Sunday, January 31, 2010

Food


RCC_9311
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Food is a cultural product; it cannot be produced by technology alone … a healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration. … It clarifies our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other.

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Life


RCC_2512
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Life has taught me that it knows better plans than we can imagine, so that I try to submerge my own desires … into a calm willingness to accept what comes, and to make the most of it, then wait again.

Julia Seton, By a Thousand Fires

Friday, January 29, 2010

Consciousness


RCC_2821
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Consciousness is our second birth, the birth of our capacity to reflect upon and wonder about experience.

Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Spritual Journey


RCC_6206
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


We call spirituality a journey and speak in metaphors of travel, yet many of us never leave the neighbourhood.

Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

This Road


RCC_2417
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I have always known that at last I would take this road, but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.

Narihara

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Becoming


RCC_3092
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


We always were who we have become, and we are always becoming who we always were.

Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Pleasure & Sorrow


RCC_6113
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.

Robert Browning Hamilton

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Doors of Percepion


RCC_9429
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


If the doors of perception were cleansed, said Blake,
everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.
But the doors of perception are hung with cobwebs of thought,
prejudice, cowardice, sloth. Eternity is with us, inviting our
contemplation perpetually, but we are too arrogant to still our
thought and let divine sensation have its way.

Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism

Friday, January 22, 2010

Our Lives


RCC_6056
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


If our lives demonstrate that we are peaceful, humble and trusted, this is recognized by others. If our lives demonstrate something else, that will be noticed too.

Rosa Parks, civil rights activist

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Success


RCC_6108
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Bill Cosby

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Process


RCC_6023
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


When you focus on the outcome rather than the process, you can easily miss the target by ignoring all the little clues along the way that point you in the right direction. … The biggest distraction of all is focusing too intently on the goal.

Gary Fong, the accidental millionaire: how to succeed in life without really trying

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Look


RCC_6015
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Everywhere is perfect if only we have eyes to see it.
("Look beneath your feet," says the sign at the entrance to many a Zen temple.)

Pico Iyer

Monday, January 18, 2010

Saint or Communist?


RCC_6307
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why so many people are poor they call me a communist.

Dom Helder Câmara, late archbishop of the Brazilian Diocese of Olinda and Recife

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Future


RCC_5634
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

Abraham Lincoln

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Knowing


RCC_9013
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Tao Te Ching

Friday, January 15, 2010

Heaven


RCC_1531
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


In this life we are to become heaven so that God might find a home here.

Meister Eckhart

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Making room for the other


RC1_8898
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


The classic sign of God's mystery is to entertain, to make room for the other.

Kathleen Noris, Dakota

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Eating


RC1_8307
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

Wendell Berry

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Monday, January 11, 2010

Emergency


RCC_9368
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth.  The old certainties are crumblng fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Sunday, January 10, 2010

i thank You God


_DSC6495
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

e. e. cummings

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Life


RC1_8502
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?

Henry David Thoreau

Friday, January 8, 2010

Simplicity


DSC_8012
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Simplicity of living, if deliberately chosen, implies a compassionate approach to life. It means that we are choosing to live our daily lives with some degree of conscious appreciation of the condition of the rest of the world.

Duane Elgin

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Silence


RCC_5604
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Silence of the heart is necessary so you can hear God everywhere – in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, in the animals.

Mother Teresa

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Thousand Faces of the Divine


RC1_0592
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


All I know is there are a thousand faces of the Divine, and a thousand ways to pray. Every minute of life presents an essential choice: to avail ourselves of this relationship, or to close up in isolation.

Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Tmes Like These

Monday, January 4, 2010

Still Small Voice Within


RCC_7882
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


Only when we are silent can we begin to hear the voice that is truly our own – what the Quakers call “the still small voice within.” … The source of this voice – which may be without sound, and yet is heard – is called by many different names: the inner guide, guardian angel, spirit guide, the collective unconscious, or just plain intuition. Actually all of us hear the whispering of this voice every single day of our lives, but many ignore it.

Rick Fields, Chop Wood, Carry Water

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Laughter


RCC_7818
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


At the height of laughter the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Unimagined Bridge


RC1_9183
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto


As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday, January 1, 2010

Lasting Change


RC1_8546
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.

Eknath Easwaran