Hope

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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

Journey

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

J. R. R. Tolkien

Light

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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

The Mid-Point

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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

The Black Church

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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

To Hope

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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

Truth about stories

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

Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Seven Whispers of Spiritual Common Sense

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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

Colonialism

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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

New Life

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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

Longing

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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

Prayer

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

Joan Chittister

Wisdom

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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

Life

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

Right where you need to be

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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

Mealtime Prayer

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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

Story you are tending

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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

Wisdom

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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

Quietude

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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

in the ordinary

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Language

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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

I

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

Dorothy Allison

Story

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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

Childhood

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What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.

Mary Jo Putney

Imagination

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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

A Time to Remember

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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.

Discovery

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

Marcel Proust

Irony

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

David Kundtz, Everyday Serenity

To See

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

Georgia O’Keeffe

Being

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

Steven Harrison

Simplicity

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

Lao-Tzu