Christmas Lessons

RC1_0082, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell

Each Christmas come since World War I I've learned its lessons well

That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame

And on each end of the rifle we're the same.

John McCutcheon, Christmas in the Trenches

New Eyes

RCC_6074-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     The purpose of art is not to strand us in an

     alternate world, but to return us to the

     realm of the ordinary, only with new eyes.

       Gregory Wolfe,

       "Transfiguration," Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on

       Art, Faith, and Mystery

Seeing & Naming

RIC_6647-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

I had seen only that which I was able to name. …

The mere words I knew, the richer, fuller, and more variegated would be the world that opened before me, and which I could capture. 

Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

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Questions

RIC_1949, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Questions are the creative acts of intelligence.

Frank Kingdon

Solution in hieroglyphic

RIC_2089, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Every person’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries they would put.

We act it as life, before we apprehend it as truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change

RIC_6408 a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The stuff of our lives doesn’t change.

It is we who change in relation to it.

Molly Vass

Questions

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The presence of questions already indicates the presence of dialogue: someone in your mind is asking; someone in your mind is responding.

Christina Baldwin, One on One

Hope

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Hope is delicate suffering.

Amiri Baraka, African American poet,
from "Language Is a Place of Struggle": Great Quotes by People of Color, edited by Tram Nguyen

Perspective

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

To figure out what was really happening behind the clichés, I’d learned, meant a practice of looking not at the centre but at the edges of things – at the unlikeliest and weakest people, not the most apparently powerful.

Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

Be broken

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart.

Never give up, never lose hope.

Allah says, “The broken ones are my beloved.”

Crush your heart. Be broken.

Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir, aka Nobody, Son of Nobody

Honesty

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Honesty is the best poetry.

Gregory Alan Elliott

Good for Something

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

God in All Things

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw – and knew I saw – all things in God and God in all things.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

Information

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Information is that which changes us.

Stafford Beer

Seeking the alternatives

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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

No social system, no historical vision, no theoretical totalization, no matter how powerful, can exhaust all the alternatives or practices that exist within its domain. There is always the possibility to transgress. … There’s always an opportunity to formulate an alternative, and not either to remain silent or to capitulate. … I think it’s the role of the intellectual always to be asserting the alternative.

Edward Said in Conversations with Edward Said by Tariq Ali

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

Peace

Divine Peace-Bringer,
take what is jagged in my relationships,
and transform it with your grace.
I will do my best to bid farewell
to whatever keeps me from inner peace.
Help me bring your enduring harmony
into every part of my existence.
I open the door of my heart to you.
I open the door.


Joyce Rupp, The Open Door