Cool Quotes!
This page will grow over time as I find quotes that I love and are in alignment with my story/message and this blog. Enjoy!
The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift—your true self—is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs. —Bill Plotkin from Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
[There are] moments when it is clear—if I have the eyes to see—that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice. And . . . I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be? —Parker Palmer from Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. . . . That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin for “voice.” Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. . . . I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity. —Parker Palmer from Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Art and physics, like wave and particle . . . are simply two different but complementary facets of a single description of the world. Integrating art and physics will kindle a more synthesized awareness which begins in wonder and ends with wisdom. . . . - Leonard Shlain from Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
Einstein’s realization that light (which is color) is the quintessence of the universe paralleled the apotheosis [i.e., glorification or divinization] of light by the artists. Before Einstein made his discovery, Claude Monet announced that “the real subject of every painting is light.” Echoing this sentiment, Einstein later commented, “For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is.” - Leonard Shlain from Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
The journey into the second half of our own lives awaits us all. Yet not everyone embarks or continues on the journey, even though most of us get older. The “further journey” seems to be a well-kept secret. Many people do not even know there is one. There are too few who are aware that there is more to life...
I believe that God gives us our soul—our deepest identity, our True Self, our unique blueprint—at our own conception. Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our own destiny to the full. If we do not, our True Self will never be offered again, in our own unique form—which is perhaps why almost all religious traditions present the subject with strong words like “heaven” and “hell.” The discovery of our soul is crucial and of pressing importance for each of us and for the world.
We do not “make” or “create” our souls; we just “grow” them up. We are the clumsy stewards of our own souls. Much of our work is learning how to stay out of the way of this rather natural growing and awakening. We need to unlearn a lot, it seems, to get back to that foundational life. This is why religious traditions call the process “conversion” or “repentance.”
Whether or not we find our True Self depends in large part on the moments of time we are each allotted and the choices we make at those moments. Life is indeed “momentous,” created by accumulated moments in which the deeper “I” is slowly revealed if we are ready to see it. Following our inner blueprint or soul and humbly serving others is indeed of ultimate concern. Each thing and every person must act out its nature fully, at whatever cost. This is our life’s purpose, the deepest meaning of “natural law.” We are here to give back freely what was first given to us! It takes both halves of our life to fulfill this calling. - Adapted from Richard Rohr's daily blog and his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Often the only thing that can break down your natural egocentricity is discovering that the qualities you hate in others are actually within you. You’re not so moral after all. You’ve imagined doing “bad” things; and if you could get away with it, you know you’d do it. Perhaps the only reason you don’t is because you’re afraid. Fear is not enlightenment... Fear keeps you inside of a false order and will not allow any reordering. - Adapted from Richard Rohr's daily blog and Adult Christianity and How to Get There, disc 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2004)
You understand so little of what is around you because you do not use what is within you. - Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 1.2.29. Translation supplied by Avis Clendenen, “Hildegard: ‘Trumpet of God’ and ‘Living Light’”
The Great Work now . . . is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. —Thomas Berry from The Great Work: Our Way into the Future
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to [us] as it is, infinite. —William Blake from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” The Complete Poems, ed. Alicia Ostriker
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981), theologian and civil rights leader - occasion unidentified. This often-used quotation is attributed to Reverend Thurman on the history page of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground at Boston University.