Images captured from the ordinary that signify signs of sacredness within and around us. All photographs copyrighted by Richard C. Choe© [rcckruc@gmail.com]. Click on the photo to enlarge it. Please do not copy or use photographs without permission.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Hope
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
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Light
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friday, December 11, 2009
Language
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
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Story
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
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
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
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Friday, December 4, 2009
Irony
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
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
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Great Thoughts
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
“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
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
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
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Door
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
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Truth
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
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Seed of growth and liberation
Every painful event contains in itself a seed of growth and liberation.
Anthony de Mello
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Homeless
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
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
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
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The World
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
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
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
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