Family

RCC_1112, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

A family is its stories.

Arthur W. Frank, letting stories breathe: a socio-narratology

Justice

DSC_2204, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Justice constitutes the first condition of humanity. 

Wole Soyinka, The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness

Vision

RIC_8201-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     Your vision will become clear only when you
     can look into your own heart.
     Who looks outside, dreams;
     who looks inside, awakens.

       Carl Jung

Where There Is Love

RIC_6404-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Where there is love
You’ll always find somebody,
And where there is you
Somebody will find love.

Patricia Louise Ruchen, Where There Is Love

Be kind

RIC_6307-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Be kind to each other.

That is one of the key ingredients in being a good friend.

Thank God for good friends. 

David G. Hallman, August Farewell: The Last Sixteen Days of a Thirty-Three-Year Romance

In Memory of Jack Layton [July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011]

RC1_9250, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

“We deeply regret to inform you that the Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones.”

Olivia Chow, wife and a fellow NDP MP

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love

Until we see your beautiful face again

In that land where there is no more separation,

Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,

And where we will never lose you again.

John O'Donohue, On the Death of the Beloved

.

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

.

Storytellers

RIC_8253-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Storytellers use fiction to tell the truth,

and the more stories you know,
the more ways you have to tell the truth,

and the more stories you know,

the more courage you have to make a difference in the world. 

Dan Yashinsky, The Tale of Rob Ford, Insight, Toronto Star, Saturday, August 20, 2011

.

Stories

RCC_0371, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Stories, like tools,
may be best understood by what they are able to do. 

Arthur W. Frank, letting stories breathe: a socio-narratology

Forgiveness

RIC_7464-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     Forgiveness is the decision to free ourselves
     from the personal offense and blame
     that have us stuck in a cycle of suffering.

       Fred Luskin, Forgiveness for Good

Patience

RIC_3116, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

St. Augustine

Pilgrims

RIC_3201, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

    

     We are, all of us, pilgrims who struggle along different

     paths towards the same destination.

       Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Metaphors

RIC_3128, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Metaphors matter – they are powerful images, creating options and limits. 

Mark Lau Branson, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations

Creating meaning together

DSC_7406, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Social Constructionism:
We construct our world, our reality, through our language.

Mark Lau Branson, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations


As people create meaning together, so do they sow the seeds of action. Meaning and action are intertwined. As we generate meaning together we create the future.

Taos Institute website [http://www.taosinstitute.net/]


.

We

RIC_7247-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

I am the words and you are the melody,
I am the melody and you are the words. 

Hindu Mantra

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

Observation

RCC_9933, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The range of what we think and do

Is limited by what we fail to notice.

R. D. Laing

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

Connective Power

RC1_4425, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The connective power embodies and serves the whole, while the consuming power grips and serves the part. 

Mark Nepo, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion

Life

RIC_6448-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Much of life is the forming and breaking of patterns.

Mark Nepo,

Facing the Lion, Being the Lion

Dialogue

RCC_3644, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

It is when we are in dialogue that we are most human. 

Hannah Arendt

Religion

RCC_2809, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Religion makes experience meaningful and sacred – or it expresses the fact that these things are true of experience, properly understood.

It does indeed add another dimension to experience. 

Marilynne Robinson

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

.

Writer

DSC_5850, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     The writer, unless he is a mere word
     processor, retains three attributes
     that power-mad regimes cannot
     tolerate; a human imagination, in
     many forms it may take; the power to
     communicate; and hope.
       
       Margaret Atwood

Being human

RIC_6646-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

I am human, so nothing human is alien to me.

Terrence, Roman playwright

Question

RIC_5028-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

If a man speaks in the forest,

and there is no woman there

to hear him, is he still wrong?

Seen on a T-shirt

.

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

Hope

RC1_9265, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

If I have tried to bring anything to federal politics,
it is the idea that hope and optimism should be at their heart.

We CAN look after each other better than we do today.
We CAN have a fiscally responsible government.
We CAN have a strong economy; greater equality; a clean environment.
We CAN be a force for peace in the world.

I am as hopeful and optimistic about all of this as I was the day I began my political work, many years ago.
I am hopeful and optimistic about the personal battle that lies before me in the weeks to come.

And I am very hopeful and optimistic that our party will continue to move forward.  ...

And we WILL work with Canadians to build the country of our hopes

Of our dreams
Of our optimism
Of our determination
Of our values...
Of our love.

Thank you.

Jack Layton, Letter to his constituency on July 25, 2011 indicating he will be taking a temporary leave of absence as Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada to focus on fighting cancer.


.

Unbroken

RC1_5147, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We are broken-hearted, but we are not broken.  ...

We will not allow our fear to break us. Evil can kill individuals, but it can never defeat a whole people.

Jens Stoltenberg,

     Prime Minister of Norway on the massacre on July 22, 2011

A single moment

DSC_0688, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a person finds out, once and for all, who they are. 

Jorge Luis Borges

Full of God

RCC_6081, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when . . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God. 

Harriet Martineau

Love

DSC_3639a, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We find the truest expression of ourselves in the people we love. 

Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song

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

Irises

RIC_5318-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

. . . over this dream of life,

this life of sleep, we waken dying —

violet becoming blue, growing

black, black — all that

an iris ever prays,

when it prays,

to be.

Li-Young Lee, Irises

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

To be truly wise

RIC_3078, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

To be truly wise is to understand

that knowing and not knowing are one.

Each has the power to transform. 

Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song

Bridge

RC1_4208, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

A bridge never belongs to one side only.

Tariq Ramadan, What I Believe

Meaning of our lives

RC1_8047, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The relationships that matter the most to us are characteristically to particular people to whom we love – husband or wife, parents, children, dearest friend – and sometimes to particular places – a home or personal territory that we invest with the same loving qualities. These specific relationships, which we experience as unique and irreplaceable, seem to embody most crucially the meaning of our lives.

Peter Marris

.

Spiritual Living

RIC_6235-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     The higher goal of spiritual living is not to

     amass a wealth of information, but to

     face sacred moments.

       Abraham Joshua Heschel

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

What home will we find?

RIC_2825, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We are the children of tomorrow.

We are the ones who come from behind.

Earth is a home that you have borrowed;

What home will we find?

What home will we find?

Dennis Lee, Children of Tomorrow in So Cool

Story & Stories

RIC_6160-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

One’s story is not only one’s own.
It is always told against a background of others’ stories. 

Charlotte Linde, Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory

The Risk to Bloom

RC1_4854a, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

And then the day came

when the risk to remain

tight in a bud was

more painful than the

risk to bloom.

Anais Nin

Quiz

RCC_7922, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

What gets you through the day?
Your best friend, being there.

…

What must you give to find the way?
The rest of your life.

Dennis Lee, Quiz, So Cool

Passion

RIC_6246-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Follow your bliss!

Joseph Campbell

Capacity to be alone

RIC_6171-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The capacity to be alone thus becomes linked

with self-discovery and self-realization;

with becoming aware of one’s deepest needs, feelings, and impulses.

Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

.

Spoken Words

RC1_4783, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

I can retract what I did not say, but I cannot retract what I have already said.

Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Pearls of Wisdom

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