Thursday, December 31, 2009

Hope


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Hope is hope against the evidence. Hope arises in a break with the past. There is a kind of cut and the past is let go of. There is a difference between simple expectation and hope. … Expectation is based on the pattern you see in the past…. I think that hope is a kind of birth — it doesn’t come out of what went before, it comes out in spite of what went before.

Alphonso Lingis, Philosopher

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Journey


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Light


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beams.


Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Monday, December 28, 2009

The Mid-Point


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


In my understanding I saw God in a point. In seeing this I saw that God is in all things. God works in creatures because God is in the mid-point of everything.

Julian of Norwich

Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Black Church


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The black church, not because of the color of our people but because of our historical experience, ought to be the conscience of the nation.


Churches call ministers, but it takes time to grow a pastor.

Gardner Calvin Taylor

Saturday, December 26, 2009

To Hope


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.  ...  Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed.  Hope is for action; action is impossible without hope.

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Friday, December 25, 2009

Truth about stories


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The truth about stories is that that's all we are.

Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Seven Whispers of Spiritual Common Sense


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Maintain peace of mind.
Move at the pace of guidance.
Practice certainty of purpose.
Surrender to surprise.
Ask for what you need and offer what you can.
Love the folks in front of you.
Return to the world.

Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Colonialism


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Colonialism is a denial of the reality of self in favour of an imaginary special position inside the mythology of someone else's empire. That special position can never exist because empires have their own purpose.

John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Tellng Truths About Canada

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

New Life


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


My boat strikes something deep.
At first sounds of silence, waves.
Nothing has happened;
Or perhaps everything has happened
And I am sitting in my new life.

Rumi

Monday, December 21, 2009

Longing


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


If a person feels a longing to be at one with the universe,
it is as if the universe feels the same longing
to be at one with the person.
If I sense a great aching in my heart to be in love with God,
it seems that God must be in some mysterious way
share that aching for me.

Gerald May, Will and Spirit

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Prayer


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Prayer is not a pious gesture at all.
It is a respnse to the One whose heart beats with ours.

Joan Chittister

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Wisdom


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

There is in all visible things
an invisible fecundity,
a dimmed light,
a meek namelessness,
a hidden wholeness.
This mysterious Unity and Integrity
is Wisdom, the Mother of all,
Natura nautrans.

Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia

Friday, December 18, 2009

Life


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Life should not be measured by the breaths we take, rather by moments that take our breath away.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Right where you need to be


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


You've been right where you need to be.
Maybe you've been there all along.

Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeling Your Soul

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Mealtime Prayer


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


For all we eat,
    and all we wear,
for daily bread,
    and nightly care,
we thank you God.
    Amen.

Anonymous, A Year of Grace: 365 Mealtime Prayers by William S. Kervin

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Story you are tending


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


What's the story you are tending, the one you'll never let be put out?
Let's start there.
Tell me that story.

Christina Baldwin, Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

Monday, December 14, 2009

Wisdom


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


What event or experience in you life have you ridden to wisdom?
Let's start there.
Tell me that story?

Christina Baldwin, Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Quietude


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.

Marian Wright Edelman

Saturday, December 12, 2009

in the ordinary


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, December 11, 2009

Language


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we’re capable of – to explain the pains and glory of our existence.

Maya Angelou

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.

Dorothy Allison

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Story


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Story is a search for community. As we tell each other who we really are, we find the people with whom we really belong. Story brings us home.

Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Monday, December 7, 2009

Imagination


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


It's not the colour of a nation that holds a nation's pride.
It's imagination.
It's imagination inside.

Andrea Menard, The Halfbreed Blues

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A Time to Remember


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

In 1991, the Canadian Parliament declared December 6 a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

We remember in horror on this day, on December 6, 1989, the loss of 14 young women, students at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal, murdered because they were women. Every year, we speak their names and the names of too many other victims of violence.

We honour the lives of these 14 women:

Geneviève Bergeron, 21;

Hélène Colgan, 23;

Nathalie Croteau, 23;

Barbara Daigneault, 22;

Anne-Marie Edward, 21;

Maud Haviernick, 29;

Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, 31;

Maryse Laganière, 25;

Maryse Leclair, 23;

Anne-Marie Lemay, 27;

Sonia Pelletier, 23;

Michèle Richard, 21.

Annie St-Arneault, 23;

Annie Turcotte, 21.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Discovery


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Friday, December 4, 2009

Irony


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The irony is that the more you separate what you are from what you do, the more you can do!

David Kundtz, Everyday Serenity

Thursday, December 3, 2009

To See


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Nobody sees a flower, really – it’s so small – we haven’t time, and to see takes time. …

Georgia O’Keeffe

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Being


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


We have learned so much about how to do that we have forgotten how to be.

Steven Harrison

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Simplicity


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

Lao-Tzu

Monday, November 30, 2009

Great Thoughts


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I say to you in all sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.

Oliver Wendell Holms, Jr.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Mother


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


“Mother” does not mean being the woman who gives birth to and cares for a child; to be a mother is to feel in your own flesh the suffering of all the children, all the men, and all the young people who die, as though they had come from your own womb.

Luz Beatriz Arellano [Nicaragua]

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Look into your heart


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for what has been your delight.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Friday, November 27, 2009

Greatest disease


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or Leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.

Mother Teresa, A Simple Path

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Who am I?


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Who I am is what fulfills me and what fulfills the vision I have of a world.

Audre Lorde

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Door


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


A door is truly an amazing thing.

Closed, it is an agent of separation. …
But swing it open and it becomes an invitation,
uniting what before was separate.

Drew Leder

Monday, November 23, 2009

Truth


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The truth knocks on the door and you say,
"Go away, I'm looking for the truth"
and so it goes away. Puzzling.

Robert Pirsig

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Friday, November 20, 2009

Seed of growth and liberation


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Every painful event contains in itself a seed of growth and liberation.

Anthony de Mello

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Homeless


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Probably no word better summarizes the suffering of our times than the word “homeless.” It reveals one of our deepest and most painful conditions, the condition of not having a sense of belonging, of not having a place where we can feel safe, cared for, protected, and loved.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Anthropology


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The key revelation of anthropology is the idea that distinct cultures represent unique visions of life itself, morally inspired and inherently right. ... To dismiss indigenous peoples as trivial, to view their societies as marginal, is to ignore and deny the central revelation of anthropology.

Wade Davis, Light at the Edge of the World

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Heaven on Earth


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.

Mark Twain

Monday, November 16, 2009

Emptiness


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Emptiness is the footprint on which the centred person moves.

Tibetan sage

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The World


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The world is not like a picture painted by an artist centuries ago which now hangs untouchable in a museum. It is more like a work of art in constant process of creation, still in a studio.

Ernesto Cardenal

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Miracles


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


But that is the thing about miracles: it is perception that determines them as such, not facts.

Camilla Gibb, sweetness in the belly

Friday, November 13, 2009

Story


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Everyone has a story. That’s what the circle teaches us. We become better people, a better species, when we take the time to hear them. That’s how you change the world, really. One story, one voice at a time.

Richard Wagamese, One Native Life

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Door


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own.

Rabindranath Tagore