Monday ~ June 20, 2016

A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.

(Lisa Kirk, 1925 - 1990)

Sunday ~ June 19, 2016

A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably a protection for a hidden idolatry of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny. It is not the faith of the free. The faith of free persons must tangibly make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Saturday ~ June 18, 2016

Knowledge abounds on every hand by which my steps may be guided, Facts, facts, facts... Thet are everywhere about me. I know with my mind the meaning of many choices that I make. Besides there are many sources upon which I may draw for information that will be the raw material of my decisions. But facts are not the heart of my need. I need wisdom. The quality that will make clear to me the significance, the relatedness of things that are a part of my daily experience - this I lack again and again. I need wisdom to cast a slow and steady radiance over my landscape in order that things, choices, deeds may be seen in their true light - the light of the eternal and the timeless.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Monday ~ June 13, 2016

I walked a mile with pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow
and ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me!

(Robert Browning Hamilton, 1890 - 1943?)

Saturday ~ June 11, 2016

But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not until then, will he be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself.

(Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815 - 1902)

Friday ~ June 10, 2016

Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn't stay there. It was the washed greenblue mapmakers use to indicate Inlets and coves, softspoken contours where the land leaves off
And water lies plainly, as if lamped by its own justice.
I hardly know how to say how it was
Though it spoke to me most kindly,
Unlike a hard afterwards or the motions of forestalling.
Now in evening light the far-off ridge carries marks of burning.
The hills turn thundercolored, and my thoughts move toward them, rough skins
Without their bodies. What is the part of us that feels it isn't named, that doesn't know
How to respond to any name? That scarcely or not at all can lift its head
Into the blue and so unfold there?

(Laurie Sheck, b. 1953)

Thursday ~ June 9, 2016

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy tp permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but great deeds. To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

(Christian Larson, 1874 - 1962)