The essence of struggle

RIC_6463-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.



     The essence of struggle is the decision to become new rather than
     simply to become older.

       Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope

     
    

Heart

RIC_0075-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Wherever I am,

my heart is, and

that is where I will meet the Divine.

Tom Maddix,

Running Scared: The Call of Pilgrimage

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

Monoculture

RCC_1860, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr. 

The governing pattern a culture obeys is a master story – one

narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking

diversity and forming a monoculture. When you’re inside a

master story at a particular time in history, you tend to

accept its definition of reality. You unconsciously believe and

act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other

things. That’s the power of the monoculture; it’s able to

direct us without us knowing too much about it.

 F. S. Michaels, Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything

Memory

RIC_6469-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

All memory is present.

Novalis (Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg)

Connected

RIC_6426-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We cannot live for ourselves alone.

Our lives are connected by a thousand individual threads,

and along these sympathetic fibres,

our actions run as causes and return to us as results. 

Herman Melville

.

Joy

RIC_6227-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Joy that is only ours is not real joy.

Kyriacos Markides, Riding with the Lion

Story of Our Life

RIC_6727-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

None of us can read the story of our life – we can only live it. The result is that we live in and with uncertainty.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversations: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible – Genesis: The Book of Beginnings

Our Story

RIC_6719-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Our story is the vehicle through which we communicate to others and ourselves a piece of our life. Our story is how we put our events into perspective and assign meaning to what happened. 

Fred Luskin, Forgive for Good

Food

RIC_6677-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

    
     Food is not a weapon. To use it as such — to foster a
     mentality willing to use it as such — is to prepare, in the
     human character and community, the destruction of the
     sources of food. … Neither nature nor people alone can
     produce human sustenance, but only the two together,
     culturally wedded. 

      Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Nature

RIC_5317-2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Nature is not on the surface, it is inside. 

Colours, on the surface, show that inside. 

They show the roots of the world. 

Paul Cézanne in Cézanne by Joachim Gasquet

Unlearning of fear

RIC_2234-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment – or unlearning – of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts.

Marianne Williamson

Innocence

RCC_9260, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Innocence is more than lack of knowledge and experience, it’s learning to look at the world with wonder.

Richard Wagamese

Sin

RIC_6439-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The sin most insistently called abhorrent to God is the failure of generosity, the neglect of the widow and orphan, the oppression of strangers and poor, the defrauding of the labourer.

Marilynne Robinson

Passion

RIC_6246-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Follow your bliss!

Joseph Campbell

Beauty

RIC_5347-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Rien n’est beau que le vrai,

le vrai seul est amiable.

Beauty is only in the true,

only the true is lovable.

Nicolas Boileau-Deéspreaux

Harmony

RIC_5304-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Together we have sought the good odour of our life,

where the flowers of many colours are growing,

not only one colour, but many colours;

we can listen to many sounds, not only one;

we can dialogue with many traditions, not only one;

where we can dance and break down the great walls

that do not allow dance,

to expose ourselves to the Wind,

to the Spirit that ruffles our hair and our lives.

Ivona Gebara

World of the imagination

RIC_5341-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

George Santayana once said, "Another world to live in is what we mean by religion." And so, too, the world of the imagination and the enlargement of human sympathy it provides.

Joyce Carol Oates, 3 Minutes or Less: Life Lessions from America's Greatest Writers

Art

RIC_5300-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Art liberates and purifies, and its tokens are those short moments when we look at a beautiful landscape forgetting about ourselves, when everything that concerns us disappears, is dissolved, and it does not matter whether the eye that looks is that of a beggar or a king.

Czeslaw Milosz, A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry

Attitude

DSC_3859, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.

Swedish Proverb