon in A TOUCH OF WONDER

Arthur Gordon A TOUCH OF WONDER hope

The broken places

The World breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.

~ Ernest Hemingway in A FAREWELL TO ARMS

Ernest Hemingway A FAREWELL TO ARMS hope

A beauty without features

Anyone who has probed the inner life, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the center of human consciousness something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist – an outer world and the mystery of the inner world – but that we are suspended between them, as a space in which both worlds meet ... as if the human a is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds.

~ Kabir Edmund Helminski in THE KNOWING HEART

Kabir Edmund Helminski The Knowing Heart hope

The fundamental illusion

The illusion that God is absent is the fundamental illusion of the human condition.

~ Thomas Keating

Thomas Keating hope

Days pass and the years vanish

Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. O Holy One, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk... And we will exclaim in wonder, "How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it."

~ Rachel Naomi Remen in MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSINGS

Rachel Naomi Remen My Grandfather's Blessings hope

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