Justice = Love

"We understand that justice is what love looks like in public. So when you really love people you hate the fact that they’re being treated unjustly, you loathe the fact that they’re being treated unfairly and you must do something, you must bear witness."

--Cornel West

A preference for gentleness

“Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending to animals and sweetcorn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.”

—	Garrison Keillor

A mindfulness reminder...

When I'm anxious it's because I'm living in the future. When I'm depressed it's because I'm living in the past. ~ Shaena Strubing

From a Celtic poet

"Music is what language would love to be if it could". - John O'Donohue

Forgive some sinner...

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."— H. L. Mencken

Oddly, I first heard this on one of the episodes of Season 5 of "The Wire".

Compassion

"Compassion is our mandate. It is, and must be, the purpose for which we all live."

— Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Success

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To give of one’s self; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - This is to have succeeded."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Entertaining??

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."—Aristotle (via ageofreason)

Sure, buy it a drink, maybe even dinner, but don’t take it home with you.

Being Present

"Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers- Plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun’s warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life’s stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or unable many of us are to pay this price in an age when manufactured sources of stimulation and pleasure are everywhere at hand. For me, enjoying nature’s pleasures takes conscious choice, a choice to slow down to seed time or rock time, to still the clamoring ego, to set aside plans and busyness, and to simply to be present in my body, to offer myself up."

— Lorraine Anderson

Stories

"The universe is made of stories,
not atoms.

— Muriel Rukeyser, Poet (1913 - 1980)

"We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say-and to feel- ‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.’ You’re not as alone as you thought."

— John Steinbeck

"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."

— Mary Oliver

Sharing our authentic stories, and really listening to someone else's story, are topics that have been central to a number of discussions and teachings that I’ve been exposed to in the past few months. Story, so it seems, is the irreducible core element of our humanity.

Look to this day...

"Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can."

—

Dalai Lama

12th Step, perhaps...

"…….Ladies and gentlemen, who would dare attempt to analyze a phenomenon, diagram a wonder, or parse a miracle? The answer is: only a fool. And I trust that tonight I have not been such a fool. All I have tried to do is tell you where I have been these past 16 years and some things I have come to believe because of my journeyings.

This coming Sunday, in the churches of many of us, there will be read that portion of the Gospel of Matthew which recounts the time when John the Baptist was languishing in the prison of Herod, and, hearing of the works of his cousin Jesus, he sent two of his disciples to say to Him, “Art thou He who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Christ did as He so often did. He did not answer them directly, but wanted John to decide for himself. And so He said to the disciples: “Go and report to John what you have heard and what you have seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them.”

Back in my childhood catechism days, I was taught that the “poor” in this instance did not mean only the poor in a material sense, but also meant the “poor in spirit,” those who burned with an inner hunger and an inner thirst; and that the word “gospel” meant quite literally “the good news. “

More than 16 years ago, four men — my boss, my physician, my pastor, and the one friend I had left — working singly and together, maneuvered me into A.A. Tonight, if they were to ask me, “Tell us, what did you find?” I would say to them what I now say to you: “I can tell you only what I have heard and seen: It seems the blind do see, the lame do walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, and over and over again, in the middle of the longest day or the darkest night, the poor in spirit have the good news told to them.”

God grant that it may always be so."

— Excerpt from the pamphlet: “A Member’s Eye View of AA”

...all are responsible

Once more, Gandhi leads us.

Compare, too, the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel while sharing his thoughts on American involvement in Viet Nam:

“It became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all are responsible.”

Religion

"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion — its message becomes meaningless."

— Abraham Joshua Heschel
God In Search Of Man

Hope

"Hope is like a road in the country. There was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."

— – Lin Yutang, Chinese author and inventor

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Bobby leads still...

"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

— Robert F. Kennedy

Civility in politics today

“I’ve wondered rhetorically how our political life would have evolved differently if the Christian re-emergence into politics in the late 20th century had modeled a practical love of enemies. My own deepest despair at present is not about the vitriol and division per se — as alarming as they are. It is about the fact that we seem to be losing any connective tissue for engaging at all, on a human level, across ruptures of disagreement. Across the political spectrum, many increasingly turn to journalism not for knowledge but to confirm individual pre-existing points of view. What we once called the red state, blue state divide is now more like two parallel universes where understandings of plain fact are no longer remotely aligned. This leads to a diminishing sense of the humanity of those who think and live differently than we do. And that is the ultimate moral slippery slope, for everyone on it and for the fabric of our civic life.”

—

Krista Tippitt

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/restoring-civility/

Winter calls..

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show."

— Andrew Wyeth

Realism and humility

"We live in the midst of multiple crises —economic and political, cultural and ecological—posing a significant threat to human existence at the level we have become accustomed to. There’s no way to be awake to the depth of these crises without emotional reactions, no way to be aware of the pain caused by these systemic failures without some dread and distress.
Those emotions come from recognizing that we humans with our big brains have disrupted the balance of the living world in disastrous ways that may be causing irreversible ecological destruction, and that drastically different ways of living are not only necessary but inevitable, with no guarantee of a smooth transition.
This talk, in polite company, leads to being labeled hysterical, Chicken Little, apocalyptic. No matter that you are calm, aren’t predicting the sky falling, and have made no reference to rapture. Pointing out that we live in unsustainable systems, that unsustainable systems can’t be sustained, and that no person or institution with power in the dominant culture is talking about this—well, that’s obviously crazy. But to many of us, these insights simply seem honest. To be fully alive today is to live with anguish, not for one’s own condition in the world but for the condition of the world, for a world that is in collapse. What to do when such honesty is unwelcome?
In June 2010, I published a short essay online asking people who felt this anguish to report on their emotions and others’ reactions. In less than a month I received more than 300 messages, and while no single comment could sum up the responses, this comes close:
“I feel hopeless. I feel sad. I feel amused at the absurdity of it all. I feel depressed. I feel enraged. I feel guilty and I feel trapped. Basically the only reason why I’m still alive is because there are enough amazing people and things in my life to keep me going, to keep me fighting for what matters. I’m not even sure how to fight yet, but I know that I want to.”
I didn’t ask for biographical information, so there’s little data on the age, race, or occupation of the respondents. Nor did I ask specifically about political or community activism, but the letters reinforced a gut feeling that dealing openly with these emotions need not lead to paralysis and inaction. People can confront honestly a frightening question—“What if the unsustainable systems in which we live are beyond the point of no return?”—and stay politically and socially engaged. One respondent, a longtime community organizer, put it succinctly:
Recently several of our visionary thinkers have moved from the illusion that ‘we have 10 years to turn this around.’ They now say clearly that ‘we cannot stop this momentum.’ It takes courage and faith to speak so plainly. What can we do in the face of this truth? We can sit face to face and find the ways, often beyond words, to explore the reality that we are all refugees, swimming into a future that looks so different from the present. We can find pockets of community where we can whisper our deepest fears about the world. We can remain committed to describing the present with exceptional truth.
What happens when we tell “exceptional truth”?
First, we often feel drained by it. Another respondent observed:
“My personal ambition seems to decrease in proportion to the increase in world suffering. I think that’s part of my emotional reaction to crisis. I don’t think I am fully alive. I’m not depressed, just weirdly diminished.”
Second, we encounter those who don’t want to face tough truths. Many wrote about isolation from family and friends who deny there are reasons to be concerned:
“I’m a drug addict with over 20 years clean, and I know all about using up my future and farting out lame excuses. I promised myself an honest life to stay clean, and the double-edged sword is that I started seeing just how much our culture swims in denial.”
Sometimes people accuse those who press questions about systemic failure and collapse of being the problem: “People get angry at me for it and call me ‘dark’ and ‘negative’ and ‘sinful,’ telling me to instead move to the ‘light,’ ‘positive,’ and ‘love.’ Whatever.” Regardless of others’ reactions to talking honestly about collapse, it’s essential we continue; no political project based on denying reality can be viable for the long term. We need not have a crystal ball to recognize, as singer/songwriter John Gorka put it, that “the old future’s gone.” The future of endless bounty for all isn’t the future we face.
How can we open an honest conversation about that future? It isn’t easy, but it starts with telling the truth, from our own experience, like this 70-year-old woman who lives in a rural intentional community: I’ve lived long enough now to be very aware of how different the world has become, how the cycles of nature are off kilter, how the seasons and the climate have shifted. My garden tells me that food doesn’t grow in quite the same patterns, and we either get weeks of rain or weeks of heat and drought. This is the second year in a row that our apple trees do not have apples on them. But most people get their food in grocery stores where the apples still appear, and food still arrives, in season and out, from all over the world. This will soon end, and people won’t understand why. They don’t see the trouble in the land as I and my friends do. I grieve daily as I look on this altered world. My grandchildren are young adults who think their lives will continue as they have been. Who will tell them? They can’t hear me. They, and many others, will have to see the changes for themselves, as I have. I can’t imagine that anything else will convince them. My grief for the world, and for them, is compounded by this feeling of helplessness because there is no way we can have the collective action you speak of when the ‘collective’ is still in denial. The work of breaking out of denial is less about specific actions and more about the habits and virtues we must cultivate. Far from that rural community, a 35-year-old woman working in an office in Chicago summed up the task:
“We really need to take it back to the basics and keep it simple. This reminds me of one of my own quotes I thought of a few months ago—‘be humble or be humiliated.’ I think I’m a simple person. I try to avoid making things more complex than they have to be. I try to focus more on what I need versus what I want. ‘Be humble or be humiliated’ is my own personal reminder.”
Her personal reminder is relevant for us all, individually and collectively. Humanity’s last hope may be in embracing a deep humility, recognizing that our cleverness is outstripped by our ignorance. If we become truly humble, we can abandon attempts to dominate the living world and instead find our place in it.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/in-the-face-of-this-truth"

— Exactly. Up until recently, I’ve had no patience with the doom-and-gloom crowd, or with the arm-yourselves-and-live brigades. And I’m still very skeptical about buying into those kinds of messages. But with 6.5 billion people on the plant, climate change seeming to be accelerating, and our leaders appearing to be unable or unwilling even to discuss the potential consequences of these realities, let alone offer solutions, one can’t help but think that we really do need to consider what individual actions may be in order, or may become essential, in order for our families and our communities to prosper in these times, or maybe even for them to survive.