Wednesday ~ June 5, 2019

Soul is something creative, something active. Soul is honesty. I sing to the realists, people who accept it like it is. I express problems; there are tears when it's sad and smiles when it's happy. It seems simple to me, but to some, feelings take courage.

(Aretha Franklin, 1942 - 2018)

Monday ~ May 6, 2019

Two kinds of ideals are always at work in our lives. There are those ideals that are ultimate and in a very real sense always far out beyond anything that can be achieved. Or as one person puts it, they are like far-off lighthouses whose glow is far away in the distance... There are those ideals that seem to be created out of the stubborn realities, in the midst of which we work and live.

Sunday ~ May 5, 2019

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage is sweet.

(Annie Dillard, b. 1945)

Saturday ~ April 13, 2019

The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out.

(John M. Mason, 1770 - 1829)

Friday ~ April 12, 2019

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bio
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

(Li-Young Lee, b. 1957 )

Thursday ~ April 11, 2019

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with human beings; if they are not virtuous, they become vicious.

(Jean de la Bruyere (1645 - 1696)

Wednesday ~ April 10, 2019

Lord, bless those hands, the harvesters. Bless the travelers who gather our food, and those who grow it, clean it, cook it, who bring it to our tables. Bless the laborers whose faces we do not see - like the girl my grandmother was, walking the rails home; bless us that we remember.

(Natasha Trethewey, b. 1966)