Creating change

Kinton Ramen 5 (2014, 1.15), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The only way we really create change 

is to enter any situation with the humility to listen

and to recognize the world as it is, and then 
the audacity to dream what it could be.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Courage

RIC_0781-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     Faith is not enough.
     We must act on our faith.
     Inner healing is not enough.
     We must heal our world.
     Spiritual practice is not enough.
     We must have the spiritual courage
     to stand up against injustice.
        
        Raine Eisler

Short Memory

RIC_2263, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

A lot of people mistake a short memory

for a clear conscience. 

Doug Larson

     On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the United States' second atomic bomb 
     attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was destroyed and an estimated 70,000
     people were killed by the bomb. According to statistics found within Nagasaki Peace Park, the
     death toll from the atomic bombing totalled 73,884, including 2,000 Korean forced workers
     and eight POWs, as well as another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand
     diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation. [from Wikipedia]

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Deep Listening

RIC_8014-2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things… [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

James Carroll

Responsibility

RIC_4939-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

Jonas Salk

Centre of Our Being

RIC_1464-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the

     silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will

     not fail us. 

       Thomas Merton

Belief

RIC_1930-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

People are not interested in what to believe;

they're interested in how to believe. 

 Diana Butler Bass,
The United Church Observer (March 2012)

Ultimate freedom

RIC_2279, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

When you are depraved of all freedom … you still have the most important freedom of all, which no one can take away from you: that is the freedom to choose what kind of person you want to be.
                                                                            
Ingrid Betancourt, Even Silence Has An End: My Six years of Captivity in the Columbian Jungle

Perspective

RIC_8356-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     In one drop of water are found all the 
     secrets of all the oceans. 
      
      Kahlil Gibran

Where you are

RIC_3232, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

If you don’t know where you’re going,

turn around and make sure you know where you’re coming from.

African saying

Sedentary Agitation

RCC_9184, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Sedentary Agitation:
Being regularly upset by all that you see
but not getting up and doing anything about it.

Cory Booker

My life

RCC_9432, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

My life is my practice.

Ram Dass

The Days

RCC_9469, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The days are too short for love;

how can there ever be time for quarrelling?

Margaret Gatty

Birthing your images

RIC_6639
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photography

RIC_7063
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Photography is the poetry of the moment, illuminated by the beauty of light.

Paul Sanderson, poet & musician

Eyes of the unfeeling

DSC_9325
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

A picture lives by companionship.  It dies by the same token.  It is therefore risky to send it out into the world.  How often it must be impared by the eyes of the unfeeling. 

Mark Rothko

Do not harm others

RCC_5987
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

All beings tremble before violence.  All fear death.  All love life.  See yourself in others.  Then whom can you hurt?  What harm can you do? 

Buddha

Eternity

RCC_8914
Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.

Wendell Berry, XIII, Sabbaths 2005

Exceptional

Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional is also what makes you lonely.

Lorraine Hansberry

Imagination

The imagination is the great friend of the unknown.  Endlessly, it invokes and releases the power of possibility.

John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom