Quotations

Christmas enters

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air...

Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things,
Even hate, which crouches breeding in dark corridors...

We beckon this good season to wait awhile with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay awhile with us.

~ Maya Angelou, excerpt from "Amazing Peace"

Maya Angelou Amazing Peace advent

Surely the holy one is not deaf

Surely the holy one is not deaf.
He hears the delicate bells that ring
On the feet of an insect as it walks.

~ Kabir in THE SONGS OF KABIR, translated by Rabindranath Tagore

Kabir The Songs Of Kabir advent

God loves the lowly

God is so free and so marvelous {doing} wonders where people despair... tak{ing} what is little and lowly and mak{ing} it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly... God marches right in {and} chooses people as... instruments and performs... wonders where one would least expect them.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer in GOD IS IN THE MANGER

Dietrich Bonhoeffer God Is In The Manger advent

Every small thing

Jesus came to us as a child so that we might come to understand not only that nothing we do is insignificant, but that every small thing we do has within it the power to change the world.

~ Joan Chittister, OSB in BECOMING FULLY HUMAN

Joan Chittister Becoming Fully Human advent

Light a candle

The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle.

~ Irving Greenberg in THE JEWISH WAY

Irving Greenberg The Jewish Way advent

All that is necessary

All that is necessary
To make this world a better place
To live is to love as
Christ loves, as Buddha loved.

~ Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan advent

Peace is inside all of us

Peace is inside all of us.
We just need to share it.

~ Jacoba Barber-Rozema, age 10

Jacoba Barber-Rozema advent

Make all things new

In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will...

Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.

~ Walter Brueggemann in AWED TO HEAVEN, ROOTED IN EARTH

Walter Brueggemann Rooted In Earth, Awed To Heaven advent

Amazing Peace

We shout with glorious tongues the coming of hope...
To celebrate the Promise of Peace.

~ Maya Angelou, excerpt from "Amazing Peace"

Maya Angelou Amazing Peace advent

Blessings of joy and peace

BLESSINGS of joy and peace! May the Promise of this season find a home in your heart!

~ Nan Merrill, 1992

Nan Merrill advent

You formed my inward being

...You formed my inward being,
You knit me together in my mother's womb...
Your mysteries fill me with wonder!
More than I know myself do You know me;
my essence was not hidden from You,
When I was being formed in secret,
intricately fashioned from the elements of the earth...

~ Nan Merrill, "Psalm 139" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING

Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying death

You are not going somewhere strange

...May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid...You are not going somewhere strange. You are going back to the home you never left. May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full...May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured. May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam cara.

~ John O'Donohue in ANAM CARA: A BOOK OF CELTIC WISDOM

Anam Cara: A Book Of Celtic Wisdom death

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn...

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what will it be like, that cottage of darkness?...

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement...
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real...

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

~ Mary Oliver, excerpts from "When Death Comes" in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, VOL. 1

Mary Oliver Vol. 1, New And Selected Poems death

Life, too, is probably round

I am done with talk of death except as it is a part of life, one side of a sphere whose roundness would otherwise be incomplete. In a letter van Gogh wrote, "The earth had thought to be flat... science has proved that the world is round... they persist nowadays in believing that life is flat and runs from birth to death. However, life, too, is probably round."

~ Fenton Johnson in THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEART

Fenton Johnson The Geography Of The Heart death

Love is revealed as the great currency

What I've seen on my rounds is that if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to reflect at the end of a life, then love is revealed as the great currency. It's the thing. The treasury. It's what mattered...

How well did I love? whom did I love?, and how was love central to the life that I made for myself?

...When the lots are counted, when we are gathered in, we will find that it was love that mattered. Love expressed, given, received, fought for. So for those of us fighting right now, I say; keep going. As a culture, as an individual, believe in the full life that is your bequeathed inheritance, not the subterranean half-life that terror and impoverished minded bullies will try and spike your wine with. You are too good for that.

~ Martin Shaw in A COUNSEL OF RESISTANCE AND DELIGHT IN THE FACE OF FEAR

Martin Shaw A Counsel Of Resistance And Delight In The Face Of Fear death

Turn your dying into a question

What if your dying is an angel? And what if your dying job, should you choose to accept it, is to wrestle this angel of your dying instead of fighting it? ...Wrestling isn't what happens to you. It is what you do. And you will not be alone in it...Living your way of life wrestles the way life has of being itself: That is how meaning is made...That is what the news of your death could mean: It could mean the beginning, unadorned, common, and singular, of your one true life and its work...

Come to your death as an angel to wrestle instead of an executioner to fight or flee from and you turn your dying into a question instead of an edict: What shall my life mean? What shall my time of dying be for? What is it going be like, that cottage of darkness?

~ Stephen Jenkinson in DIE WISE

Stephen Jenkinson Die Wise death

For Death

...when destiny draws you
into these spaces of poverty,
and your heart stays generous
until some door opens into the light,
you are quietly befriending your death;
so that you will have no need to fear
when your time comes to turn and leave,
that the silent presence of your death
would call your life to attention...
to the urgency to become free
and equal to the call of your destiny.

~ John O'Donohue, "For Death" in TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US

To Bless The Space Between Us death

Whisperings of release in the air

It is the most supremely interesting moment in life, the only one in fact when living seems life, and I count in the greatest good fortune to have these few months so full of interest and instruction in the knowledge of my approaching death. It is as simple as one's own person as any fact of nature, the fall of a leaf or the blooming of a rose, and I have a delicious consciousness, ever present, of wide spaces close at hand, and whisperings of release in the air.

~ Alice James in THE DIARY OF ALICE JAMES

Alice James The Diary Of Alice James death

Toward the opening awaiting me

So I turn my head and look towards death now. Feeling my way through the tunnel with the space of emptiness and quiet. That shimmering silence that awaits me...
A breath...A pause. I relax, and then float on toward the opening awaiting me...
This is my direction now; inward to the green pastures, to the great light of divine love, the great peace of All Knowing.

~ Karen Paine-Gernee, quoted in LIFE PRAYERS

Karen Paine-Gernee Life Prayers death

Abide with me

Oh, abide with me, where it's breathless and it's empty
yes, abide with me and we'll pass the evening gently
stay awake with me and we'll listen more intently
to something wordless and remaining sure and every changing
in the quietness of now.
There are things I cannot prove, and still somehow I know.
It's like a message in a bottle that some unseen hand has thrown
you don't have to be afraid, you don't have to walk alone
I don't know but I suspect, that it will feel like home.

~ Carrie Newcomer & Parker Palmer, "Abide"

Carrie Newcomer & Parker Palmer A Permeable Life death

Engaged and awake

When a person is poised in all three centers (mind, heart, and body), balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut tracks of issues and agendas and ways of thinking, we seem to come from a deeper, steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the words of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves.

This state of presence is extraordinarily important to know and taste in oneself. For sacred tradition is emphatic in its insistence that real Wisdom can be given and received only in a state of presence, with all three centers of our being engaged and awake. Anything less is known in the tradition as "sleep" and results in an immediate loss of receptivity to higher meaning. To return to that favorite Wisdom metaphor, it is like the disciple Peter suddenly sinking beneath the surface of the waters.

~ Cynthia Bourgeault from THE WISDOM WAY OF KNOWING

Cynthia Bourgeault The Wisdom Way Of Knowing silence

Fully present to what is happening in the world

The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

~ Joanna Macy

Joanna Macy silence

Blessing in the chaos

Blessing in the Chaos

To all that is chaotic in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be a calming of the clamoring,
a stilling of the voices
that have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you

that go with you even to the holy places
but will not let you rest,
will not let you hear your life with wholeness.

~ Jan Richardson from THE CURE FOR SORROW

Jan Richardson The Cure For Sorrow silence

The quality of consciously being here

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. In addition to the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative, and creative capacities; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification because they are operating best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call "heart".

Presence signifies the quality of consciously being here. It is the activation of a higher level of awareness that allows all our other human functions - such as thought, feeling, and action - to be known, developed, and harmonized. Presence is the way in which we occupy space, as well as how we flow and move. It shapes our self-image and emotional tone. It determines the degree of our alertness, openness, and warmth. Presence decides whether we leak and scatter our energy or embody and direct it.

~ Kabir Helminski from LIVING PRESENCE

Kabir Helminski Living Presence silence

Degree of presence

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

~ Alan Watts from THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY

Alan Watts The Wisdom Of Insecurity silence

This very moment is the perfect teacher

Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. They're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are ... The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

~ Pema Chödrön from WHEN THINGS FALL APART

Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart silence

The practice of inner stop

One of the first conscious efforts you can make after you have observed some wrong work or negative I in you is the practice of inner stop. It means to become absolutely still within yourself. You are not trying to stop your thoughts. Stopping all thoughts are not possible. But you can hold yourself inviolate against any particular thought that wishes to grab your attention by being entirely motionless inside. It has nothing to do with stopping the I itself. I's will continue to move in and out of your awareness but in your stillness, you have become invisible to them like a rabbit that freezes when it senses a predator. You notice an encroaching negative I or negative state and instead of trying to banish it you become silent and still inside yourself and therefore are invisible to it. You don't talk to it or contend with it in any way. You simply stay still within yourself which will give you the time to proceed to the next movement. Practicing inner stop gives you the opportunity to decide the best course of action.

~ Rebecca Nottingham from THE WORK: ESOTERICISM AND CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Rebecca Nottingham The Work: Esotericism And Christian Psychology silence

The whole world falls in

May God break my heart so deeply the whole world falls in.

~ Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa silence

The beginning of counscious love

I will also tell you a secret. We have to will one another: this is the beginning of conscious love.

~ Maurice Nicoll from PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENTARIES ON THE WORKS OF GURDJIEFF AND OUSPENSKI

Maurice Nicoll Psychological Commentaries On The Works Of Gurdjieff And Ouspenski silence

I must see that I am asleep

In order to wish to be present, I must see that I am asleep. "I" am not here. I am enclosed in a circle of petty interests and avidity in which my "I" is lost. And it will remain lost unless I can relate to something higher.

I need to understand that by myself, without a relation with something higher, I am nothing.

I can escape only if I feel my absolute nothingness and begin to feel the need for help. I must feel the need to relate myself to something higher, to open to another quality.

~ Jeanne de Salzmann from THE REALITY OF BEING

Jeanne de Salzmann The Reality Of Being silence

Being is

Being is what you can bear.

~ Sofie Grigorievna Ouspensky

Sofie Grigorievna Ouspensky silence

When we live superficially

When we live superficially ... we are always outside ourselves, never quite 'with' ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions ... we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.

~ Thomas Merton from LOVE AND LIVING

Thomas Merton Love And Living silence

Be awake

It is important that awake people be awake. The darkness around us is deep.

~ William Stafford from "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" in THE WAY IT IS

William Stafford The Way It Is silence

This is the mystery

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering becomes love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.

~ Katherine Mansfield from THE JOURNAL OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Katherine Mansfield The Journal Of Katherine Mansfield silence

It's hard to let go anything we love

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

~ Madeleine L'Engle in A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT

Madeleine L'Engle A Ring Of Endless Light enough

I taught myself to live simply

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries...

~ Anna Akhmatova from "I Taught Myself to Live Simply"

Anna Akhmatova enough

Never alone or weary of life

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations and concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the reassurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

~ Rachel Carson in THE SENSE OF WONDER

Rachel Carson The Sense Of Wonder enough

This is a wonderful day

This is a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.

~ Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou enough

To know one mountain

"It's better to know one mountain than to climb many."

~ Native American Proverb

Native American Proverb enough

Famous

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye from "Famous"

Naomi Shihab Nye Words Under The Words enough

I am having this one

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

~ Kazuo Ishiguro in CONVERSATIONS WITH KAZUO ISHIGURO

Kazuo Ishiguro Conversations With Kazuo Ishiguro enough

My Symphony

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
Grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

~ William Ellery Channing from "My Symphony"

William Ellery Channing My Symphony enough

Be free of possessing things

The value of a human being can be measured by what he or she most deeply wants. Be free of possessing things. Sit at an empty table. Be pleased with water, the taste of being at home.

~ Rumi

Rumi enough

At peace with the way things are

As you open yourself to your soul, a calming sense of peace and connectedness develops within you. This peaceful feeling deepens your levels of thought, releases the innate healing powers of your body, reminds you to be grateful for all the gifts of life, and broadens your perspective, so that you can be at peace with the way things are.

~ Jack Canfield from "Rekindling the Fires of Your Soul"

Jack Canfield Handbook For The Soul enough

Celebrate a simple life

It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien enough

Each moment is all we need

Be happy in the moment, that is enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.

~ Mother Theresa

Mother Theresa enough

In the child is much knowledge

In the child is much knowledge, much wisdom. If we do not profit from it, it is only because of neglect on our part to become humble and to see the wonder of this soul and learn what the child can teach.

~ Maria Montessori in THE THEOSOPHIST

Maria Montessori The Theosophist child

Every child

"Every child is an idea of God."

~ Eberhard Arnold

Eberhard Arnold child

We feel at one with nature and the realm of dreams

As infants we enjoy an intimacy with everything around us: tiny stones, butterflies, flowers, birds, animals both stuffed and real. We live in a world of beauty and imagination. Ecstasy comes easily. We feel at one with nature and the realm of dreams...The past, the future, the present: these are meaningless to us, for we have the ability to blend them into one. We can be anything we want at any time...Then at some point in our lives, that awareness changes...adults convince us that we are not all one.

~ John Perkins in THE WORLD IS AS YOU DREAM IT

John Perkins The World Is As You Dream It child

What our Children Need Most Right Now

"I encourage you to spend as much time with your family as your time allows, whether it's dancing, playing, walking, cooking, cleaning, being silly, or just hanging out. This can be a scary time for kids, and nothing will help ease their fears and encourage their cognitive and social development like spending time with you." ...This same teacher is also emailing us [parents] a daily photo of a bird to identify...and sharing out-of-the-box ideas for the students' unit this month on an appropriate topic: survival...but the words above are the words I will treasure as a parent for a long time. They will remind me to take a break from refreshing the updated coronavirus map, checking my school email, and cursing Amazon's multitude of out-of-stock items.

Instead, I'll look my 12-year-old daughter in the eyes and ask, "How you doing, Baby Goose?" I'll accept my son's challenge to a muddy soccer game in the backyard. I'll take him by the hand and walk up our mountain one more time, grateful that during a crisis when all we have is each other, "each other" is exactly what we all need.

~ Justin Minkel, an elementary school teacher in Arkansas, "What our Children Need Most Right Now": in Education Week., March 2020

Justin Minkel child

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