One Earth

RIC_8612-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


One of my biggest images is that we are all in this together. ... There is one earth and human family. 
The challenge before us is how to we share the resources of Mother Earth in ways that uphold the dignity and well-being of every child of God, and in ways that are respectful of the whole environment.

Bishop Susan Johnson, 
2013 Joint Assembly of Anglican Church of Canada and 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada

Wisdom

RCC_0767, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Bury your secret in the chamber of your heart.

Your unknown desire will burgeon.

Drop seeds to the bowels of the earth,

And the garden will spring beyond belief.

Rumi

World

RIC_7741-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The garden of the world has no limits except in your mind.

Its presence is more beautiful than the stars,

With more clarity

Than the polished mirror of your heart.

Rumi

Why I write

Shadow 1 (2013, 6.18), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     I write because I seek to re-order all that comes 
     to me through my physical senses, my emotions, 
     my spirit, my intuition, onto a page so that I 
     might learn to experience it with integrity, 
     respect and honour.

        Richard Wagamese

Mythology & Religion

RCC_0798, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Mythology may, in a real sense, 

be defined as other people’s religion. 

And religion may, in a real sense, 

be understood as a popular misunderstanding of mythology.

Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That

Truth

RIC_7937-2 , a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Truth lifts the heart,
Like water refreshes thirst.

Rumi

Rooted in Love

Tree 3 (2013, 2.23), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Although much of our life is rooted in the anxiety of our time, 
in other words the fear of death, the continuity of knowledge 
and wisdom that has brought us here together is rooted in love, 
the love that is not only as strong as death, but able to cast out 
its fear. 

Northrop Frye

Wonder

Mississauga 1 (2013, 6.19), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Always on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

E. B. White

Humanity

RIC_9750-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


People are of two types, they are either your brothers in faith 
or your equals in humanity.

Ali ibn Abi Talib

Ordinary

RIC_4773-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     Anyone can love a rose,
     but it takes a lot to love a leaf.
     It's ordinary to love the beautiful,
     but it's beautiful to love the ordinary.

        Unknown

Dream worth having

Richmond Hill United Church 15 (2013, 7.9), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


The only dream worth having ... 
is to dream that you will live while you're alive, 
and die only when you're dead. 

Arundhati Roy

Truth

RIC_4769-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
     Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.

        Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone

Remain Radiant

RCC_0788, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Let the world be as it is
and learn to rock with the waves.

Remain 'radiant,'
as Joyce put it,
in the filth of the world.

Joseph Campbell,
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Stories

Construction on Kingston Road 1 (2013, 6.27), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Stories are our way of coping, 

of creating shape out of mess. 

Sarah Polley

Seeing

Hands (2013, 6.23), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Blessed are they who see beautiful things 
in humble places where other people see nothing. 

Camille Pissarro

On Human Condition

Mississauga Chinatown 5 (2013, 6.4), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom,
     decrees of damnation pronounced by society, 
     artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, 
     and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; 
     so long as the three great problems of the century - 
     the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption 
     of woman through hunger, the crippling of children 
     through lack of light—are unsolved; 
     so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; 
     in other words, and with a still wider significance, 
     so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, 
     books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.

        Victor Hugo, Preface to Les Misérables

What you see

Sky 1 (2013, 6.25), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

It's not what you look at that matters, 

it's what you see. 

Henry David Thoreau

Your role

Calling Lakes Centre 7 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     It's important to know your role, 
     but it's important to know, too, 
     that it's only a role. 

        Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self

Poetry

Eye of the Tiger, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


In the very essence of poetry
there is something indecent;
A thing brought forth 
that we didn't know we had in us,
So we blink our eyes, 
as if a tiger had sprung out
And stood in the light, 
lashing his tail.

Czeslaw Milosz, Ars Poetica?

Writer

Regina 1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The writer is nothing but a questioner.

Grace Paley

Task of Artists

Calling Lakes Centre 25 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


It is the task of artists ... 
to look with their own eyes ... 
They will not, 
they cannot permit themselves,
generation after generation, 
to hold views they have not examined for themselves. 

Saul Bellow

What we Know

Calling Lakes Centre 10 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     We hear the expected far better than the
     unexpected and recall things in light of what 
     we already think. 

        Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self

Culture

Mississauga Chinatown 3 (2013, 6.4), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Culture is not fate; it only offers templates, which 
individuals can finally accept, reject, or modify, and do. 

Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self

Literature

Fort Qu'Appelle 3, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     Literature is the written expression of revolt
     against accepted things.

        Thomas Hardy

Change

Shadow 2 (2013, 6.18), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

I can be changed by what happens to me.

But I refuse to be reduced by it. 

Maya Angelou

Light

Light 1 (2013, 6.19), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

However vast the darkness, 

we must supply our own light. 

Stanley Kubrick

Poem

Mississauga 2 (2013, 6.19), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

A poem should not mean but be.

Archibald MacLeish

Blessings

On the way to Calling Lakes Centre, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

May the God who dances in creation
and embraces us with human love

who shakes our lives like thunder

bless us and drive us out with power 

to fill the world with her justice. 

Amen. 

Janet Morley

Challenge

Regina 2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Each challenge brings its own gifts. 

Bronnie Ware

Interdependent Self

Mississauga 3 (2013, 6.19), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

To have an interdependent self 

is not to have no self. 

It is to have a different self, 

the possession of which is a joy; 

the loss of which is disabling; 

and the restoration of which 

can be a joy, too. 

Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self

Myths

Calling Lakes Centre 21 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Myths are truths remembered like dreams. 

Steven Charleston

Subversive

Calling Lakes Centre 9 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

All good writing is subversive. 

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Children

Jacqueline Treloar's art displayed at Kingston Road United Church 9, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Children aren't colouring books.

You don't get to fill them with your colours.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Meaning

Toronto Pearson Airport Terminal 1 #2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     We now live in a world where information is
     potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, 
     but meaning is expensive. 
     Where is the meaning? 
     Only human beings can tell you where it is. 
     We’re extracting meaning from our minds and 
     our own lives.

        George Dyson

Visualization

Calling Lakes Centre 1 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Every field has some central tension it is trying to resolve. Visualization deals with the inhuman scale of the information and the need to present it at the very human scale of what the eye can see. 

Martin Wattenberg, The Economist, 2010

Eye

Calling Lakes Centre 24 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – 

often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – 

in the eye. 

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Storytelling

Calling Lakes Centre 30 (2013, 6.11), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


God calls us to reconciliation through the mutuality 
of relationship and through the outpouring of love.  
The story telling, the breaking one's heart and spirit open, the mutuality that is shared are great steps in relationship building, creation mending, and reconciliation seeking. 

Miriam Spies

Dreams

Sky Light 2 (2013, 6.4), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Are dreams a way for God to prepare us for the future?

Gary Woolsey

Sin

Distillery Distract 3, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. 
Every other sin is a variation of theft. ... 
When you kill a man, you steal a life. 
You steal his wife's right to a husband, 
rob his children of a father. 
When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. 
When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. 

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Symbols

RCC_6146-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no words.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Originality

RIC_4802-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion,
for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. 

Bertrand Russell

Spreading Light

RIC_0855-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

There are two ways of spreading light: 

to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. 

Edith Wharton

Hope

Flowers (2013, 5.31), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Don't let anyone rob you of hope. 

Pope Francis

Shadows

Hoop Reflection 2 (2013, 6.3), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     In art and photography 
     it's the shadows that give a piece a depth. 
     It's the shadows.
     In our lives it's the shadows and the light together. 
     It's the grief and the joy 
     that bring beauty and depth and character. 

        Nancy Berns

We are

Closer to High Noon, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


We are critical. 
We are the subjects of change, not the objects. 
We have to be the protagonists of change. 
No-one can save anyone else. 

Federico, New Internationalist, June 2013

Dark & Light

Passage (2013, 6.1), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     It is so much darker when a light goes out 
     than it would have been had it never shone.

        John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Learning to See

Light 1 (2013, 5.29), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


Learning to see means at first bearing witness to what we are 
and where we are, right now, at this very moment.

Laura Dunn and David Ulrich

The Days

Bloor Street United Church 1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     The days are nouns: touch them
     The hands are churches that worship the world.

        Naomi Shihab Nye,
        The Words Under the Words

Wonder

Garden Centre 1 (2013, 5.20), a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


How can this be?
Such calm, such peace, such solitude
in this world of woe.

David Budbill, The Sixth of January

To be fully human

Traffic Light, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.


     There is no disconnect around technology and design that will
     allow us to be fully human until we pay attention to suffering, 
     the poverty, to exclusion, to unfairness, to injustice.

        Bryan Stevenson