Thursday ~ December 20, 2018

A lot is in the decision to view emotions in this way, as intelligent responses to the perception of value. If emotions are suffused with intelligence and discernment, and if they contain in themselves an awareness of value or importance, they cannot, for example, easily be sidelined in accounts of ethical judgement, so as often they have been in the history of philosophy. Instead of viewing morality as a system of principles to be grasped by the detached intellect, and emotions as motivations that either support or subvert our choice to act according to principle, we will have to consider emotions as part and parcel of the system of ethical reasoning. We cannot plausibly omit them, once we acknowledge that emotions include in their content judgements that can be true or false, and good or bad guides to ethical choice. We will have to grapple with the messy material of grief and love, anger and fear, and the role these tumultuous experiences play in thought about the good and the just.

(Martha Nussbaum, b. 1947)

Wednesday ~ December 19, 2018

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can't accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don't make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept other as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, b. 1926)

Tuesday ~ December 18, 2018

If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic. (Hazel Henderson, b. 1933)

Sunday ~ December 16, 2018

Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has a vagueness of greatness about it.

(Amelia E. Barr, 1831 - 1919)

Sunday ~ December 16, 2018

Saturday ~ November 24, 2018

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.

(Thomas H. Huxley, 1825 - 1895)

Work Principle of the Day

A Great Organization has both Great People and a Great Culture...

Companies that get progressively better over time have both. Nothing is more important or more difficult than to get the culture and people right.

Wednesday ~ Noverber 21, 2018

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone  can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. There is a false and momentary happiness in self satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit.

(Thomas Merton, 1915 - 1968)

Tuesday ~ November 20, 2018

Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many people have thrown up their hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn, A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn no glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

(Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)

Modular-Finance...

Man & Machine beats Man or Machine...

Dalio Principle of the Day - Life Principle 5.5

Unfortunately, many tests by psychologists show that the majority of people mostly follow the lower level path, leading to inferior decisions w/out them realizing. As Carl Jung put it, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and your life will call it fate."


LOGIC, REASON, AND COMMON SENSE ARE YOUR BEST TOOLS FOR SYNTHESIZING REALITY AND UNDERSTANDING WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.

Thursday November 1, 2018

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being pf a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our souls when we look the other way.

(Martin Luther King, Jr.  1929 - 1968)

Modular-Finance...

Complex Adaptive Systems ... Combinatory play and and the Concept of Emergence...

Sunday ~ August 26, 2018

Saturday ~ August 25, 2018

Friday ~ August 24, 2018

Matter, alive with energy, evolves to spirit. While distinctive, human intelligence and creativity rise out of the very nature of the universe, which is itself intelligent and creative. In other words, human spirit is the cosmos come to consciousness.

(Elizabeth Johnson, b. 1941 )

Thursday ~ August 23, 2018

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we love, or from which we were estranged. It strikes when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure has become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment, a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know..." If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience, we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed,

(Paul Tillich, 1886 - 1965)

Wednesday ~ August 22, 2018

Avarice, greed, concupiscence and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that Jesus tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Tuesday ~ August 21, 2018

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statute and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of arts.

(Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862)

Monday ~ August 20, 2018

A flurry of leaves at the window
like those calendar pages flying
in old movies
to indicate time passing,
and it is passing,
though where it is going
nobody seems to know.
Something is always lost
and something found -
an earring or the key
to a certain door,
to some second self.
I watch as energy and matter
bow and switch places,
as last yeat's leaves appear
and disappear again.

(Linda Pastan, b. 1932)

Sunday ~ August 19, 2018

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

(Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967)

Saturday ~ August 18, 2018

Tribal people say the words are sacred. We don't mean that you are supposed to kneel down and worship them. We mean that you should in your being, recognize that when you speak, your utterance has consequences inwardly and outwardly and that you are accountable for those consequences. You can't just say anything that comes to your head and then get distressed if another person acts on it. Now that other person may have misunderstood you, which means that they have a responsibility to find out exactly what you mean before they act, but the principle is still there.
 Without linguistic honor there can be no community, there can be no ethnic, there can be no love,  there can be no creative vision, there can be no peace, and there can be no relationship.

(Paula Gunn Allen, 1939 - 2008)

Friday ~ August 17, 2018

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow - the immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at work - but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Thursday ~ August 16, 2018

We touch this strength, our power, who we are in the world, when we are most fully in touch with one another and with the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, in so doing, we are participants in ongoing incarnation, bringing god to life in the world. For god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love.

(Carter Heyward, b. 1945)

Wednesday ~ August 15, 2018

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.
Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but for at the common table.

(Charles Reznikoff,  1894 - 1976)

Tuesday ~ August 14, 2018

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell what I know
Storm Clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The human race is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause Nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

(Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014)

Monday ~ August 13, 2018

Blessed be my brain
that I may conceive my own power.
Blessed be my breast
that I may give sustenance to those I love.
Blessed be my womb
that I may create what I choose to create.
Blessed be my knees
that I may bend so as not to break.
Blessed be my feet
that I may walk in the path of my highest will.

(Robin Morgan, 1941 -  )

Sunday ~ August 12, 2018

The secret of success is concentration; wherever there has been a great life, or a great work, that has gone before. Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing.

(Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner, !855 - 1920)

Saturday ~ August 11, 2018

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face... The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)

Friday ~ August 10, 2018

Spread love everywhere you go: First of all in your own house... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: Kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, Kindness in your greeting.

(Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997)

Thursday ~ August 9, 2018

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.

(Audre Lorde,  1934 - 1992)

Wednesday ~ August 7, 2018

But how are we to love when we are stiff numb and disinterested? How are we to transform ourselves into limber and soft organisms lying open to the world at the quick. By what process and what agency do we perform the Great Work, transforming lowly materials into gold? Love, like its counterpart Death, is a yielding at the center. Not in the sentiment. Not in the genitals. Look deep into my eyes and see the love-light. Figured forth in intelligent cooperation, sensitive congeniality, physical warmth. At the center the love must live... Love is not a doctrine, Peace is not an international agreement. Love and peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.

(Mary Caroline Richards, (1916 - 1999)

Tuesday ~ August 7, 2018

I invented this rule for myself to be applied to every decision I might have to make in the future. I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness, and other things being equal I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side. I think it must be a rule something like this that makes jonquils and crocuses come pushing through cold mud.

(Katherine Butler Hathaway, 1890 - 1942)

Monday ~ August 6, 2018

I doubt that anyone does not really believe in God. People may think they don't have any belief, but you will usually find that there is a belief in something beyond themselves. In any case, I would not judge people's character by their belief or unbelief. I would judge their character by their deeds; and no matter what they said about their beliefs, their behavior would soon show whether they were people of good character or bad.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)

Sunday ~ August 5, 2018

It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work and amusement than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other good things, the undisputed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.

(Agnes Repplier, 1855 - 1950)

Saturday ~ August 4, 2018

You re all worked up chasing after this and trying to avoid that. These things are not coming to you, so to speak, but you are going to them. Stop desiring the one and fearing the other, and they will stay where they are, and you will not be pursuing or fleeing them.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 0 180)

Friday ~ August 3, 2018

Life demands that duality in men and women be freed to function, released from hate or guilt. All we derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality... We need each other's qualities if we are ever to understand each other in love and life. The beautiful difference of our biological cells will not diminish through this mutual fusion. It should indeed flower, expand the mind as well as the flesh. When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of a women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both. We could both breathe free.


(Marya Mannes, 1904 - 1990)

Thursday ~ August 2, 2018

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment.
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

(Jack Gilbert, 1925 - 2012)

Wednesday ~ August 1, 2018

Idolatry is the practice of ascribing absolute value to things of relative worth. Under certain circumstances money, patriotism, sexual freedom, moral principles, family loyalty, physical health, social or intellectual preeminence, and so on are fine things to have around, but to make them the standard by which all other values are measured, to make them your masters, to look to them to justify your life and save your soul is sheerest folly. They just aren't up to it.


(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926 -  )

Tuesday ~ July 31, 2018

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath its adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.

(Willian Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616)

Monday ~ July 30, 2018

Endurance can be a harsh and bitter root in one's life, bearing poisonous and gloomy fruit, destroying of our lives. Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance.

(Pearl S. Buck, 1892 - 973)

Sunday ~ July 29,2018

Do not depend on the hope of results... You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself... You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people... In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

(Thomas Merton, 1915 - 1968)

Saturday ~ July 28.2018

The sculptor Michelangelo was once asked how it was that he could create such beautiful works, "It's very simple, he answered. "When I look at a block of marble, I see the sculpture inside it. All I have to do is remove what doesn't belong." The master says: "There is a work of art each of us was destined to create. That is the central point of our life, and - no matter how hard we try to deceive ourselves - we know how important it is to our happiness. Usually, that work of art is covered by years of fears, guilt, and indecision. But, if we decide to remove those things that d not belong, if we have no doubt as to our capability, we are capable of going forward with the mission that is our destiny. That is the only way to live with honor."

Wednesday ~ July 18, 2018

The "Seven Social Sins":
Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice.

(Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 - 1948)

Tuesday ~ July 17, 2018

In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 - 1945)

Monday ~ July 16, 2018

In a world more and more polluted by the lying of politicians and the illusions of the media, I occasionally crave to hear and tell the truth... Friendship by its very nature freer of deceit than any other relationship we can know, because it is the bond least affected by striving for power, physical pleasure, or material profit, most liberated from any oath of duty or of constancy.

(Francine du Plessix Gray, b. 1930)

Sunday ~ July 15, 2018

To love is the greatest thing in life; it is very important to talk about love, to feel it, to nourish it, to treasure it, otherwise, it will soon be dissipated, for the world is very brutal. If while you are young you don't feel love, if you don't look with love at people, at animals, at flowers, when you grow up you find that your life is empty; you will be very lonely, and the dark shadows of fear will follow you always. But the moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

(Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895 - 1986)

Saturday ~ July 14, 2018

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible things, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

(William James, 1842 - 1910)

Friday ~ July 13, 2018

We eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers, and friends. It is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service.

(Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895 - 1986)

Wednesday ~ June 20, 2018

Let's start with a fundamental human problem, and I don't mean race or religion or origin. I mean fear. Fright, my young friend, maybe the first serious enemy you have to face in our society. It's the most destructive emotional bogeyman there is. Cold feet, panic, depression, and violence are all symptoms of fear - when it's out of control. But this feeling, ironically, can also trigger courage, alertness, objectively. You must learn not to try to rid yourself of this basic, human emotion but to manipulate it for your own advantage. You cannot surrender to fear, but you can use it as a kind of fuel. Once you learn to control fear - to make it work for you - it will become one of your best friends.

(Jose Torres, 1936 - 2009)

Tuesday ~ June 19, 2018

The day comes when remaining the same becomes more painful than the risk to grow. And when that happens there are many goodbyes. We leave old patterns, old friends, old lovers, old ideas, and some cherished beliefs. Loss and growth are so often one and the same.

(Phoebe Eng, b. late 20th century )

Monday ~ June 18, 2018

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air,
heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh only to more of it, an obesity of grief.
you think, how long can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face.
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again.

(Ellen Bass, 1947 -   )

Sunday ~ June 17, 2018

In seeking to avoid a fight, we concede what we're about. We're about justice, fairness, equality - that's our strength. We cannot concede our strength. We must realize, understand and believe that our current conditions do not reflect our ultimate potential.  If we limit our choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, we disconnect ourselves from what we truly want. And all that is left is a compromise. In order to move forward, we need both the courage of our convictions and the commitment to do the work.

(Gary Delgado, 1951 -   )

Saturday ~ June 16, 2018

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
Compassionate with the aged,
Sympathetic with the striving,
and tolerant of the weak and the strong.
Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

(George Washington Carver, 1864 - 1943)

Friday ~ June 15, 2018

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way. Our culture does not encourage us to undertake that attainment. Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.

(June Jordan, 1936 - 2002)

Thursday ~ June 14, 2008

If I had influence with the good fairy... I should ask that her gifts to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the source of our strength.

(Rachel Carson, 1907 0 1964)

Wednesday ~ June 13, 2018

Without shared ideas on politics, morals, and ethics, no society can exist. Each one of us has ideas about what is good and what is evil; they cannot be kept private from the society in which we live. If men and women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about good and evil, they will fail; if having based it on common agreement, and if the agreement goes, the society will disintegrate. For society is not something that is kept together physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought. If the bonds were too far relaxed the members would drift apart. A common morality is part of the bondage. The bondage is part of the price of society; and humankind, which needs society, must pay its price.

(Patrick Devlin, 1905 - 1992)

Tuesday ~ June 12, 2018

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight... We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.

(Jack Gilbert, 1923 - 2012)

Monday ~ June 11, 2018

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble, cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

(Dorothy Day, 1897 - 1980)

Sunday ~ June 10, 2018

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

(Lucius Seneca, 4 BCE - 65 CE)

Saturday ~ June 9, 2018

Those who would take over the earth and shape it to their will never, I notice, succeed. The earth is like a vessel so sacred that at the mere approach of the profane it is marred, and when they reach out their fingers it is gone. For a time in the world, some force themselves ahead and some are left behind. For a time in the world, some make a great noise and some are held silent. For a time in the world, some are puffed fat and some are kept hungry. For a time in the world, some push aboard and some are tipped out. At no time in the world will one who is sane over-reach, over-spend, over-rate.

(Lao-Tse, 5th century BCE)

Friday ~ June 8,2018

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will. Find out what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of justice which will be imposed upon them. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

(Frederick Douglass, 1818 - 1895)

Thursday ~ June 7, 2018

We have a great more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882)

Wednesday ~ June 6, 2018

What if you feel the invisible tug between you and everything?...
It's a hard time to be a human. We know too much and too little.
Does the breeze need us? The cliffs? The gulls?
If you've managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth, the earth, ever so slightly, fell toward the apple as well.

(Ellen Bass, 1947 -   )

Tuesday ~ June 6, 2018

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those who,
age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

(Adrienne Rich, 1929 - 2012)

Monday ~ June 4, 2018

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.  Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth, be ready for the unexpected; change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in seasons.

(Heraklietos of Ephesos, 535 - 475 BCE)

Sunday ~ June 3, 2018

Forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.
Draw us from trivial content
and set our eyes on far-off goals.
Keep us at tasks too hard for us
that we may be driven to you for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying;
make us sure of the good we cannot see
and of the hidden good in the world.
Save us from ourselves
and show us a vision of a world made new.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)

Saturday ~ June 2, 2018

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

(Betty Friedan, 1921 - 2006)

Friday ~ June 1, 2018

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily... An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on the minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code the the majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal... We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men and women willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always right to do right.

(Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr., 1929 - 1968)

Thursday ~ May 31, 2018

Tenderness and rot share a border.
And rot is an aggressive neighbor whose iridescence keeps creeping over.
No lessons can be drawn from this however.
One is not two countries.
One is not meat corrupting.
It is important to stay sweet and loving.

(Kay Ryan, b. 1945)

Wednesday ~ May 30, 2018

We are not lovers
because of the love
 we make
 but the love
we have

We are not friends
 because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
 we save

I don't want to be near you
 for the thoughts we share
 but the words we never have
 to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
 together

(Nikki Giovanni, b. 1943)

Tuesday ~ May 29, 2018

But no matter how short, our lives have been blessed.
We live in a land without famine or war,
each night we smooth down into the grace of sheets.
How we forget to be grateful.
In the morning we will have fresh fruit,
and music and news.
Roses will scent the air.
And all that we have forgotten,
the mockingbird will repeat
into small green spaces
of our still unripened hearts.

(Barbara Crooker, b. 1945)

Monday ~ May 28, 2018

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely
 ambition
was that their lips, still touched
 with fire,
should tell of the Spirit clothed
 from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring
 branches
The desires falling across their
 bodies like blossoms.

(Stephen Spender, 1909 - 1995)

Sunday ~ MAY 27, 2018

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we'vs built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness in that hour of inconceivable terror when you take back your name from all things.
Just give me a little more time!
I want to love things
As no one has thought to love them,
Until they're worthy of you and real.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 192)

Saturday ~ May 26, 2018

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the Spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

(Hildegard von Bingen, 1098 - 1197)

Friday ~ May 25, 2018

Forgiveness is not an abstraction for it needs a body to feel its relief.
Knees, shoulders, spine are required to adore the lightness of a burden removed.
Grief, like a journey over water completed, slides its keel in the packed sand reef.
Forgiveness is contact with belief that your only life must now be lived.

(Molly Peacock, b. 1947)

Thursday ~ May 24, 2018

I talk to you with visible and palpable words,
words with weight, flavor, and smell, like things.
While I speak,
things imperceptibly shake loose from themselves, escaping toward other forms, other names.
They leave me these words: with them, I talk to you.
Words are bridges.
And they are traps, jails, wells.
I talk to you: you do not hear me.
I don't talk with you: I talk with a word.
That word is you.,
that carries you from yourself to yourself.
You, I, and fate created it.

(Octavio Paz, 1914 - 1908)

Wednesday ~ May 23, 2018

All of us want to be loved unconditionally.
We crave that love.
We are born craving to be loved unconditionally.
Some of us become warped and crippled from the lack of that love,
some of us become stunted, some of us sicked,
some of us die from that lack of love.
Maybe the health and vibrancy of the universe too
depends on a love like that.
Maybe the creation is not finished.

(Pattiann Rogers, b. 1940)

Tuesday ~ May 22, 2018

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now.
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.
I see the island
And its sands are fair;
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.

 (Langston Hughs, 1902 - 1967)

Monday ~ May 14, 2018

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not die in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom, goes on as fruit.

(Dawna Markova, b. 1942)

Sunday ~ April 22, 2018

Why, who makes such a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the of the water,
Or stand under the trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at a table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or watch animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

(Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892)

Friday ~ April 13, 2018

You are ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, you will completely miss the experience... The past is finished. Learn from it and let it go. The future is not even here yet. Plan for it, but do not waste your time worrying about it. Worrying is worthless. When you stop ruminating about what has already happened, when you stop worrying about what might never happen, then you will be in the present moment.
Then you will begin to experience joy in life.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, b. 1926)

Thursday ~ February 1, 2016

Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of Earth's greenings.
Now, think.
All nature is at the disposal of humankind.
We are to work with it.
For without it we cannot survive.

(Hildegard of Bingen, 1908 - 1179)