Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    "Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological
    terms, I said:  If God had wanted to put everything into the world from
    the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without
    organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of
    change.  But He seems to have thought that a live universe with events
    unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one."

    	-- Karl Popper

    
    "Some people, I swear,
    	want to love God in the same way as they love a cow.
    	They love it for its milk and cheese and the profit
    	they will derive from it.
    
    Those who love God for the sake of outward riches or for
    	the sake of inward consolation operate on the
    	same principle.
    	They are not loving God correctly;
    	they are merely loving their own advantage."
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1329)
                                                

    The more you seek God, the less you will find God
    	If you do not seek God, you will find God. 	
    God does not ask anything else of you 
    	except
    that you let yourself go and let God
    	be God in you.
    
    Above all else, then:
    	Be prepared at all time	for the gifts of God	
    and be ready always for new ones.
    
    For God is a thousand times
    	more ready to give 
    		than we are to receive.
    
    -- Meister Eckhart

    Just had to ask ;-)
    
    If Jesus tells us to seek that we may find, and Meister Eckhart says
    don't seek and you'll find...who do you trust?
    
    Steve
    (who realizes it's now time for an introduction ;-)

    Steve,
    
    Some people fill their lives so full with their search for
    God, there is no room left for God.  
    
    
    Jesus does indeed tell us to seek that we may find.  He also says 
    (as does Meister Eckhart) that the kingdom of God lies within.  
    When one experiences and realizes the truth of that statement there
    is no need for a search.
    
    Karen

    Luke 7:20-21 seems to be appropriate here:
    
    "Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come.
    His answer was, "The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to
    be seen.  No one will say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!';
    because the Kingdom of God is within you (or among you, or within your
    midst)."
    
    A seeker and finder,
    Richard

As Richard correctly points out, the phrase commonly translated "within
you" can also be translated "among you" or "within your midst" meaning,
of course, Jesus himself.  However, despite the desire of most Christians
(such as myself) to translate this as "among you", the preferred translation
is indeed "within you" for reasons in the Greek which I shall not go into.
Which leaves me wondering.  What was Jesus really saying???

Collis

    Thanks for that quote, Richard, especially the alternate meanings that
    you provided.
    
     Karen,
    
      It is my personal preference to view it as myself being in the
    kingdom, rather then the kingdom being in me. Are you in the kingdom?
    If the kingdom is within me, does this mean that you are within me,too?
    
      If so, I haven't noticed you yet. Sorry. :-)
    
    Gil

    Hi Gil,
    
    > Are you in the kingdom?
    
    Yes.
    
    > If the kingdom is within me, does this mean that you are within me,
    > too?
    
    Yes.
    
    > If so, I haven't noticed you yet. Sorry. :-)
    
    No problem, Gil.  I'm glad my presence is that gentle. :-)
    
    Karen

    	One quote from Eckhart and a half-dozen interesting responses pop
    up. Thank you, Karen. I am certain that God is to be found within us
    and that active searching and breast beating are not the way to find
    that, yet we must search in order to find - perhaps by seeking that
    which is right we will serendipidously find God? I'm sure the two are
    both true and reconcilable, but how? Maybe if somebody else has another
    quote?

    Dave -1,
    
    The two are both true and reconcilable.  
    
    	 There is one God and Father of all, who is above all, 
    	 and through all, and in you all.
    
    Once you truly experience this, the search ends.
    For no where can you look and not know God is there.  
    
    We only search for things that appear to be hidden.  
    God does not hide from us.  We just do not see God 
    sometimes.
                                          
    Karen

    Re:  .13
    
    Amen, sister Karen.
    
    DR

    
    
        "When I raise my arm, this is truth. When I assert that I
         have raised my arm, truth crumbles into dust."
    
                                                        - Dogen

    
Barry,

I appreciate your selected quotes.  At the same time, I arrive at a different
place concerning in their application.

Peace,
Richard

    Richard,
    
     That's okay since "Scripture is of no private interpretation".
    Howzabout we ask God to reveal to us HIS interpretation?
    
    But to stay on the purpose for this note:
    
    Better a little with the fear of the Lord
    	Than great night with turmoil.		-Proverbs 15:16
    
    Gil

    For God so loved the world (cosmos) that He gave His only begotten Son
    so that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal
    life.
    
    
    notes:
    
    1.  This is my memory version
    2.  A few weeks ago, I heard this preached and we spent a lot of time
    on the word WHOSOEVER.
    
    God is SOOOOOO good!  8-)
    
    Steve

    Did you ever wonder if God could *really* love you?
    
    Would someone with a bible at work quote Romans 5:8?
    
    I think it goes roughly like this...
    
    ...but this is how God showed his love for us...that Jesus died for us
    while we were still His enemies...
    
    I mean, Jesus said that there was no greater gift than for one to lay
    down his life for a friend, but for an enemy?  Wow.
    
    God's SOOOOOOO goood (have I said that yet? ;-)
    
    Steve

    Thank you Steve for this quote!  Thank you too 
    for including the word (cosmos).  Jesus is the 
    Cosmic Christ - Lord and Lordess of the *Cosmos*! 
     
    Kb.:-)

>    Would someone with a bible at work quote Romans 5:8?

    	From the KJV:

    	"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet
    	sinners, Christ died for us."

    	From the NIV:

    	"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were
    	still sinners Christ died for us."

    		Alfred

    PS: There are several versions of on-line Bibles (all KJV that I
    	know of) on the net. I use a DECWINDOWS Bookreader copy myself.

    
    	"The Logos of God has become human 
    	 so that you might learn from a human being 
    	 how a human being may become divine."
    
    			-- Clement of Alexandria
    

     "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion
    on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers
    that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes
    like the flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more. 
    
      But from everlasting to everlasting the ord's love is with those who
    fear Him, and His righteousness with thier children's children - with
    those who keep His covenants and remember to obey His precepts."
    
                                   _ King David of Israel (Psalm 103:13-18)
    
    Gil

    
    
     "The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them,
      but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
    
    
                                                 -George Bernard Shaw

    "Now we have known sin."
    
    	- Dr. Oppenheimer, after the successful detonation of the atomic bomb

    Christians should indeed assume a positive attitude towards religious
    pluralism.  We can no longer endorse the viewpoint that the Christian
    religion is the only true one.  We can no longer condemn other
    religions as "false."  I'm trying to understand what a Christianity
    that doesn't discriminate against other religions would look like.  To
    my mind, no religion can contain God's richness in an exhaustive way. 
    This means that there is more truth in all religions together than in
    one particular religion.  It also means that there are religious
    experiences outside Christianity that can't be reached from within it.

    	- Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, in a recent interview

    For out of the fire comes a desire to know Him. 
    
    Christ is like a cool breeze blowing agenst you cheek on a hot summer
    day.
    
    God bless,
    Bill

    uhm, Karen ;-)
    
    The word (cosmos) is (if I'm not mistaken) the Greek word used for
    "world".
    
    I don't buy the "cosmic christ" stuff that I've heard.
    
    But you knew that already ;-)
    
    Steve

    ...God can save us from the fire, but even if He doesn't, we won't bow
    down to your false gods!
    
    			- Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednigo after being
    			  told by King Neb. that if they wouldn't 
    			  worship his idols, he'd throw them into
    			  the fire

    Hi Steve .33,
    
    > The word (cosmos) is (if I'm not mistaken) the Greek word used
    > for "world".
    
    > I don't but the "cosmic christ" stuff that I've heard.
    
    Oh okay Steve.  Do you believe that anything exists beyond terra firma,
    like our moon perhaps, or the planet Neptune, or the Milky Way, or
    Halley's Comet, or the other billion plus other galaxies that are 
    scientifically understood to be "out there"?  In your understanding 
    of God's kingdom, who is Lord of _them_?  
    
    By the way, cosmos does mean "world" to the Greeks, but you had
    better check and see what the Greeks understood the "world" to mean,
    not just your interpretation of how they used the term.  From what
    you've said, I think you'll be surprised. 
    
    Karen 

    
        "The quality of mercy is not strain'd:
         It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.
         Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed:
         It blesseth him that gives and him that takes
         'This the mightiest in the mightiest...
         And earthly power doth then show like God's
         When mercy seasons justice."
    
                                      -William Shakespeare

    
    	In him were created all things in heaven and on earth:
    	everything visible and everything invisible.
    
    			-- Col 1:16
    
    	Each creature is a witness to God's power and omnipotence;
    	and its beauty is a witness to the divine wisdom....Every
    	creature participates in some way in the likeness of the
    	Divine Essence.
    
    			-- Thomas Aquinas
    
    	Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.
    	Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God.
    
    	Every creature is a word of God.
    
    	If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature -- 
    	even a caterpillar -- I would never have to prepare a sermon.
    	So full of God is every creature.
    
    			-- Meister Eckhart
    

    He who is on the road to Heaven will not be content to go there alone.
    
    Gil

    Speak kind words and you will hear kind echoes.

    I found a wonderful book at my church bookstore yesterday while I was
    auditioning people for our choral group.  Last night I came across a
    passage that I want to share with you all.  
    
    From _The Book of Qualities_  by J. Ruth Gendler
    
    Faith
    
    Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt.  When Faith was
    out of town visiting her uncle in the hospital, Doubt fed the cat and
    watered the asparagus fern.  Faith is comfortable with Doubt because
    she grew up with him.  Theis mothers are cousins.  Faith is not
    dogmatic about her beliefs like some of her relatives.  Her friends
    fear that Faith is a bit stupid.  They whisper that she is naive and
    she depends on Doubt to protect her from the meanness of life.  In
    fact, it is the other way around.  It is Faith who protects Doubt from
    Cynicism.
    
    
    Nanci

    "When peace, like a river, attendeth my sould,
     When sorrow like sea-billows roll,
     Whate'er may betide, thou has taught me to say:
     It is well -- it is well -- with my soul!
    
    Nancy

    
    <-----my *ALL* time favorite, especially in light of the story behind
          its writing!  This song has brought me through many trying times.
    
    
    Dave

    "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
     When sorrow like sea-billows roll,
     Whate'er may betide, thou has taught me to say:
     It is well -- it is well -- with my soul!"
    
    Nancy
    

    ...I am the Almighty God:  walk before me, and be thou perfect.
    
      Genesis 17:1
    
    
    Nanci

    Since I entered something about the "C" word elsewhere I thought this
    might be appropriate...
    
    Compassion
    
    Compassion wears Saturn's rings on the fingers of her left hand.  She
    is intimate with the life force.  She understands the meaning of
    sacrifice.  She is not afraid to die.  There is nothing you cannot tell
    her.
    
    Compassion speaks with a slight accent.  She was a vulnerable child,
    miserable in school, cold, shy, alert to the pain in the eyes of her
    sturdier classmates.  The other kids teased her about being too
    sentimental, and for a long time she believed them.  In ninth grade she
    was befriended by Courage.
    
    Courage lent Compassion bright sweaters, explained the slang, showed
    her how to play volleyball, taught her you can love people and not care
    what they think about you.
    
    In many ways Compassion is still the stranger, neither wonderful, nor
    terrible, herself, utterly, always.
    
      -J. Ruth Gendler
    
    
    
    Nanci 

    Peace is not the silence of cemetaries; peace is not the silent result
    of violent repression...Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of
    all to the good of all...in it each one feels at home.
    
    		Archbishop Oscar Romero

    We have to repeat continuously, "no" to violence, "yes" to peace.
    
    		Archbishop Oscar Romero

    That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
    that they also may be one in us...
    
              -John 17:21
    
    
    Today I am going to meet each experience as I feel it really is.  I
    shall endeavor to see the Divine Presence in everything.  I am
    demanding of myself that I see and sense and feel the One Life that
    flows through all things.  I affirm this Presence and accept its
    benificent action because it already is.  As I fare forth today on the
    wonderful experience of living, I feel that I am on a journey of
    Self-discovery and the discovery of the Self hidden in everyone, and
    the Power behind everything.
    
      -Affirmative prayer, Science of Mind magazine Oct. 1990
    
    
    
    Nanci

                                                         
    God is Energy.  Love is the highest energy.  God is love.  God is the
    highest source of energy which exists.  There is no such thing as a
    disbeliever in God.  Every man is searching for energy and God is
    energy.  The energy that is God, however, cannot be studied and
    observed like the energy of electricity.  God is a subtle energy, a
    force beyond the grasp of the mind and the senses.  God is infinite,
    incomparable.  His energy never began, nor will it ever end.  God is
    the highest energy, the source of all energies.  For this reason there
    is only one God.
    					- Yogi Amrit Desai
    					  Founder of Kripalu Center,
    					     Lenox, Mass.

    Cindy,
    	can a lovely quote, which expresses much of how I feel, be
    invalidated if the source is invalidated ?  I seem to recall that the
    cult refered to has closed its doors due to "irregularities" in certain
    fund raising activities. Perhaps I'm thinking of a different cult ? 
    Naw, one in sleepy ol' Lenox is more than enough. I do like the quote.

    This one is for Alfred
    
    2 Timothy 23-26
    
    Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know
    they only breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be
    quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing,
    correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant
    that they will repent and come to know the truth.
    
    Bonnie

    
    
    
            True happiness springs from moderation. 
    
                                                   -Goethe

re Note 6.51 by WMOIS::B_REINKE:

>             -< Alfred's suggestion for a theme verse for the file >-
> 
>     2 Timothy 23-26
    
        I like that verse, and the idea of a "theme verse," a lot!

When I left DEC Hong Kong, the Christian Fellowship gave me a plaque with this
quotation:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master!
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving, that we receive;
Pardoning, that we are pardoned;
Dying, that we are born 
  to eternal life.

    St. Francis of Assisi

The prayer of the Alcoholic Anonomus (sp?) goes like

	Lord, help me this day to change that which I can change,
		Help me to understand that which I cannot change,
	Give me the wisdom to know (distinguish) between the two.

	Amen

    
    
     "The decisive desire of men is not for peace, however deep 
    their longing, but for life in dignity, the sense of which burns,
    however feebly, in every man, however humble his status or obscure
    his place upon the earth."
    
    
                                                    -Eric Severeid

    
      "Anybody can become angry - that is easy; but to be angry with
    the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time,
    and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not
    within everybody's power and is not easy."
    
    
                                                     -Aristotle

    
    	God is dead!
    			-Nici
    
    
    	Nici is dead!
    			-God

        "By this shall all men know that you are mine, that you have
         love one for another."  Jesus Christ
    

        (with some credit to Charlie Johnson, who inserted this quote
        in Golf::Christian (note 43.106) at a particularly
        appropriate time -- it's a particularly appropriate time
        here, too.)

        Bob

    re .59
    
    Thanks, Bob.  I continue to be fascinated that Jesus did not say
    *love me* as I have loved you, but *love one another* as I have
    loved you.
    
    Peace,
    Richard

        "Somehow we must stand up to our most bitter opponents and
        say:
        	'Do to us what you will and we will still love you'."

        			-- Martin Luther King

        (as copied from the wall of the corridor connecting the
        second floors of ZKO1 and ZKO3.)

    Whether Christ turned water into wine I do not know, but in my case He
    did a much more useful thing, He turned beer into furniture.
    
    -- Leslie D. Weatherhead in "The Manner of the Resurrection,"
       quoting a "drunken brute" who was converted

    
    
     "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the
    world and moral courage so rare."
    
                                                     -Mark Twain

    What I like about process theology is that it argues that love of
    others *is* love of God, inherently.  That is because the love we
    express to others permanently enhances the divine life through
    objective immortality.
    
    -- Mike

    Re. 65
    
    You speak wisely.  But, allow me to reiterate Jesus did _not_
    say, "Love me as I have loved you."
    
    Richard

re Note 6.66 by CSC32::M_VALENZA:

>     What I like about process theology is that it argues that love of
>     others *is* love of God, inherently.  

        Which is not that different from what Jesus is quoted as
        saying in Matthew 25:31-40:

           "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, escorted by all
           the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of
           glory.  All the nations will be assembled before him and
           he will separate men one from another as the shepherd
           separates sheep from goats.  He will place the sheep on
           his right hand and the goats on his left.  Then the King
           will say to those on his right hand, 'Come, you whom my
           Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom
           prepared for you since the foundation of the world.  For I
           was hungry and you gave me food;  I was thirsty and you
           gave me drink;  I was a stranger and you made me welcome;
           naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in
           prison and you came to see me.'  Then the virtuous will
           say to him in reply, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and
           feed you; or thirsty and gave you drink?  When did we see
           you a stranger and made you welcome; naked and clothe you;
           sick or in prison and go to see you?'   And the King will
           answer, 'I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to
           one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to
           me'."

        Bob

    Thanks for quoting that passage, Bob.
    
    -- Mike

    "Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so;
    do nothing because it seems mgood to do so; do only that which you must
    do and which you cannot do in any other way."
    
    		Ursula K. LeGuin

    "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. 
    And only those who see take off their shoes; the rest sit around it and
    pluck blackberries."
    
    		Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    
      "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall
    we, the murderers of all murderers console ourselves ? That which
    was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed
    has bled to death under our knives - who will wipe this blood
    off us ?"
    
                                                 -Friedrich Neitzsche
                                                  
    
     I thought it would be nice to put this in here in context. It seems
    to me that the first three words are usually quoted out of context
    and in doing so the whole point he was trying to make is lost.
     Try as I might I couldn't find the quote where God says,
    "Neitzche is dead" :-)
     Maybe I wasn't looking in the right book.
    
                                                       Mike 
    

    Mike,
    	I saw it in a collection of cartoons, long time back.

    I don't know if this is already in here, but I just read it. It's
    posted on the bulletin board outside the cafeteria in Shrewsbury I.

    "Everyone of us must be the change we want to see in the world."
                                          Mahatma Gandhi

    Jim

    
    
    RE: .71 and .74
    
    Thanks for these today, Mike and Jim.  

    
    Carole

    .70 sounds suspiciously like a quote from one of the early Greek
    philosophers (Democritus, I think) regarding necessity.
    
    Dick

    
     "If one person achieves the highest kind of love, it will be
    sufficient to neutralize the hate of millions."
    
    
    
                                                     -Gandhi

    
    	The cosmos is fundamentally and primarily living....
    	Christ, through his Incarnation, is internal to the world,
    	rooted in the world, even in the very heart of the tiniest atom.
    	
    	Nothing seems to me more vital, from the point of view of human
    	energy, than the appearance and eventually, the systematic
    	cultivation of such a "cosmic sense."
    
    				-- Teilhard de Chardin
    

    
    
    Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
    
    					- Got me
    
    Jamey

    It is not possible to make the Gospels a set of ethical regulations. 
    All we can do is to catch the spirit of Jesus and strive to live in
    that spirit.  The only answer there can be as to what Jesus would do,
    is that Jesus would do whatever we ought to do, if he were put in our
    place
    
    ....Probably it is a mercy that we do not know more about the
    actual deeds of Jesus than we do, for many of us are so literally
    minded, that, with more detail, we should miss the spirit altogether.
    
    
    --The Christlike God by Francis John McConnell (1927)

    
    	Remember this:  All suffering comes to an end.  
    	And whatever you suffer authentically, God has 
    	suffered from it first.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart
    
    	When Christ was in pain we were in pain.  All creatures 
    	of God's creation that can suffer pain suffered with him.  
    	The sky and the earth failed at the time of Christ's dying 
    	because he too was part of nature.
    
    		-- Julian of Norwich
    
    	
    	Weak and weary through suffering, reduced to nothing,
    	I finally collapsed, alone in my room, only to awaken 
    	sometime later in the gentle arms of compassion.
    
    		-- me.

"Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?
 Expediancy asks the question: Is it politic?
 Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
 But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
 And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither
safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it because it
is right."

Martin Luther King

    "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."
    
        Tennyson
    
    "Spirit never descends to the level of our need but asks us to rise to
    the level if its' givingness."
    
        Rev. Lloyd Tupper
    
    
    
    
    Nanci

    For feelings come and feelings go,
    	And feelings are deceiving;
    My warrant is the Word of God
   	Nought else is worth believing.
    I'll trust in God's unchanging Word
    	Till soul and body sever;
    For, though all things shall pass away,
    	His Word shall stand forever.
    
    				- uncredited in a quote book I have
    
    Gil

  
          "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."


                                               -Isaac Asimov
                                              

    
    	Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world
    	I hold to, and keep spinning out!
    
    	I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,
    	but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
    
    	So I bought some burlap, but I still
    	throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
    
    	I pulled back my sexual longings,
    	and now I discover that I'm angry a lot.
    
    	I gave up rage, and now I notice
    	that I am greedy all day.
    
    	I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
    	and now I am proud of myself.
    
    	When the mind wants to break its link with the world
    	it still holds on to one thing.
    
    	Kabir says:  Listen my friend,
    	there are very few that find the path!
    
    		-- Kabir, _The Kabir Book_
    	

    
            "No man should so act as to make gain out of
            the ignorence of another."  
    
                                              -Cicero

    
        "Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity
         for kindness."
    
    
                                                      -Seneca

    
    
    
    Where I am after a day and evening listening to and enjoying Matthew Fox.

        
    
    Have I told you lately that I love you
    Have I told you there's no one above you
    Fill my heart with gladness
    Take away my sadness
    Ease my troubles, that's what you do
    
    Oh the morning sun in all it's glory
    Greets the day with hope and comfort too
    And you fill my life with laughter
    You can make it better
    Ease my troubles, that's what you do
    
    There's a love that's divine
    And it's yours and it's mine
    Like the sun at the end of the day
    We should give thanks and pray to the one
    
    Have I told you lately that I love you
    Have I told you there's no one above you
    Fill my heart with gladness
    Take away my sadness
    Ease my troubles, that's what you do

    There's a love that's divine
    And it's yours and it's mine
    And it shines like the sun
    At the end of the day we will give thanks
    And pray to the one
    
    Have I told you lately that I love you
    Have I told you there's no one above you
    Fill my heart with gladness
    Take away my sadness
    Ease my troubles, that's what you do
    
                   Van Morrison

        
    This morning before the seminar began, I went to the bookstore.
    I saw a greeting card which said on the front "Have I told you
    lately that I love you", and picked up a bunch of them to send 
    to my family.  On the way home tonight, this song played on the
    radio and brought tears to my eyes.  At that moment I felt 
    totally loved.
    
    Carole

    
    	It's in every one of us
    	to be wise.
    	Find your heart,
    	open up both your eyes.
    
    	We can all know everything
    	without ever knowing why.
    
    	It's in every one of us
    	by and by.
    
    			-- unknown
    
    Sung at today's workshop with Matthew Fox in praise of Sophia, Divine
    Wisdom as noted in the Bible.
    

I too spent Friday evening and all day Saturday with Matthew Fox.  I didn't
take notes (I took the easy way out and ordered the tape of the lecture/
workshop), but I did write down one quote:

	Become aware of what is in you...

			Meister Echkart


Ro

    
    	When a man is deprived of the power of expression,
    	  he will express himself in a drive for power.
    
    		-- Jose Arguelles
    

    
     "Hating people is like burning your house down to get of a rat." 
     
    
                                                - Harry Emerson Fosdick

    
    
          "It is easy to keep things at a distance; it is hard 
           to get beyond them."
           
    
                                                     -Bunan

    
    "Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not again. Wisely improve
     the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future,
     without fear, and with a manly heart." 
    
                                          - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    
    
     "The best way to achieve success is to get even. I have spent my
    whole life getting even with people who said I would wind up as
    a bad person. The reason they said this was because I was a funny
    kid, and nobody likes a funny kid. Most of the people who predicted
    my demise are dead, but that hasn't stopped me. I am still getting
    even with them."
    
                                                      -Art Buchwald
         

    "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
    
    							-- G. K. Chesterton

    
    	A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe,
    	a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself,
    	his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the
    	rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  
    	
    	This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to 
    	our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest 
    	to us.  
    
    	Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening 
    	our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and 
    	the whole of nature in its beauty.
    
    		-- Albert Einstein

    
    
    "There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn,
     as in doing it."
    
                                                      -Seneca

    	
    	Jesus became a human being
    	because God the compassionate One
    	could not suffer
    	and lacked a back to be beaten.
    	God needed a back like our backs
    	on which to receive blows
    	and thereby perform compassion,
    	as well as to preach it.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart

    
    	The whole world and all creatures 
    	will be to you nothing else 
    	than an open book and a living Bible, 
    	in which you may study, 
    	without any previous instruction, 
    	the science of God and from which 
    	you may learn his will.
    
    		-- Sebastian Franck

    
    
     "With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense.
     By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from
     actions and their consequences; and all things good and
     bad, go by like a torrent." 
    
    
                                        -Henry David Thoreau

    
    	It is when people are not aware
    	of God's presence everywhere
    	that they must seek God by special methods
    	and special practices.
    
    	Such people have not attained God.
    
    	To all outward appearances
    	people who continue properly in their pious practices
    	are holy.
    	
    	Inwardly, however, they are asses.
    	For they know about God,
    	but they do not know God.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart

    
    	Something is afoot in the universe, a result is working out
    	which can best be compared to gestation and birth:  the birth
    	of a new spiritual reality formed by souls and the matter they 
    	draw after them.  Laboriously, by way of human activity and thanks
    	to it, the new earth is gathering, isolating and purifying itself.
    
    	No, we are not like the flowers in a bunch, but the leaves and
    	flowers of a great tree, on which each appears at its time 
    	and place, according to the demands of the All.
    
    		-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
     

    
    You say that I contradict myself?
    
    
    Very well, then, I contradict myself.
                 - Walt Whitman
    
    ;)

    
    
       "The ultimate evil is to leave the company of the living
        before you die."
        
                                                      -Seneca

    Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and
    is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that can scar
    the souls, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day
    to be buried.
    		- Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
      maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
    Rescue the weak and the needy;
      deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
    		- Psalm 82:3-4

    
    	How should one live?  Live welcoming to all.
    
    		-- Mechtild of Magdeburg
    	
    	(1210 - 1280.  Mechtild was a Beguine most of her life 
    	 and became a third order Domincan.  She consistently 
    	 attacked church corruption and was just as consistently 
    	 driven from town to town for her efforts.)

    
    	When religion lost the cosmos, society became neurotic.
    	And we needed to invent psychology to deal with the
    	neurosis.
    
    		--  Otto Rank
    

I was hungry,
	and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger.

I was imprisoned,
	and you crept off to your chapel and prayed for my
		release.

I was naked,
	and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

I was sick,
	and you knelt and thanked God for your health.

I was homeless,
	and you preached to me the spiritual shelter of the love of
		God.

I was lonely,
	and you left me alone to pray for me.

You seem so holy,so close to God,
	But I am still very hungry - and lonely - and cold.

(written by a homeless woman whose name is not known)

Richard

    
     "Is not because things are difficult that we do not dare to
     attempt them, but they are difficult because we do not dare
     to do so."
    
                                                      -Seneca

"Pharaseism is the occupational hazard of religious people."

					- unknown

"God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts!"

					- unknown

    
    Re.50 (Meyer)
    
    Hi Dave,
    
    Finally catching up!  No, it is not the cult you are thinking of, nor
    is it a cult at all.  
    
    I was at Kripalu Center in mid-September and it's alive and well and a
    truly heavenly place to stay - did me wonders.  (;^)
    
    Yogi Amrit Desai was not in residence at the time, unfortunately - he
    was lecturing in Italy.  You know, I went to Kripalu being very
    skeptical of a place which focused on a person...however they were
    playing a video of one of his lectures in the lobby, and I was in awe
    of him...truly so.  Then I skipped over to the bookshop and started
    reading some of his writings.  While one event in my life 3.5 years ago
    suddenly revealed the purpose of 2000 years of Western religious
    history, being at Kripalu reading his books, taking yoga classes and
    lots of other things, left me with the understanding of many thousands 
    of years of Eastern religious history as well. 
    
    Cindy

    
    "I like the silence of the church."
    
    		- Emerson

    "To help mend this world is true religion."
    
    		- William Penn

    
    
    	A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus
    said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic
    on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would
    be the Devil of Hell.  YOu must make your choice.  Either this man was,
    and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can
    shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a Demon; or
    you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord AND God.  But let us not
    come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human
    teacher.  He has not left that open to us.
    
    
    					       -C.S. LEWIS-

    
    	Those who would storm the heavenly heights by fierceness
    	and ascetic practices deceive themselves badly.  Such people
    	carry grim hearts within themselves; they lack true humility
    	which alone leads the soul to God.
    
    		-- Mechtild of Magdeburg

    
    		We are fellow workers with God.
    
    			-- 1 Cor. 3:9 

    
     "He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first
    installment on his debt."
    
                                                      -Seneca

"Suffering is the midwife of deepened trust.  Suffering deprives
us of our ordinary illusion that we are in control of our lives.
Suffering knocks us off balance and allows trust to emerge.  It
is the mystery of the cross: with the aid of suffering, trust can
be born."

Elaine M. Prevallet, quoted in _Weavings_ Sep-Oct 1990

    Is not this the fast that I choose:
      to loose the bonds of injustice,
      to undo the thongs of the yoke,
    to let the oppressed go free,
      and to break every yoke?
    Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
      and bring the homeless poor into your house;
    when you see the naked, to cover them,
      and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

    		Isaiah 58:6-7

    He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
      and what does the LORD require of you
    but to do justice, and to love kindness,
      and to walk humbly with your God?

    		Micah 6:8

    I hate, I despise your festivals,
      and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
    Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
      I will not accept them;
    and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
      I will not look upon.
    Take away from me the noise of your songs;
      I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
    But let justice roll down like waters,
      and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

    		Amos 5:21-24

    
    	"Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence
    	of all living things which are all part of one another
    	and involved in one another."
    
    	  -- an observation Thomas Merton expressed 2 hours
    	before his death.

    
    	"I want to know the mind of God.  
    	   The rest is all details."
    
    		-- Albert Einstein

    
    	"The day of my spiritual awakening 
    	 was the day I saw
    	       and knew I saw 
    	 all things in God 
    	 and God in all things."
    
    		-- Mechtild of Magdeburg

    "While I can still enter imaginatively into the conservative-evangelical
    thought world through which I once passed, and can appreciate and
    respect the traditional orthodoxy which I once fully shared, I would
    not now wish to return from the larger to a smaller vision.  I can also
    remember my own resentment at those who raised awkward questions which
    might upset the established orthodoxy and can understand the similar
    resentment obviously felt by some more traditional churchmen and
    theologians today.  But I believe that anyone either born or "born
    again" into the conservative-evangelical thought world, and who has a
    questioning mind, will find that he has to face challenges to the
    belief system within which his Christian faith was first made available
    to him, and that he will almost certainly be led by rational or moral
    considerations to modify or discard many of its elements.  The response
    to Jesus Christ, as one's lord, and as one's savior from alienation
    from God, may remain the same; but the body of theological theories
    associated with it in one's mind will usually change, and surely ought
    to change, in the light of further living, learning, and thinking."

		- John Hick

    
      A student asked the monk Joshu, "You are such a saintly person,
    where do you think you will go when you die ?"
      Joshu replied, "I shall be the first to go straight to hell."
      "How can this be ?" Responded the student, clearly shaken
    by the old monks response.
       "If I do not get there first then there will be no one waiting
     to help save other people when they arrive.", Joshu replied.  
    
        
                                                      - A Zen Mondo

    
    	Divine am I inside and out,
    	and I make holy whatever I touch
    		or am touched from.
    
    	Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
    	I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
    		and each moment then,
    
    	In the faces of men and women I see God,
    	and in my own face in the glass:
    	I find letters from God dropped in the street,
    		and every one is signed by God's name.
    
    			-- Walt Whitman
    	

    
    
     "One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical,
    decisive hour. Write it on you heart that everyday is the best
    day of the year."
    
                                                    -Ralph Waldo Emerson

    
    	Why is it that some people
    	do not bear fruit?
    
    	It is because they are so busy
    	clinging to their egotistical attachments
    	and so afraid
    	of letting go and letting be
    	that they have no trust
    		either in God, or in themselves.
    
    	Love cannot distrust.
    	It can only await the good trustfully.
    
    	No person could ever trust God too much.
    	Nothing people ever do
    	is as appropriate as great trust in God.
    	
    	With such trust,
    	God never fails to accomplish great things.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart

    
    "To him who suffers but not for love, to suffer is suffering and
     hard to bear.  But one who suffers for love suffers not, and his
     suffering is fruitful in God's sight."
    
      - Meister Eckhart
    

    
    
      "Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot
      be persuaded to say it."
    
                                             -James Russel Lowell

Saw this leafing through the 12-Nov-90 edition of _Newsweek_, from Kenneth 
Woodward, author of _Making Saints_ (Simon & Schuster)



   "What's important is not praying to saints, but telling their stories.
    The story of a saint is always a love story."



Peace,

Jim

    
      "No man is free who has not become master of himself."
    
                                                      -Epictetus
    
     

    
    	History is dotted with situations in which an 
    oppressed people overcome their masters only to become 
    oppressors themselves.
    
    	Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who saw so 
    clearly the intrinsic relationship between education and
    transformation points out that real freedom can never emerge
    out of the unexamined struggle of the oppressed against the
    oppressor, for in that struggle are only the seeds of a new
    oppression.
    
    	Rather, we must recognize that the problem lies with the
    nature of the struggle itself.  In doing this, we circumscribe
    both combatants and name the problem from a perspective that
    includes the legitimate aspirations of both.  
    
    	Oppressed and oppressor must each come to see the trap they
    are in;  they must see the whole wheel, not just their own spoke,
    and rename it.
    
    	-- _Effective Teaching And Mentoring_ by Laurant Daloz
     

    
    
    
       "I will not control, or submit to, the means of oppression.
        I will be neither, victim or executioner."
    
                                                     -Albert Camus

    
    	El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam.
    
    		-- bumper sticker

    "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save
    you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not
    bring forth will destroy you."
    
    The Gnostic Gospels

    The following story is from a book called _In the Footsteps of 
    Gandhi_ edited by Catherine Ingram.  It's a series of stories and 
    conversations with 12 spiritual social activists.  The following 
    story is told by Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian pacifist, founder of the 
    Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Jerusalem, and who 
    is now living in exile in the U.S.:
    
    Mubarak:  I am one of those people who reminds the Palestinians that 
    the Israeli is a human being.  And we must see them, as well as 
    ourselves, as human beings.  The more you destroy another human being 
    the more you destroy yourself.
    
    One day a young Palestinian boy, maybe thirteen years old, came to me 
    crying.  He was from one of the refugee camps and he had been 
    throwing stones at an Israeli soldier.  Three times he had thrown 
    stones at the soldier and three times the soldier had beaten him up, 
    the third time quite badly.  On the fourth time, the boy again threw 
    the stones and again the solidier chased him.  When he was finally 
    caught by the soldier, the boy expected to be really severely beaten 
    this time, but instead the soldier hugged him.  This boy came to me 
    weeping, angry, not understanding.  He said to me, "He hugged me!"  
    
    I said to the boy, "That Israeli soldier was a human being."  
    
    

    
    "What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness ?"
    
    
                                             -Jean Jaques Rousseau

    
    	When one tries to effect change, one must go through 
    	five stages:
    
    	First, people will greet you with indifference;  next they
    	will ridicule you;  then they will abuse you;  next they
    	will put you in jail, or even try to kill you.  If you go
    	through these four phases successfully, you will get to the
    	_most_ dangerous phase -- when people start respecting you.
    	Then you can become your own enemy unless you are careful.
    
    		-- Mahatma Gandhi

    
    	Vocation is where the heart's deep gladness meets
    	the world's deep hunger.
    
    		-- Frederick Buechorer, theologian
    

    
    "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks
     of changing themselves."
    
                                                     -Leo Tolstoy
    
                                                    

    "Everybody wants to be outstanding, but hardly anybody wants
    	to stand out."
    
    						-Patricia Spaulding

    "Life is a party to which you have been invited.  Are you going to sit
         on the sidelines or join in the dance?"
    
    
                                -I don't remember but I liked it anyway
    
    

    
    
    "Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows
    not; and often times we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
    
    
                                         -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    
    "We live in a world of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty
    of each of us is to make the little corner of it that we can
    influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant
    than it was before we entered it."
    
                                        -Thomas Huxley

    
    
    "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent
    of all the other virtues."
    
                                                   -Cicero

    
    	"If the only prayer you ever say is 'thank you',
    	 that will suffice."
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart

    
    
         "Wise men, though all laws were abolished,
          would lead the same lives."   
    
                                       -Aristophanes
        
                               

    
           "While we are procrastinating, life speeds by."
    
    
                                                          -Seneca

"What people really suffer from is immaturity.  Among mature people
war would not be a problem - it would be impossible."

							- Peace Pilgrim

    Walk cheerfully, and answer to that of God in every one.
    
    -- George Fox

    
     "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind,
    a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
    
                                               -Benedict Spinoza

    
    "Today is not yesterday; we ourselves change; how can our works
    and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always
    the same ? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful, and if
    memory have its force and worth, so also has hope."
          
                                                 -Thomas Carlyle

    
    "Make yourself an honest person, and then you you may be sure
    that there is one less rascal in the world."
    
    
                                                     -Thomas Carlyle

    
    
       "Many men would be cowards if they had courage enough."
    
                                                   -Thomas Fuller

     
    
              "The more one judges, the less one loves."  
    
                                                      -Honore de Balzac

    
      "Know well that a hundred holy temples of wood and stone 
      have not the value of one understanding heart."
    
    
                                                  -Zoroaster

    
    "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your
    belief will help create the fact."
    
                                                     -William James

"How many eyes must one man have
			before he sees the sky?

How many ears must one man have
			before he can hear people cry?

How many deaths will it take before he knows
			that too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The answer is blowing in the wind."


						- Bob Dylan

    "If you don't do your own thinking, someone else will do it for you."
    
    					- Edward de Bono

     Eternity Within

The Truth lives within me
  like a candle that never goes out.
It weaves itself through my being
  like a thread without end.
The Truth is apart from myself
  and yet it is within.
It is my spirit united with God's
  Spirit;
constant, steady and certain.
Living forever.

		Carolyn Hooper

     	 			 (
			         )
        	                /(
        	               (  \
        	                \ )
        	                 v
        	                _|_
        	               (   )
        	               |   |
        	               |   |
        	               |   |
        	               |   |    
        	            ___|___|___	
        	            \_________/
    
	"And if everyone lit just one little candle what a bright
		world this would be." - the Christophers

Let there be peace on the earth; let it begin with me.

    
                     Wise Men STILL Seek Him
    
    
    
    
     (on  a  teeshirt we bought around Christmas,,but plan to wear
    throughout the year!!   )

      "I prefer to do right and get no thanks, rather than to do wrong
      and get no punishment."

                                   -Cato

    "The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers
    and cities; but to know that someone here and there who thinks
    with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this
    makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."


                                                     -Goethe

     "First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also 
     bring peace to others."

                                             -Thoms A. Kempis

    "Never mistkae knowledge for wisdom.  One helps you make a living, the
    other helps you make a life."
    
      -Sandra Carey

    "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what
    dies inside us while we live."

                                              -Norman Cousins

       _The faith and practice of the Quakers_, by Rufus M. Jones,
       1927, Methuen & Co. London, pp. 169
 
       Nations are not thugs.  They are bodies of intelligent people.
       Their claims and causes and charges are either just or unjust.
       They would practically never push their claims, causes and
       charges to extreme issue if they were met with kindness,
       intelligence and wisdom by the nation with whom they are in
       dispute.  In any case, fighting will not settle whether the
       claims were just or unjust.  It will only settle which nation
       can mobilize and handle its fighting forces and its economic
       forces the better.  When the war ends, it will be found that
       there was an equal amount of "thuggery" practiced on both
       sides, that terrible things were done to force the final
       victory.  Multitudes of innocent persons will have suffered.
       The little children of the two countries will be the main
       victims.  Lands will be made desolate. Social progress will be
       arrested.  The poor will be swamped with taxes for an entire
       generation.  The mutilated men will drag out a broken life to
       the end of their days.  A large part of the "facts" used to
       arouse patriotism and to stir the fervour and the fierceness
       of the fighting spirit will be discovered to have been
       "propaganda". And yet not one single thing will have been done
       to determine where right or justice or truth lay in the issues
       involved.

    
    	"No interfaith conversation is genuinely ecumenical 
    		unless
    	 the quality of mutual sharing and receptivity 
    		is such that each party 
    	 makes him- or herself vulnerable to conversion
      	 	to the other's truth."
    
    		-- Kriser Standahl
                                  

    re:  .175

    I am reminded of Dr. Frank Laubach's first mission work, among the Moro
    peoples of Mindanao, the Philippines.  He was completely isolated and
    unsuccessful until he asked the local muftis to "teach me the Koran".
    
    This was the man, by the way, whose thesis done in Princeton was the
    basis, I've heard, for Wilson's proposals regarding the League of
    Nations.  Laubach also created a world-wide movement for literacy and
    late in his life would always have an inflatable globe - map of the
    earth - which he would blow up as he lectured.  
    
    DR

    
    
     To conduct one's life as to realize oneself - this seems to me
    the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task
    of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
    
     
                                                               Mike

    
    "If you want peace in the world, then fight for justice."
    
                                             Corita

    
    
    
    		Teach Peace

    
     I would rather men should ask why no statue has been erected
    in my honor, then why one has been.

                                                  -Cato

      "It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it
    argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered."

                                 
                                                 -Christian Bovee

        "The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of
        human lives, but of the products of human labor.  War is a
        way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the
        stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea,
        materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses
        too comfortable and hence, in the long run, too intelligent."
 
        - George Orwell, "1984"

     "There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make
    their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: myself. But
    my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that
    I have to make him happy - if I may."

                                                -Robert Louis Stevenson

               "Are you in earnest ? Seize this very minute.
                What you can do, or dream, you can begin it;
                Boldness, has genius, power, and magic in it.
                Only engage and the mind grows heated;
                Begin and then the work will be completed."

                                                    -Goethe

                                                    

        "A smile is the shortest distance between two people"

                                                 -Victor Borge

    The attempt to personalize theology demands that we think of theology
    less as an academic discipline or endeavor, and of it more as an art
    form.  To put theology into the service of love, to personalize it, is
    to reclaim it as a creative work of the people.  My theology will be
    revealed to the extent that I believe my theological task to be one of
    artistry, to the extent that I believe myself to be an artist--of the
    Spirit.
    	- Zoe White, "A Quaker Theology of Pastoral Care"

        "To be able to argue, men must first understand each other."


                                                   -Honore de Balzac

      "They who are of the opinion that money will do everything,
      may very well be suspected of doing everything for money."


                                                    -Sir George Savile

     "A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, when you ask his
    opinion of any matter, he must go home and look it up in his
    manuscripts to know."

                                   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

    "Just as Christ abhors sin and loves the sinner, so we must stop the
    war and support the warriors."
    
    	- From a statement by Conscious Youth, a Santa Fe, NM antiwar
    	  organization

    The following quotes were included in SCAWD Gulfwatch #7:
    
SCOTTISH CHURCH LEADERS AND OTHERS SPEAK
GulfWatch
 
     "The obscenity of this war, quite apart from brutalities which are endemic
in any war, can also be seen in the vast sums of money poured into preparing
for, and sustaining the war effort." (+Thomas Winning, RC Archbishop of
Glasgow)
     "In speaking against war, I am in the company not only of my fellow
Bishops in Scotland but also of our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.  Perhaps we
should remind ourselves of his words used at Coventry on his visit to Britain
eight years ago:  `Today, the scale and horror of modern warfare - whether
nuclear or not - makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling
differences between nations.  War should belong to the tragic past, to history;
it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future.'" (+Keith Patrick
O'Brien, RC Archbishop of Edinburgh)
     "Let us look around for allies in our own society.  It was so very
heartening to find the overwhelming support among every part of the community
when we spoke out for peace on 3 January.  Those networks need to be
strengthened." (+Michael Hare Duke, Scot. Episc. Bishop of St.Andrews)
     "We appeal to all the parties concerned to end armed hostilities and to
begin the process of dialogue and negotiation." (Quaker Peace & Service,
London)

                 "Do not learn by thinking, but rather
                 think by learning."

                                       -Confucius

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties.

He integrates empirically."



				Albert Einstein

     "I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic.
    Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love
    the little leaves that open in the Spring. I love the blue sky."


                                                    -Dostoevsky

     "In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything that
     genius can, and very many things which it cannot."

                                                  -Henry Ward Beecher

    "If God truly exists, then why can't we find him?  And, if God doesn't
     exist, then why can't we get rid of him?"
    
    				- from the play, _Echoes_

      "Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad,
      but chant the beauty of the good."

                                                  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

    
      "Censorship, like charity should begin at home; but unlike 
      charity, it should end there."
    
                                         -Clare Boothe Luce

      
                 "The only gift is a portion of thyself"

                                                 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

    
    	"When we let go and allow ourselves to go beyond human words 
    	 and return to Dabhar as the Creative Energy of God, truth 
    	 happens, affection happens and God happens; for creation not 
    	 only exists, it also discharges truth and is a source of 
    	 revelation."
    
    		-- Gerhard Von Rad, Hebrew scriptures scholar

    
      "The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because it
       is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy
       because it is an exalted activity will have neither good
       plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its
       theories will hold water."

                                                -John Gardner

   	  "Arms are instruments of ill omen. ...
	When one is compelled to use them, it is
	best to do so without relish. There is no
	glory in victory, and to glorify it despite
	this is to exult in the killing of men. ...
	When great numbers of people are killed,
	one should weep over them with sorrow.
	When victorious in war, one should observe
	mourning rites."
 
			Lao-tzu (ca. 500 B.C.)

     "Music is a revelation; a revelation loftier than all wisdom 
     and all philosophy."

                                      -Ludwig van Beethoven

     "The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the
     weak becomes a stepping stone in the pathway of the strong."


                                                 -Thomas Carlyle

    
    	"But you who are strong and swift, 
    	 see that you do not limp before the lame, 
    	 deeming it kindness."
    
    		--Kahlil Gibran, _The Prophet_
    

     "Humor is a humanizing agent. We will accept almost any allegation
     of our deficiencies - cosmetic, intellectual, virtuous - save one,
     the charge that we have no sense of humor."
    
                                                    -Steve Allen

    "Endeavor to be patient in bearing the defects and infirmities
    of others, of what sort so ever they be; for thou thyself also
    hast many failings that must be borne with by others."

                                                -Thomas A. Kempis 

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired -
    signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
    not fed, those who are cold and who are not clothed.  This world in
    arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its
    laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 
    This is not a way of life at all in any true sense, under the cloud of
    war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
    
    				D. Eisenhower
    

     "We exaggerate both misfortune and happiness alike. We are never
     either so wretched or so happy as we say we are."


                                                 -Honore de Balzac

     "I have discovered that it is absolutely necessary to believe in
      nothing. That is we have to believe in something that has no 
      form and no color - something which exists before all forms and
      color appear. This is a very important point. No matter what god
      or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your
      belief will be based, more or less, on a self-centered idea.
      You strive for perfect faith in order to save yourself. But it
      will take time to attain such a perfect faith. You will be involved
      in an idealistic practice. In constantly seeking to actualize your
      ideal you will have no time for composure. But if you are always
      prepared for accepting everything we see as something that appears
      from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal
      existence of such form and such color appears, then at that moment
      you will have perfect composure."

                                                   -Shunryu Suzuki

      "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you
       could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget
       them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well
       and serenely and with too high a sprit to be cumbered with your
       old nonsense. The day is all that is good and fair. It is too
       dear with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment 
       on yesteryears."

                                                 -Ralph Waldo Emerson

      "To hope is to risk pain and to try is to risk failure. But risk
       must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk
       nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing
       and is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply
       cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live or love. Chained by his
       certitudes or addictions, he's a slave. He has forfeited his 
       greatest trait, and that is his individual freedom. Only the
       person who risks is free."

                                                 -Leo Buscaglia

    
    
    
                   Like a wind, love is eternal.
    
    bill
     

A young brave wanted to know what liberty was, so he went out and found Eagle.

"What is Liberty?" he asked.

Eagle flew up until it was only a speck high in the sky, folded it's wings,
and plummetted to earth, diving until it was only a few feet above the rocks. 
Spreading its wings, Eagle skimmed over the rocks, slowed and landed next to 
the brave.

"I an a prisoner of the Air, that is my Liberty."


--a Native American Indian tale

    "There is a Spirit that is everywhere, in and part of all things, like
    salt in the sea.  In my heart, it is smaller than a mustard seed,
    smaller than the kernel of a canary seed.  In my heart it is also
    larger than all Earth, larger than the sky and heaven, larger than
    everything that is.

    "From this Spirit, come all sweet smells and tastes, all good deeds and
    wishes.  It is quiet, intelligent, true, unsurprised."

    		The Upanishads c.700 B.C.

    The highest truths are but half-truths,
    Think not to settle down for ever in any truth.
    Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a summer night,
    But build no house of it, or it will be your tomb.
    When you first have an inkling of its insufficiency
    And begin to descry a dim counter-truth looming beyond
    Then weep not, but give thanks;
    It is the Lord's voice whispering 'Take up thy bed and walk'.

    			A.J. Balfour

    
    
    
                       You can give without love.
                       But you can't love without giving.
    
    
    
    Christ, the light in the world.
    Bill

      "By nothing do men show their character more than by the
       things they laugh at."

                                            -Goethe

      "There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only
       argument available with the east wind is to put on
       your overcoat."

                                           -James Russel Lowell

    
    Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of
    another person's suffering.  It is the willingness to live with the
    helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his
    pain.
    
    
    				--Sheldon B. Kopp in
    		If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!

     Christians have a choice between following the supertanker,
     fly-the-flag, support-the-president, holy-war Jesus of Robert
     Schuller, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Bill Bright, or the
     end-oppression, condemn-idolatry, love-the-poor and make-peace-
     by-peace Jesus of Moses, Elijah, Isaiah and Mary.
 
          -- John Stoner, Mennonite Central Committee Peace Office

	There is a time for everything,
	and a season for every activity under heaven:

	a time for war and a time for peace

	Ecclesiastes 3:1,8

     While we are becoming so enamored and consumed by the Star Wars
     technology, it is urgent that world focus on the incredible needs
     of the civilian casualties.  It is, to us, a monumental crime that
     with a billion dollars being spent a day on this activity, the people
     who are taking the most severe blows are women and children.
 
          -- Tom Getman, World Vision

      "My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built
       by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians.
       Infants killed by trained nurses. Woman and babies shot and
       killed by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious
       of education. My request is: help your students to be human.
       Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled
       psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and spelling
       and history are only important if they serve to make our
       students human."
                                             
                                     - A Concentration Camp Survivor            

      "Man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge
       of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried."


                                                -Henry David Thoreau

	"Some days I'm the bug, some days I'm the windshield."

			Grimm (in Mike Peters' "Mother Goose and Grimm")

      

       "You never have to change anything that you got up in
        the middle of the night to write."

                                                -Saul Bellow

      "There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind.
       In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind."


                                                -Napoleon Bonaparte

        "The difference between landscapes is small, but there is a
         great difference in the beholders."

                                            -Ralph Waldo Emerson

     "The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are 
      wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right."


                                                    -Mark Twain

    "Sometimes I think the whole world would be better off had
     Noah missed the boat."
    
    "When the church and state agree there's probably something wrong
     with the church."
    
    						   -Mark Twain

    The history of European thought, even to the present day, has been
    tainted by a fatal misunderstanding.  It may be termed The Dogmatic
    Fallacy.  The error consists in the persuasion that we are capable of
    producing notions which are adequately defined in respect to the
    complexity of relationship required for their illustration in the real
    world.  Canst thou by searching describe the Universe?  Except perhaps
    for the simpler notions of arithmetic, even our more familiar ideas,
    seemingly obvious, are infected with this incurable vagueness.  Our
    right understanding of the methods of intellectual progress depends on
    keeping in mind this characteristic of our thoughts.  The notions
    employed in every systematic topic require enlightenment from the
    perspective of every standpoint.  They must be criticized from the
    standpoint of their own internal consistency within that topic, and
    from the standpoint of other topics of analogous generality, and from
    the standpoint of so-called philosophic topics with a wider range. 
    During the medieval epoch in Europe, the theologians were the chief
    sinners in respect to dogmatic finality.  During the last three
    centuries, their bad preeminance in this habit passed to the men of
    science.  Our task is to understand how in fact the human mind can
    successfully set to work for the gradual definition of its habitual
    ideas.  It is a step by step process, achieving no triumphs of
    finality.  We cannot produce that final adjustment of well-defined
    generalities which constitute a complete metaphysics.  But we can
    produce a variety of partial systems of limited generality.  The
    concordance of ideas within any one such system shows the scope and
    virility of the basic notions of that scheme of thought.  Also the
    discordance of system with system, and success of each system as a
    partial mode of illumination, warns us of the limitations within which
    our intuitions are hedged.  The undiscovered limitations are the
    topics for philosophic research.

    	- Alfred North Whitehead

      "The things our friends do with and for us, form a portion of
       our lives: for they strengthen and advance our personality."


                                                         -Goethe

    Quotes from Good Friday services in the Boston area as reported in the
    newspaper:
    
    				    I
    "We learn laboriously that there is but one way to begin to understand
    the pain of another and that is to listen....There is no way to talk
    ourselves into the heart of your selfless agony today.  It's no good
    busying ourselves... There is stillness at the foot of the cross.  We
    will stand beside the unthinkable, stand in the very heart of the
    shadow.  And do nothing, say nothing."
    					-- Rev. Richard E. Spalding
    				United Church of Christ - Presbyterian
    
    
    				   II
    Sister Linda Blessom, justice coordinator for the Sisters of Notre
    Dame, urged the congregation to "proclaim and practice ... solidarity
    with the crucified of this world" not only through compassion but
    through "taking up the cause of their liberation."
    
    
    			 	  III
    "The mystery of the Passion is that nobody is totally responsible.  The
    tragedy of evil is that Satan weaves together little acts of faithlessness
    and cowardice."
    
    Jesus' final words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," is a
    prayer of trust.  "Whenever things are difficult and hard to figure
    out, this is the prayer:  Into *thy* hands."
    				-- Rev. Krister Stendahl
    				   King's Chapel
    				

     "The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in
      liking what one has to do."

                                                 -James Barrie

             "The only way to have a friend is to be one."


                                                      -Ralph Waldo Emerson

    
    	"Religious experience does not need rational proof or
    substantiation.  No matter what the world thinks about religious
    experiences, the one who has it posseses the great treasure of a thing
    that has provided him (sic) with a source of life, meaning, and beauty
    and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.
    Religious experience is absolute.  It is indisputable."
    
    	-- C.G.Jung, _Psychology and Religion_
    

     "Life is short, and we never have too much time for gladdening the
      the hearts of those who are traveling this dark journey with us.
      Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind !"


                
                                                 - Henri-Fredrick Amiel

    
    "Send me."
    
    But where, Lord?  To do what?
    
    To bring pardon where there had been injury in a life I casually brush
    against at my daily work? (But I had thought of mediating a teenage
    gang war in Chicago!)
    
    To help turn doubt into faith in a person with whom I live intimately
    in my circle of family or friends?  (But I had thought of helping a
    tired drunk on skid row!)
    
    To bring joy into a life, consumed by sadness, which touches the hem of
    my life at a drinking fountain?  (But I had thought only of a far-off
    mission land!)
    
    "Send me."  Send me next door, into the next room, to speak somehow to
    a human heart beating alongside mine.  Send me to bear a note of
    dignity into a subhuman, hopeless situation.  Send me to show forth joy
    in a moment and a place where there is otherwise no joy but only the
    will to die.
    
    Send me to reflect your light in the darkness of futility, mere
    existence, and the horror of casual human cruelty.  But give me your
    light, too, Lord, in my own darkness and need.
    
    		  from  _Are You Running with Me, Jesus?_ 
    		  by Malcolm Boyd
    
    

     "It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible
      to recall what has been uttered."

                                                 -Plutarch

    People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
    
    			[heard on the radio this AM]

              "Use well the moment; what the hour
               Brings for thy use is in thy power;
               And what thou best canst understand
               Is the thing lies nearest to thy hand."


                                                      -Goethe

        "Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain,
         but what we do."


                                                    -Thomas Carlyle

    	"When in doubt, tell the truth."
    
    						- Benjamin Franklin

     "Life is a tender thing and easily molested. There is always
      something that goes amiss. Vain vexations - vain sometimes,
      but always vexations. The smallest and slightest impediments
      are the most piercing; as little letters most tire the eye, 
      so do little affairs most disturb us."


                                                   -Michel Montaigne

    
    	Religious experience does not need rational proof or
    substantiation.  Religious experience is absolute.  It is 
    indisputable.  No matter what the world thinks about religious
    experience, the one who has it possesses the great treasure of 
    a thing that has provided him (sic) with a source of life, meaning, 
    and beauty and that has given a new splendor to the world and to 
    (hu)mankind.
    
    	And if such experience helps to make your life healthier, more
    beautiful, more complete, and more satisfactory to yourself and to
    those you love, you may safely say:  'This was the grace of God'.
    
    	-- C. G. Jung 
    

    ...my life had been the lesson
    chosen by me
    for to purify my thought that I may be
    worthy to shine forth the Light --
    the Light ...
    
    			Donovan Leitch
    

        "Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly
         at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."


                                                      -Thomas Carlyle

        "Fill my hour, ye gods, so that I may not say whilst I have 
         done this, "Behold, also an hour of my life is gone - but
         rather, "I have lived an hour."


                                                   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

       "I believe that only one person in a thousand knows the trick of
        living in the present. Most of us spend 59 minutes of an hour
        living in the past with regrets for lost joys, or shame for
        things badly done, both utterly useless and weakening, or in the
        future which we either long for or dread. The only way to live
        is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is
        exactly what it is - a miracle and unrepeatable."


                                                 -Storm Jameson

    
    	"Whoso loveth God truly 
    	   must not expect to be loved by Him in return."
    
    		-- Spinoza
    

     
       "A benefit consists not in what is done or given, but in the
        intention of the giver or the doer."

                                                      -Seneca

    "The lives and the deaths of our homeless sisters and brothers are a
    powerful prophetic voice in our midst.  They are a statement of anger,
    of condemnation, of judgment.  They are also a statement of hope:  hope
    that all who hear may be angered, may enter into the experience of
    suffering and condemnation, may reflect upon the sources of misery, may
    act to crush the structures that are crushing our sisters and brothers,
    our children, or souls."

                              Mary Scullion

       "In some way, however, small and secret, each of us is a little
       mad...Everyone is lonely at the bottom and cries to be understood;
       but we can never entirely understand someone else, and each of
       remains part stranger even to those who love us.
        It is the weak who are cruel; gentleness is only to be expected
       from the strong. Those who do not know fear are not really brave, 
       for courage is the ability to confront what can be imagined.
        You can understand people better if you look at them, no matter
       how old and impressive they might be, as if they were children.
       For most of us never mature; we simply grow taller. Happiness only
       comes when we push our hearts and brains to the farthest reaches
       of which we are capable. The purpose of life is to matter - to
       count for something, to stand for something, to have it make some
       difference that we have lived."


                                                             -Leo Rosten

      "You know I don't believe that anyone has ever taught anything 
       to anyone. I question the efficacy of teaching. The only thing
       I know is that a person who wants to learn will learn. And maybe
       a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and
       shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat."


                                                            -Carl Rogers

      "Man must see that nothing really is, but that everything is always
       becoming and changing. Nothing stands still. Everything is being 
       born, growing and dying. The very instant a thing reaches its height
       it begins to decline. The law of rhythm is in constant operation.
       There is no reality. There is no enduring quality, fixtiy or
       substantiality in anything. Nothing is permanent but change. Man
       must see all things evolving from other things and resolving him to
       other things, an constant action and reaction, inflow or outflow,
       building up or tearing down, creation or destruction, birth and 
       growth and death. Nothing is real, and nothing endures but change."


                                                   From: The Kabala

"I'd rather go to your Hell with my God shining brightly within my soul,
 than to your Heaven of judgment and finger-pointing."

				- A favorite saying of a friend

      "The one serious conviction a man should have is that nothing
       should be taken too seriously"


                                                       -Nicholas Butler

      "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you
       are the easiest person to fool."

                                             -Richard Feynman

    "The mode of relation to God which has been in the center of attention
    is, in Whitehead's terminology, the derivation by every occasion of
    experience of its initial aim from God.  Whitehead speaks of that in God
    which is the source of this aim as his primordial nature.  But he argues
    that in God there is also a consequent nature.  Just as with every
    occasion of experience there is not only an influence upon the subsequent
    world, but also, in its own becoming, the influence of the prior world
    upon it, so also in God.  Not only does God influence the every occasion
    of experience, but also, he is in turn affected by each.  He takes up
    into himself the whole richness of each experience, synthesizing its
    values with all the rest and preserving them everlastingly in the
    immediacy of his own life.  Even the miseries and failures of life are
    so transmuted in the divine experience as to redeem all that can be
    redeemed.

    "The Christian not understands his faith as a continual challenge to do
    and dare, to take responsibility  upon himself, and to venture out
    beyond the limits laid down by the past; he also finds in his faith the
    grounds for confidence that what happens matters.  Regardless of how
    ephemeral the joys and sorrows of life, his own and those of others,
    they are not trivial or insignificant.  Even if man destroys his planet
    in the near future, our efforts now to preserve it are not worthless.
    Because what we are and do matters to God, our lives are meaningful even
    when we recognize that in the course of history our accomplishments may
    soon be swept away."
                              John Cobb, Jr.
                         God and the World (pp. 83-84)

     
      "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto
       you. Their tastes may not be the same."


                                                  -George Bernard Shaw

      "Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life"

                                               
                                                 -Bertolt Brecht

     "People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell
      them that Benjamin Franklin said it first."

                                                 -David Comins

    
      "Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is
       the ultimate victor in everything; it is he who gets the 
       most out of life."
    
                                             G.K. Chesterton

"A great many people think they are thinking 
when they are merely re-arranging their prejudices."

William James

           "When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it."

                    
                                                   -Yogi Berra

	"Following inner promptings brings quiet accomplishment"

					- from a fortune cookie

    
       A student asked Joshu, "Who is the Buddha ?"
       Joshu looked at the student and replied, "Who are you ?"
    
    
                                                      -Zen Mondo
    
                                        

        "The purpose of life consists of determining what you have
         to offer the world and then making that offering valid."


                                                   -Thomas Merton

	"I'm just soul whose intentions are good;
		Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."

					-- The Animals

	"NO is the articulate, valiant, pristine, unmistakable, primary,
reliable, sane and preferred word of the Spirit, spoken to all who would
be powerbrokers, to all who would make themselves gods.  NO is the
Spirit's word to war-making super-states.  Our worhip must echo it; it
is the beginning of subversion."

						- Fr. Daniel Berrigan

	"To each and all, the Spirit is offered.  To whatever in each
of us is most in need of a healing embrace, to whatever is most fragile,
dispirted, opaque, sterile, withheld, irascible, cramped, unlovely and
unlovable - to that the Spirit comes."

					- Daniel Berrigan, sj

	"Let us pay tribute to the people of the Spirit in our midst,
the Joels, the dreamers and visionaries, young and old.  Those who hold
fast to ideals and noble work, when literally nothing comes of their
best efforts.  Those who are not victimized by the cult and fashion of
results, proofs, justifications, outcomes, efficiencies.  Those who
hold on and hold out, sensible of the goodness and truthfulness of the
thing to be done."

					- Daniel Berrigan, poet, filmmaker.

    
    	 If I worship you in order to avoid hell,
    	 then cast me into hell.
    
    	 If I worship you to obtain paradise,
    	 then bar me from paradise.
    
    	 But if I worship you simply in and of yourself,
    	 then reveal to me the loveliness of your face.
    
    		-- Rabia, a Sufi poetess
    

	And in the midst of the lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed 
with a garment reaching to the feet, and girded about at the breasts with a 
golden girdle; And His head and hair were white as white wool, as snow; and 
His eyes as a flame of fire; And His feet were like shining brass, as having 
been fired in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters; And He had
in His right hand seven stars; and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged
sword; and His face was as the sun shines in its power.


		John seeing the resurrected, ascended, and enthroned Christ
		as He cares for the churches

    "Sometimes it takes a rainy day
     just to let you know
     everything's gonna be all right."

     Chris Williamson

Nanci

"Until one is committed
there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas
and splendid plans:
the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one
that would otherwise never have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner
of unforeseen incidents and meetings
and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed
would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect
for one of Goethe's couplets:

'Whatever you can do, or dream you can...begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.'"

W.N. Murray
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951

Before I make this comment I must apologize for my irreverance!  :-)


Re -1  The first line really struck a chord in me.  I've always been hesitant
about being committed!  :-)

Nanci

	Grace to you and peace from Him who is, and who was, and who is coming,
and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ,
the faithful Witness, the Firstborn of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of
the earth. 


			John sending grace and peace to the local churches
			*from* God, the sevenfold intensified Spirit, and
			the Son (a.k.a the Triune God)

      "Our true home is not in a house, but on the open road. This is
       because our life is journey that we make on foot."

                                                       
                                                   -Bruce Chatwin

     "If I had my life to live over again, I would have made it a rule
      to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week;
      for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been
      kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of 
      happiness, and may be possibly injurious to the intellect, and more
      probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part
      of our nature."

                                                        -Charles Darwin

      "Existence is beyond the power of words to describe. Terms may be
       used, but none of them are absolute. In the beginning of heaven and
       earth there were no words. Words come out of the womb of matter.
       And whether a man dispassionately sees the core of life or
       passionately sees the surface, the core and the surface are the same,
       words making them seem different only to express appearance. If a 
       name be needed, let the name be wonder, and then from wonder to
       wonder, existence opens."

                                                        -Lao Tzu

    To know and not to do is not really to know.
    
    Buddhist saying

    
    	Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not,
    to him it is SIN.
    
    James the Brother of Jesus

I thought there was a topic for "national religions", but I couldn't find it.
So I'll put this here, as inspirational, I do find it inspirational, not in 
the message itself, but in how I look and see what's happening in the world, 
and my country of origin's place in it.  The *second* verse of our National
Anthem...

	O thus be ever, when free-men shall stand
	between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
	Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
	praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
	Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
	and this be our motto, "In God is our trust."
	And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
	o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

					Francis Scott Key 1779-1843

             "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist"


                                                         -Indira Ghandi

I saw this sign hanging in a doctor's office the other day...

	Brilliant people talk about ideas.

	Average people talk about things.

	Small people talk about other people.

      "A Rabbi whose congregation doesn't want to run him out of
       town in not much of a Rabbi."

                                           -Haddasic Proverb

    "The best advice I have ever received was from a very old courtier
    who was one I my tutors when I was young. He told me that if I 
    wished to be happy in life I should never pass up any opportunity
    to rest my feet or pass water."

                                              -Prince Phillip
   
    

	"Blessed is the man, who, having nothing to say, abstains
	 from giving wordy evidence of the fact"

    						(Author unknown)

    If thou shouldst fail only in capability and not in intention,
    verily thou hast done all in the sight of God.
     
                                             Meister Eckart 

    "If we consider philosophical controversies, we shall find that
    disputants tend to require coherence from their adversaries, and to
    grant dispensations to themselves."

    	- Alfred North Whitehead

    United in the strife that divided them.
    
    T. S. Eliot

    
    
    "[Christ is coming] in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the
    homeless child, and seeking for shelter."
    
                                                 Mother Theresa

"World peace through non-violence is neither absurd nor unattainable.  All
other methods have failed.  Thus we must begin anew."

					- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Wars, conflict; it's all business.  One murder makes a villain.
Millions a hero.  Numbers sanctify."

					- Charles Chaplin

    ...the main objection [to philosophic speculation], dating from the
    sixteenth century and receiving final expression from Francis Bacon, is
    the uselessness of philosophic speculation.  The position taken by this
    objection is that we ought to describe detailed matter of fact, and
    elicit the laws with a generality strictly limited to the systematization
    of these described details.  General interpretation, it is held, has no
    bearing upon this procedure; and thus any system of general
    interpretation, be it true or false, remains intrinsically barren.
    Unfortunately for this objection, there are no brute, self-contained
    matters of fact, capable of being understood apart from interpretation
    as an element in a system.  Whenever we attempt to express the matter of
    immediate experience, we find that its understanding leads us beyond
    itself, to its contemporaries, to its past, to its future, and to the
    universals in terms of which its definiteness is exhibited.  But such
    universals, by their very character of universality, embody the
    potentiality of other facts with variant types of definiteness.  Thus
    the understanding of the immediate brute fact requires its metaphysical
    interpretation as an item in a world with some systematic relation to
    it.  When thought comes upon the scene, it finds the interpretations as
    matters of practice.  Philosophy does not initiate interpretations.  Its
    search for a rationalistic scheme is the search for more adequate
    criticism, and for more adequate justification, of the interpretations
    which we perforce employ.  Our habitual experience is a complex of
    failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation.  If we desire a
    record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its
    autobiography.  Every scientific memoir in its record of the 'facts' is
    shot through and through with interpretation.  The methodology of
    rational interpretation is the product of the fitful vagueness of
    consciousness.  Elements which shine with immediate distinctness, in
    some circumstances, retire into penumbral shadow in other circumstances,
    and into black darkness on other occasions.  And yet all occasions
    proclaim themselves as actualities within the flux of a solid world,
    demanding a unity of interpretation.

	- Alfred North Whitehead, "Process and Reality", pp 21-22

    "I continue to believe with all my mind and heart that the death
    penalty will not help us but will debase us; that it will not protect
    us but will make us weaker.  We should refuse to allow this time to be
    marked forever in the pages of history as the time that we were not
    strong enough, not intelligent enough, not civilized enough to find a
    better answer to violence than violence."

    	Mario Cuomo

    
    	"If it were all so simple!  If only there were evil people
    	 somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it
    	 were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us
    	 and destroy them.  But the line dividing good and evil cuts
    	 through the heart of every human being.  And who is willing
    	 to destroy a piece of their own heart?"
    
    		-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
    
    
    from:  _Meeting the Shadow_

    
    	"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and
    	 try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms
    	 or books that are written in a foreign tongue.  The point
    	 is to live everything.  *Live* the questions now.  Perhaps
    	 you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your 
    	 way some distant day into the answers."
    
    		-- Rainer Maria Rilke
    

    
    	"God is both mother and father, but God is more mother
    	 than father."
    
    		-- Pope John Paul I, a pronouncement he made 
    	shortly before his sudden death.
    

    
      "We all agree your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough ?"
    
                                                    Niels Bohr to
                                                    Wolfgang Pauli

                "The reverse side also has a reverse side"


                                                 -Zen Proverb

       "A man's worst enemies can't wish on him what he can
        think up himself."

                                   -Yiddish Proverb

         "We are here and it is now. Further than that all human
          knowledge is moonshine."

                                    -H.L. Mencken

      A member of his congregation asked the Rabbi, "Which is more
    important, the Sun or the Moon?"
      The Rabbi thought for a moment and replied, "Well, the Moon comes
    out at night when it is always dark and helps us to see a little bit.
    The Sun only comes out during the day when it is always light, so it
    not as important as the Moon."

                                                 -Haddasic Story

           "Well, this is going to be a new experience."

                                      

                                   -George Bernard Shaw's last words

    
    	 A human being is a part of the whole...the universe.
    	 He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as
    	 if separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion
    	 of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison
    	 for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
    	 affection for a few persons nearest us.  
    
    	 Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by 
    	 widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
    	 creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
    
    		-- Albert Einstein
         

      "Gradually, man has become a fantastic animal that has to fulfill
    one more condition of existence than any other animal: man has to
    believe, to know, from time to time why he exists: he cannot flourish
    without a periodic trust in life - without faith in reason in life. 
    And again and again the human race will decree from time to time:
    "There is something at which it is absolutely forbidden to laugh."


                                                   -Friedrich Nietzsche

    
    	"Eden 'is.'  The kingdom of the Father is spread 
    	 upon the earth, and men do not see it."
    
    	   -- Joseph Campbell _The Power of Myth_
    

     One day Nasrudin was sitting in the marketplace in front of a 
    basket of hot peppers, eating one after another. His eyes were
    watering, his face was red and contorted and he was obviously
    in great discomfort and suffering greatly, but still he continued
    to eat the hot peppers. Finally, someone asked him why he was
    doing this. Nasrudin replied, "I am looking for a sweet one."


                                                 - A Sufi Story

    
    	   The son of a Rabbi went to worship on the Sabbath in a 
    	nearby town.  On his return, his family asked, "Well, did 
    	they do anything different from what we do here?"  "Yes, 
    	of course," said the son.  "Then what was the lesson?"  
    	"Love thy enemy as thyself."  "So, it's the same as we say.  
    	And how is it you learned something else?"  "They taught me 
    	to love the enemy within myself."
    
    		-- Hasidic story
    

    
     "When you set yourself free from life and death you will know
    your ultimate destination. Where will you go ?"


                                                 -Zen Koan

    A university student visiting Gasan asked him: "Have you ever read the
    Christian Bible?"

    "No, read it to me," said Gasan.

    The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take
    ye thought for raiment?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they
    grow.  They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that
    even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these....Take
    therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take the
    thought for the things of itself."

    Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened
    man."

    The student continued reading:  "Ask and it shall be given you, seek
    and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.  For everyone
    that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that
    knocketh, it shall be opened."

    Gasan remarked:  "That is excellent.  Whoever said that is not far from
    Buddhahood."

    		From 101 Zen Stories

     "Tribe follows tribe and nation follows nation
      like the waves of the sea.
       It is the order of nations, and regret is useless.
      Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surly come,
      for even the white man whose God walked and talked with him
      as a friend with a friend cannot be exempt form the
      common destiny.
       We may be brothers after all. We will see."


                                                 -Chief Sealth

    
    	"If we could read the secret history of our enemies,
    	 we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering
    	 enough to disarm all hostility."
    
    		-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    

         "Language is a tailor's shop in which nothing fits."


                                                       -Rumi

    	To Create an Enemy
    
    Start with an empty canvas
    Sketch in broad outline the forms of
    men, women, and children.
    
    Dip into the unconscious well of your own
    disowned darkness
    with a wide brush and
    stain the strangers with the sinister hue
    of the shadow.
    
    Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
    hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
    your own.
    
    Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.
    
    Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
    fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
    every finite heart.
    
    Twist the smile until it forms the downward 
    arc of cruelty.
    
    Strip flesh from bone until only the 
    abstract skeleton of death remains.
    
    Exaggerate each feature until man is
    metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect.
    
    Fill in the background with malignant
    figures from ancient nightmares -- devils,
    demons, myrmidons of evil.
    
    When your icon of the enemy is complete
    you will be able to kill without guilt,
    slaughter without shame.
    
    The thing you destroy will have become
    merely an enemy of God, an impediment
    to the sacred dialectic of history.
    
      -- Sam Keen, "The Enemy Maker" from _Meeting the Shadow_ 

    
    	  The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem
    	and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.  That I feed the
    	hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the 
    	name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues.  
    	What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.  
    	
    	  But what if I should discover that the least among them all, 
    	the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, 
    	the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I 
    	myself stand in the need of the alms of my own kindness -- that 
    	I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then?"
    
    		-- Carl G. Jung

    
    	"If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being
    	displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a
    	pleasant place of shelter."
    
    		-- Saint Theresa of Lisieux, from _Meeting the Shadow_
    

    

      "I live in my own place
       have never copied nobody even half
       and at any master who lacks the grace
       to laugh at himself - I laugh."


                            Inscribed over the front door of
                            Nietzsche's house

    
    	"There can be no Kingdom of God in the world
    	 without the Kingdom of God in our hearts."
    
    		-- Albert Schweitzer
    

    
    
               "If life were clear, art would not exist."
    
                                                 -Alber Camus

    
    
    "Love gives all you need, not all you want."
    
    
    
     From Fr. Cohen's talk last night on EWTN.
    
    Jim

    
    	"We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking,
    	 only to learn that it is God who is shaking them."
    
    		-- Charles C. West
                

    	
    	"To know someone here or there with whom you feel 
    	 there is understanding in spite of differences 
    	 or thoughts expressed -- that can make of this earth
    	 a garden."
    
    		-- Johann Wofgang von Goethe
    

    
               "Nothing is more real than nothing"
                
                                            -Samuel Beckett

    	
    	"Conscious faith is freedom.  Emotional faith is slavery.
    	 Mechanical faith is foolishness."
    
    		-- G.I. Gurdjieff
    

    
    	"If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such,
    	 the path of error is the path of truth."
    
    		-- Hans Reichenbach
    

    
    	"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
    
    		-- Groucho Marx
    

    
    	"It is no use walking anywhere to preach,
    	 unless our walking is our preaching."
    
    		-- St. Francis of Assisi
    

Is that what they mean by "walk the talk"?  :-)

Nanci

    
    	"Prayer is not the moment when God and humans are
    	 in relationship, for that is always.  Prayer is
    	 taking initiative to intentionally respond to
    	 God's presence."
    
    		-- L. Robert Keck
    

"I would like to believe that people in the long run are going to do
more for peace than are governments.  Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of
their way and let them have it."

			- Dwight Eisenhower, US President and General

    
    	"Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give
    	 anything for it but truth."
    
    		-- Matthew Henry
    

"As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of
murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the
death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is
not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced
in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized
murder." -- Coretta Scott King
[From "The Death Penalty -- Cruel & Inhuman Punishment" a pamphlet by
Amnesty International [322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001]
 
 
"I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that
undermines the moral and legal foundations of a society. I reject the
notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on
potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true -- that
savagery begets only savagery." -- Andrei Sakharov
[From "The Death Penalty -- Cruel & Inhuman Punishment" a pamphlet by
Amnesty International [322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001]
 

    
    	"The gulf between knowledge and truth is infinite."
    
    		-- Henry Miller
    

    
     "Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what
      it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or
      rejection, one may as well burst out in laughter."
    
                                               -Long Chen Pa

   "More than at any time in history mankind faces a crossroads.
    One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other
    to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom
    to choose correctly."

                                             -Woody Allen

    
    	"Contradiction is the criterion of reality."
    
    		-- Simone Weil
    

     "Wouldn't it be funny if there was nothing wrong with the Hubble
    telescope at all and it is just that the whole universe is fuzzy"


                                                          -Jay Leno

    "Life is too important to be taken seriously."
    
    					-- Oscar Wilde

    
    	"It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God's
    	 mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of
    	 its inconsolable bitterness.  
    
    	 If still persevering in our love, we fall to the point 
    	 where the soul cannot keep back the cry, "My God, why 
    	 hast thou forsaken me?", if we remain at this point 
    	 without ceasing to love, we end by touching something 
    	 that is not affliction, not joy, an essence, necessary 
    	 and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and
    	 sorrow:  the very love of God."
    
    		-- Simone Weil
    

    "It's not the IQ but the I will that matters."
    
    	Poster on a classroom door

  
      "A child is entitled to sane messages from adults. How parents
    and teachers talk to children will help them to know how they
    should feel about themselves. Their statements affect a 
    child's self esteem and self worth. To a large extent language
    determines their destiny. Parents and teaches need to eradicate
    the insanity so insidiously hidden in their everyday speech. 
    The messages that tell children to distrust their perception,
    to disown their feelings and to doubt their own worth. The prevalent
    so-called normal talk drives children crazy. The blaming and shaming,
    the preaching and the moralizing, the ordering and the bossing and
    the accusing, the ridiculing and the belittling, the threatening and
    the bribing, the diagnosing and the prognosing - these techniques
    brutalize, vulgarize and dehumanize children. Sanity only comes
    when we trust our own inner reality and such trust is only learned
    through the process of real communication."



                                                    Hiam Ginott
    

	"Eat with a Jew, but sleep with a Christian."

					- Islamic proverb

	"The naked fear no thief."

					- Russian proverb

"I traveled the world over in search of God, till I was utterly exhausted.
In despair I sunk my face into my hands, but as I lifted my face away,
I stared into my hands and was amazed by the miracle they were -- my hands
were a masterpiece of creation.  My long search for God was at last fulfilled,
by the presence of God in the palms of my hands...."

					- author unknown

    "The world has become too small to hate anyone anymore."
    
    			- Dick Sargent on the Sally Jessy Raphael Show

    "The definition of an eternity: Two people and a turkey."
    
    				- Of uncertain origin

    "The radical truth of reality is that we are all one."
    
    					- Thomas Merton

     "I have brought myself to the point where can sleep naked on the
      earth and eat grass. And may God grant everyone a a life like
      that. I need nothing and I fear no one, and I understand myself
      so well that no man is richer and freer that I."

               
                                                 -Semyon Tolkovy

	"Moral theology would hardly advance at all without visionaries
and extremists, people who see things differently and plead God's cause
even in matters others judge insignificant.  I don't think there are many
moderates in heaven."

				- Andrew Linzey, The Christian Century
				  October 9, 1991

    
    It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need
    and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
    
                     - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

People think democracy makes them free.
People think war can be justifiable.
People think all men and women are created with equal rights.
People think sin brings eternal consequence.

What do they know?  Nothing, I say.

People don't receive freedom from democracy.  They bring freedom to it.
War is not justifiable.  War begs justification.  Justification brings it.
People are not created with equal rights.  People create equal rights.
Sin does not bring eternal consequence.  Eternal consequences make sinners.

People don't know this.  Even if we did, what difference would it make?

- James Woodyatt
    

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can
    change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has."

						-Margaret Mead

	"War never determines who is right....only who is left."

						- Unknown

	"The brook would lose its song if God removed the rocks."

	- When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
	  And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.

					Isaiah 43:2

	"I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world.
It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.
Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute
necessity for the survival of our civilization.  To return hate for hate
does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe.  Someone
must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and
evil, and this can only be done through love.  Moreover, love is creative
and redemptive.  Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys.
The aftermath of the 'fire with fire' method...is bitterness and chaos;
the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and the creation of the
beloved community...Yes, love -- which means understanding, creative,
redemptive goodwill, even for one's enemies -- is the solution to the race
problem."

						- Martin Luther King, Jr.
						  Ebony, November 1957

	"The function of education...is to teach one to think intensively
and to think critically.  But education which stops with efficiency may
prove to be the greatest menace to society.  The most dangerous criminal
may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals...We must remember
that intelligence is not enough.  Intelligence plus character -- this is
the goal of education."

						- Martin Luther King, Jr.
						Morehouse Maroon Tiger, quoted
						in "What Manner of Man."

    
    	"The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite
    	 of one profound truth may well be another profound truth."
    
    		-- Niels Bohr, physicist
    

	"What does the Lord require of you but to act justly 
	and to love mercy and to work humbly with your God."

						Micah 6:8

(I don't know the translation off hand, I saw this in the _Pastoral Staff_, 
The Western Massachusetts Diocese Episcopal newsletter.)

Jim

    "Life's good, but not fair at all."
    		- Lou Reed

	And St. Francis said to the Almond Tree:
		"Sister, speak to me of love."
			And the Almond Tree blossomed.

					    - Kazantzakis

    
    
           Some people, I swear,
    		want to love God in the same way as they love a cow.
    		They want itfor its milk and cheeseand the profit
    		they will derive from it.
           Those who love God for the sake of outward riches or for
    		the sake of inward consolation operate on the
    		same principle.
    		They are not loving God correctly;
    		they are merely loving their own advantage.
    
    
                                                -Meister Eckhart
    		

              Do all the good you can
              By all the means you can
              In all the ways you can
              In all the places you can
              All the times you can
              To all the people you can
              As long as ever you can

                                       - John Wesley

	To you in this room who are seekers, to you, young and old who
have toiled all night and caught nothing, but who want to launch out
into the deeps and let down your nets for a draught, I want to speak as
simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can.  For God can be found.  There
is a last rock for your souls, a resting place of absolute peace and
joy and power and radiance and security.  There is a Divine Center into
which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation in God, a Center
where you live with Him and out of which you see all of life, through
new and radiant vision, tinged with new sorrows and pangs, new joys
unspeakable and full of glory.

				-Thomas R. Kelly
				 A Testament of Devotion

      "So long as we love, we serve. So long as we are loved by others
      I would say we are almost indispensable; no man is useless while
      he has a friend."

                                                 - Robert Louis Stevenson

       "You may be as orthodox as the Devil, and just as wicked."

                                                     -John Wesley

    "Perspective.  Use it or lose it."
    
    Richard Bach, _Illusions_
    
    
    Nanci

        "May we pursue the right, without self-righteousness. May we know
        unity, without conformity. May we grow in strength, without pride in
        self. May we, in all our dealings with all the people of the earth,
        ever speak the truth and serve justice."

                                                 -Dwight D. Eisenhower

    
    
	   Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, 
            and the man that getteth understanding.
    	   Her ways are ways of pleasantness 
            and all her paths are peace.
    
    				Proverbs 3: 13,17
    
    

from the Old Farmer's Almanac (1858)

Having in my youth notions of severe piety, I used to rise in the
night to watch and pray. One night as I engaged in these exercises,
my father, a man of practical virtues, awoke while I was reading.
"Behold," said I to him, "thy other children are lost in irreligious
slumber, while I alone awoke to praise God." "Son of my soul," said
he, "it is better to sleep than to wake to mark the faults of thy
brethren."

    
    "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."


                                                      -Horace Mann

   'There are some fierce, horrifying phrases in Zen: "When you meet the
    Buddha, kill him; when you meet the Patriarch, kill him" or "Boil the
    Buddha! Boild the Patriarch!"  I am afraid Christianity has no saying
    like these.  Quakers would never say, "When you meet the Christ, kill
    him; when you meet Fox, kill him."  For many Christians this would be
    nothing but a sacrilegious remark.  For Zen Buddhists, however, this is
    the greatest repayment of the kindnesses they have received from the
    Buddha or the Patriarch.  I think Quakers could understand why and
    appreciate these Zen phrases; because this is exactly what George Fox
    did.  What do they mean?

    'When one attains enlightenment, one will know the true spirit of Buddha
    and the highest wisdom directly, not through words.  Buddha's teachings
    as were recorded in sutras and books and have been handed down from
    generation to generation are nothing but words.  Words are very
    incomplete indexes to the Truth and not the Truth itself.  Besides,
    they are fixed and do not change, though everything in the world
    changes.  Nothing is permanent in this world.  When we see what has
    happened in the world the past few years, we cannot but appreciate the
    truth of the Buddhist idea of "impermanence of everything."  Yet, fixed
    words do not change or flow with the world.  One Zen phrase says,
    "Words fail."  Another goes, "As soon as you preach a thing, you miss
    the mark."  So, those who have known the inner Buddha directly through
    their own experience will not stick to the Buddha's teachings in
    sutras.  When the teachings in sutras differ from or conflict with
    their experiential knowledge, they are ready to throw them away: that
    is, kill the Buddha.  I think that George Fox and William Penn were
    genuine Christians.  They knew the true spirit of Christ, the Inward
    Christ, so they could "kill Christ," that is, apply the teachings in
    the Bible directly from their own experiences without being literal in
    their understandings of the teachings.'

    			Teruyasu Tamura
    			"A Zen Buddhist Enounters Quakerism"

    
    	"We must learn to regard people less in the light of
    	 what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of
    	 what they suffer."
    
    		-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
    

               "Life can only be understood backwards
                but can only be lived forwards."

       
                                                -Soren Kierkegaard

      "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on
       in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace, like
       a clock during a thunderstorm."

                                       -Robert Louis Stevenson

      "To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming,
       is the only end of life."

                                         -Robert Louis Stevenson

      "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,
       and the true success is to labor."

                                            -Robert Louis Stevenson

    
    	"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration 
    from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind;  yet strange,
    I am ungrateful to these teachers."
    
    		-- Kahlil Gibran
    

     "If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question
      of success or fame, the gods have called him."


                                                   -Robert Louis Stevenson

           "How poor are they that have not patience.
            What wound did ever heal but by degrees ?"


                                             William Shakespeare

    "There is do, and not do, there is no try."
   	
   					Yoda

    
    	"The sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin against 
         new life, against self-emergence, against the Holy 
    	 fecund innerness of each person.  It can be committed
    	 quite as easily against oneself as against another."
    
    		-- M.C. Richards
    

    Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and
    tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper
    hand, they have always fallen. Always.
    
    	- M.K. Gandhi, Lawyer, philosopher & peace activist.

     "None who have always been free can understand the the terrible,
      fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free."


                                                        Pearl S. Buck

    "Far to often our lives become overburdened with trivialities,
    myriads of small projects which at the time seem terribly important.
    Soon these chores become more important than the truly important
    things in life - family, faith, lending a helping hand to those who
    are less fortunate. It takes a real effort to keep from becoming 
    consumed with the daily comings and goings, but it is a goal that
    we should strive toward. We should take time to hold hands, say a
    kind word now and then, to be polite and giving and sharing.
    More importantly we should get back to the basics of life - love."


                                                   -Birch Bayh

    
    	"You've got to have something to eat and a little love
    	 in your life before you can hold still for any damn
    	 body's sermon on how to behave."
    
    		-- Billie Holiday
    

     "Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help,
      and what he cannot help."

                                                  -Thomas Fuller

    
    	"Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies."
    
    		-- Samuel Butler
    

        "Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools."


                                                        -Thomas Fuller

     "If you have one true friend you have more than your share."

                                                    -Thomas Fuller

    

      "Though all men were made of one metal, yet they were not cast
       all in the same mold."
                                                       -Thomas Fuller

    
     "When we cannot find contentment in ourselves; 
      it is useless to seek it elsewhere."


                                   -Francois De La Rochefoucald

    "I was bicycling the other day and came to an area where the
    Ompompanoosuc River broadly meanders and flattens out by the roadside.  
    To my left there was a railroad bed which crossed the "Pomp" ( as it is
    called hereabouts) and along side of that bed were two fisherman. I
    have never fished, but it seems like an attractive way to spend time as
    actually catching a fish appears incidental to the activity.  Being on
    the river, alone or with some good companionship, appears to be the
    main point of the enterprise, and that seems like an activity that
    would suit me. On my side of the river were two crows, who also seemed
    to be just hanging out, pretending to catch fish but just being.   It
    seemed like a mirror image to me, as both the pairs were involved in
    the same activity, or lack thereof.  I wondered aloud whether
    fisherman, when they died, came back as crows, or vice versa.  My
    companion told me that depended on how they took care of their Karma in
    this life.  I am unclear whether it is an advancement or not to become
    the crow."
    
    		Jim Greenleaf, in a mail message posted on the Quaker
    		mailing list

     "It is only those people who possess firmness who can possess true
      gentleness. Those who appear gentle generally posses nothing but
      weakness, which is readily converted into harshness."

                                              -Francois De La Rochefoucauld

                             

     "Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure, which is
    useful to them, to praise, which deceives them."


                                            -Francois De La Rochefoucauld

 
    "There must be a time of day when a man who makes plans, forgets his
    plans and acts as if he had no plans at all.
     There must be a time of day when a man who has to speak falls very
    silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself:
    Did they have meaning ?"

                                            -Thomas Merton
                                                 

    "We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end.
 The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space,
 with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space
 the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size,
 volume, quantity, speed, price, power, and acceleration.
     The primordial blessing of "increase and multiply has suddenly
 become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, marshaled,
 numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, worked to the
 point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment,
 surfeited with everything, nauseated with the human race and with
 ourselves, nauseated with life.
     As the end approaches there is no room for nature. The cities crowd
 it off the face of the earth.
     As the end approaches there is no room for quite. There is no room
 for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for
 attention, for the awareness of our state.
     At the time of the ultimate end there is no room for man...
     There is no room for him in the massed crowds of the eschatological
 society, the society of the end, in which all those for whom there is
 no room are thrown together, thrust, pitched out bodily into a whirlpool
 of empty forms, human specters, swirling aimlessly through the cities,
 wishing they had never been born.
     In the time of the end there is no longer the desire to go on living.
 The time of the end is when men call for the mountains to fall upon them,
 because they wish they did not exist.
     Why? Because they are part of a proliferation of life that is not fully
 alive, it is programmed for death. A life that has not been chosen and can
 hardly be accepted, has no more room for hope. Yet it must pretend to go
 on hoping. It is haunted by the demon of emptiness. And out of this
 unutterable void come the armies, the missiles, the weapons, the bombs,
 the concentration camps, the race riots, the racist murders and all the
 other crimes of mass society."

                                               -Thomas Merton

     "Take care that you do not let your thoughts become your prison."


                                                   -William Shakespeare

                   "Words are but wind."

                                      -William Shakespeare
                                          

        "In religion, what damned error, but some sober brow
         Will bless it and approve it with a text ?"


                                         -William Shakespeare

    	"From this day to the ending of the World,
    	... we in it shall be remembered
    	... we band of brothers"

    						"Henry V"
    						William Shakespeare

	Birds sing on a bare bough;
		O Believers,
			canst not thou?

					C. H. Spurgeon

		A friend is one
		to whom one may pour out
		all the contents of one's heart,
		chaff and grain together,
		knowing the gentlest hands
		will take it and sift it,
		keep what is worth keeping,
		and with a breath of kindness
		blow the rest away.

					- Arabian proverb

    
    	The difficulty with fundamentalism of any kind, be it Marxist,
    Christian, Islamic, or sociobiological, is that it is the kind of
    empowerment of an interpretation that gives people such a sense of
    control over their own world that they end up thinking that their
    interpretation _is_ the world.  
    
    	When an explanation becomes total, it becomes totalitarian.  In
    taking power to itself, it takes power away from anything that is other
    to itself, for that very otherness proves that the interpretation can't
    really be the totality of reality.  Whether it is "all in the Bible"
    for Jimmy Swaggert or "all in the Koran" for the Ayatollah Khomeini,
    there is a world forced to surrender to the fundamentalist's powers of
    explanation.
    
    	-- William Irwin Thompson, cultural historian and author
    

    My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish
    his work.

    Do you not say "Four months more and then the harvest?" I tell
    you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 

    Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for
    eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 

    Thus the saying "One sows and another reaps" is true.  I sent you to
    reap what you have not worked for.  Others have done the hard work, and
    you have reaped the benefits of their labor.

    To the weak, I became weak, to win the the weak.  I have become all
    things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.  I do
    all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

    "Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love
    can do that.  Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.  Hatred confuses
    life; love harmonizes it.  Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."
    
				    - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    
    	"You've got to have something to eat and a little
    	 love in your life before you can hold still for
    	 any damn body's sermon on how to behave."
    
    		-- Billie Holiday
    

    And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word
    of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of
    men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you
    who believe.  1 Th 1:13

    
    	"The more the soul knows, the more she loves, 
    	 and loving much, she tastes much."
    
    		-- St. Catherine of Siena
    

    "I'll tell you a great secret, my friend.  Don't wait for the last
     judgement. It happens every day."

                                               -Albert Camus

    
    	"Our spiritualization of hostility...consists in a profound
    	 appreciation of having enemies.... A new creation needs
    	 enemies more than friends:  in opposition alone does it 
    	 feel itself necessary."
    
    		-- Friedrich Nietzsche _Twilight of the Idols_
    

"It takes courage to die, but even more to live."

	Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in a letter to Emilie Mataja    

      "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the
       Sermon on the Mount."

                                    Gen. Omar Bradley

    At the heart of catechesis [religious instruction] we find, in essence,
    a Person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, 'the only Son from the
    Father ... full of grace and truth,' who suffered and died for us and
    who now, after rising, is living forever.  It is Jesus who is 'the way,
    and the the truth and the life,' and Christian living consists in
    following Christ.
    
    Pope John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae (1979)

    
    	"The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to
    	 clear away whatever may block our awareness of that 
    	 which is God in us.  The aim is to get rid of whatever
    	 may so distract the mind and encumber the life that
    	 we function without this awareness."
    
    		-- Howard Thurman, _Disciplines of the Spirit_
    

     "It is easier to love humanity as a whole than 
      to love one's neighbor."

                                 -Eric Hoffer

"It is better to Dance than to Die."

		-the ballet instructor of a dear friend

       "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream."


                                             -Malcolm Muggeridge

	The job of the peacemaker is to stop war,

		to purify the world,

			to get us saved from poverty and riches,

		to heal the sick,

	to comfort the sad,

		to wake up those who have not yet found God,

			to create joy and beauty wherever you go,

		to find God in everything and everyone.


					- Muriel Lester

    
    	"Perhaps it may be and this is my prayer that, through our sacred
    pipe peace may come to those peoples who can understand, an
    understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. 
    Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that
    we pray to Him continually.
    
    	We should understand well that all things are the works of the
    Great Spirit.  We should know that He is within all things:  the trees,
    the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged
    animals, and the winged peoples;  and even more important, we should
    understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love,
    and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He
    intends."
    
    	-- Black Elk, Oglala Sioux

		First  they came for the Jews,
		but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't react.
		Then they came for the communists,
		but I wasn't a communist, so I didn't object.
		Then they came for the homosexuals,
		but I wasn't homosexual, so I didn't stand up.
		Then they came for the political activists,
		but I wasn't a political activist, so I didn't protest.
		Then they came for me ...
		
		and by that time no one was left to speak out.

			          From the writings of Martin Niemoeller,
			          a Protestant minister.  He was among 
			          the millions of Jews, Catholics, gays, 
			          workers, clergy, political activists,
			          Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, mentally
			          ill, etc., that the Nazis imprisoned,
			          tortured and often exterminated as
			          "undesirables".

    The humanistic way of thinking which has proclaimed itself as our guide
    did not admit the existence of evil in man, nor did it see any task
    higher other than the attainment of happiness on earth.

    It started modern western civilization on the dangerous trend of
    worshiping man and his material needs...gaps were left open for evil,
    and its drafts blow freely today.

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1978 Harvard commencement address

"History will remember us not for our positioning, but for our principles.  Not
by a move to the political center, left or right, but rather by our grasp on
the moral and ethical center of wrong and right."
                                                   --Jesse Jackson

    Upon the death of a very very very dear friend of mine ... may he rest
    in peace - the peace that he sought for so very long.  He is finally
    free at last, free at last ... thank God Almighty, he's free at last.
    
    
    	"Our lives are but fine weavings
    	That God and we prepare,
	Each life becomes a fabric planned
    	And fashioned in His care.

    	"We may not always see just how
    	The weavings intertwine,
    	But we must trust the Master's hand
    	And follow his design,
    	For He can view the pattern
    	Upon the upper side,
    	While we must look from underneath
    	And trust in Him to guide...

    	"Sometimes a strand of sorrow
    	Is added to His plan,
    	And though it's difficult for us,
    	We must understand
    	That it's He who fills the shuttle,
    	It's He who knows what's best,
    	So we must weave in patience
    	And leave to Him the rest...

    	"Not till the loom is silent
    	And the shuttles cease to fly
    	Shall God unroll the canvas
    	And explain the reason why--
    	The dark threads are as needed
    	In the Weaver's skillful hand
    	As the threads of gold and silver
    	In the pattern He has planned."

    Lord, Creator of Life, You have blessed us with the privilege of
    bringing new life into the world.  Open our hearts and minds to
    recognize Your special gift of children and Your great love for each of
    us created in Your image and likeness.

    Through love You sent Your Son Jesus to redeem us and through love He
    entered our world as an unborn child in the womb of Mary, His mother.

    We now turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary for her prayers and intercession
    as we struggle to protect innocent children from decisions that seek to
    destroy them.  Following Mary's example as mother and disciple, let us
    proclaim the truth of our faith, assists those in crisis and protect
    those most vulnerable, unwanted and unloved.  Amen.

    Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
    
    HL Mencken

	"Everybody thinks of themselves as having
		a sense of humor,
			even if they don't."

					- Nora Ephron

     "All I know is, it is better to tell the truth than to lie, better to
     be free than a slave, better to have knowledge than be ignorant."

                                                    - H. L. Mencken

    
    	"I want to remind you since I've become Governor, the Russian
    	 empire has fallen.  The Berlin wall has come down.  I had as
     	 much to do with it as George Bush did."
    
    		-- Texas Governor, Ann Richards
    		   San Antonio, TX  August 27, 1992

    "You can stil kill a chicken in Hialeah.  You just can't pray over it
    when you do it."
    
    Robyn Blummer, exceutive director of the Florida ACLU

    
    	"We will require a substantively new manner of thinking
    	 if mankind is to survive."
    
    		-- Albert Einstein
    

    
    	"The whole crux of life...is that it constantly 
    	 requires the living reconciliation of opposites 
    	 which in strict logic are irreconcilable."
    
    		-- E. F. Schumacher
    

    What is harder?  To create something from nothing, or to create saints
    from sinners?
    
    Soren Kierkegaard

    
    	"If only it were all so simple!  If only there were evil
    	 people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and
    	 it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of
    	 us and destroy them.  But the line dividing good and evil
    	 cuts through the heart of every human being.  And who is
    	 willing to destroy a piece of his (sic) own heart."
    
    		-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, _Meeting the Shadow_
    

    
    	Do you want to know what goes on 
    	in the core of the Trinity?
    	I will tell you.
    	The Father laughs 
    	and gives birth to the Son.
    	The Son laughs back 
    	and gives birth to the Spirit.
    	The whole Trinity laughs
    	and gives birth to us.
    
    	All things love God.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart (1260-1329). Mystic, prophet, 
    		   theologian, feminist, and declared heretic.

    
    	"Religion = spirituality + politics"
    
    		-- Michael Harner, anthropologist
    

    
    	To watch over a person who grieves is a more urgent duty 
    	than to think of God.
    
    		-- Ellie Wiesel
    

	Sometimes you can do more to change a person by talking to God
	about them than you can by talking to the person about God.

		I don't know who said it first but it came up in
		conversation with my father and step mother one of whom
		repeated it.


				Alfred

    
    	I have said this before many times.  If a person were in a 
    	rapture as great as St. Paul once experienced and learned
    	that her neighbor were in need of a cup of soup, it would
    	be best to withdraw from the rapture and give the person
    	the soup she needs.
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart
    

    
    	"Is not one of the problems of religious life today that
    	 we have separated ourselves from the poor and the wounded 
    	 and the suffering?  We have toomuch time to discuss and to 
    	 theorize, and we have lost the yearning for God which comes
    	 when we are faced with the sufferings of people."
    
    		-- Jean Vanier
    

    
    	"At Catholic Worker we sought a 'Green Revolution' --
    	 a kind of society where it would be easier for people 
    	 to be good."
    
    		-- Dorothy Day
    

    
    	Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, 
    	of why and how an old song can move us to tears.
    
    	Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great
    	Unity...of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong.
    	The most popular name for it in our times is God -- with a
    	capital "G."  Science is, very usually, branded as being 
    	atheistic.  After what we said, this is not astonishing.
    	If its world-picture does not even contain blue, yellow, 
    	bitter, sweet -- beauty, delight, and sorrow -- if personality
    	is cut out of it by agreement, how should it contain the most
    	sublime idea that presents itself to the human mind?
    
    	The world is big and great and beautiful.  My scientific knowledge
    	of the events in it comprises hundreds of millions of years.  Yet
    	in another way it is ostensibly contained in a poor seventy or
    	eighty or ninety years granted to me -- a tiny spot in immeasurable
    	time, nay even in the finite millions and milliards of years that
    	I have learnt to measure and to assess.  Whence come I and whither
    	go I?  That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every
    	one of us.  Science has no answer to it.
    
    		-- Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961) Nobel Prize winner, 
    		   Physics, 1933.
    

 
        "Self-hatred is the basis for hating others or the world at 
        large.  For self-hatred, being really unbearable, is easily 
        justified by making others and the world bad so they can 
        become the object of hatred instead of one's own self.  
        Thus, pessimism may be called the philosophy of hatred, or, 
        as Nietzsche termed it more subtly, of 'ressentiment.'  Being 
        loved by God, manifesting itself as love for God, can only be 
        experienced on the basis of self-acceptance."
        
        		--  Otto Rank
        

    
    	 I never united myself to any church because I have found
    	 difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservations,
    	 to the long complicated statements of Christian doctrine
    	 which characterize their articles of Belief and Confessions
    	 of Faith.  
    
    	 When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole 
    	 qualification for membership, "Thou shalt love thy God, with 
    	 all thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself," 
    	 that church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul.
    
    		-- Abraham Lincoln
    

    
    	"Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls
    	 of men and is not concerned about the social and economic
    	 conditions that can scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund
    	 religion only waiting for the day to be buried."
    
    		-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
    
    

    	I'm ninety-two years old, all right.  I get up every morning at 
    seven a.m.  Each day I remind myself, "Wake up.  Get up."  I talk to 
    my legs, "Legs, get moving.  Leg's you're an antelope."  It's a 
    matter of mind over matter.  You have to have the right spirit.  And 
    I'm out on the streets, seven-thirty a.m. sharp.
    
    	I'm wearing my Honorable Sanitation Commissioner badge they gave 
    me from City Hall.  I'm alert, I'm ready, I'm out there.  And I got 
    my whistle.  My job is I help get parked cars off the street so they 
    can bring in the sanitation trucks and the Wayne Broom, the big one 
    -- thirty grand for a broom!  So when they show up, I go around 
    blowing my whistle to get people to move their cars.  I have a great 
    time.  
    
    	People are asleep.  They're busy with businesses.  They're busy 
    taking time off from the businesses.  They're busy having a good 
    time.  They're busy not having a good time.  Whatever.  I don't care.  
    I blow my whistle.  I'm all over the place.
    
    	I don't discriminate, either.  I go after the sanitation men too.  
    The union got them a coffee break.  Some coffee.  They're having 
    eggs, they're having bacon, they're having toast...they're having 
    French toast.  I kid them about it.  And I go right into the 
    restaurant and blow my whistle.  They love it, they understand.  
    Everybody loves it, everybody understands.  It's the whistle that 
    gets them.  Sometimes I'm having such a laugh, I can't blow it.  Then 
    I get back to work.  "Schleppers, get moving, let's go!"
    
    	This used to be a beautiful city.  People cared.  If you didn't 
    pay your rent, the sheriff would come and put your furniture out on 
    the street.  But the poorest of the poor would come automatically and 
    drop their pennies and nickels at your house and put you back into 
    your apartment.  That's neighborhood.
    
    	Now it's different.  Things have gotten out of kilter -- hard to 
    say why.  People seem to be lost in their own lives.  I see them on 
    the street, lost in their own thoughts.  Not that I'm all that 
    different.  I'm a schlepp myself.  I have as many bad habits as 
    anyone.  You should see my apartment.  It's a mess.  Me, Mr. Clean!  
    But I'm trying.  Let's try.  It's all possible.
    
    	What can I tell you?  I'm not a saint or a wise man.  I'm not the 
    Two-Thousand-Year-Old-Man, I'm only the ninety-two-year-old man.  
    Just a senior citizen.  But what do I know that everybody doesn't 
    know?  We know.  I just go out there in the morning and blow my 
    whistle.  That's what I do.  You do what you do.  Me, I'm having a 
    great time.  Wonderful fun.  And when people see how much fun I'm 
    having, they have to laugh.  What else can they do?  Then I hit them 
    with it:  "Move your car!"

    			A Soldier's Prayer

    I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.

    I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

    I asked for health, that I might do greater things.

    I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

    I asked for riches, that I might be happy.

    I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

    I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.

    I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

    I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.

    I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

    I got nothing that I asked for ....

    	....but everything I had hoped for.

    Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

    I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

						-Author unknown (to me)

    
    	"Nothing could be more unauthoritative than the parables
    	 of Jesus.  Their whole purpose is to enable the listener
    	 to discover something for him/herself.  They are not 
    	 illustrations of revealed doctrines;  they are works of
    	 art which reveal or uncover the truth about life."
    
    		-- Albert Nolan

		"Preach the gospel at all times.
			    If necessary, use words."

					- Francis of Assisi

		It is the invisible that God sees,
			and that the Christian must look for.

						- Julian of Norwich

	"Jesus has been so zealously worshipped, his deity so vehemently
affirmed, his halo so brightly illumined, and his cross so beautifully
polished, that in the minds of many he no longer exists as a human.  He
has become an exquisite celestial being who momentarily lapsed into painful
involvement in the human scene, and then quite properly returned to  his
heavenly habitat.  By thus glorifying him, we more effectively rid ourselves
of him than did those who tried to do so by so crudely crucifying him."

					- Clarence Jordan
    

    
    	"Jesus became a human being because God the compassionate
    	 One could not suffer and lacked a back to be beaten.
    	 God needed a back like our backs on which to receive 
    	 blows and thereby to perform compassion as well as to 
    	 preach about it."
    
    		-- Meister Eckhart
    

    The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask
    him whether he is the surplus population, or if he is not, how he knows
    he is not.
    
    GK Chesterton

    One Aramaic translation of the Lord's prayer (by Neil Douglas- 
    Klotz, Aramaic scholar) begins to show how rich the Aramaic 
    language actually is:
    
    1.	Abwoon d'bwashmaya 
    
    (Abw = all sources of parenting, coming from, birthing, being   
    created, emanating;  oon = inside of, creator of the shimmering  
    sound that touches all.  Notice "shm" in "bwashmaya")
    
    	"O Birther!  Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that 
    	 moves in light."
    
    2.	Nethqadash shmakh:   (notice the root "shm" again)
    
    	"Focus your light within us -- make it useful: as the rays of 
    	 a beacon show the way."
    
    3.	Teytey malkuthakh:
    
    	"Create your reign of unity now -- through our firey hearts 
    	 and willing hands."
    
    4.	Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d/bashmaya aph b'arha:
    
    	"Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in 
    	 all forms."
    
    5.	Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana:
    
    	"Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:  
    	subsistence for the call of growing life."
    
    6.	Washboqlan khaubayn aykana daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn:
    
    	"Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the 
    	 strands we hold of others' guilt."
    
    7.	Wela tahlan l'nesyuna:
    
    	"Don't let surface things delude us,"
    
    8.	Ela patzan min bisha:
    
    	"But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose."
    
    9.	Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l'ahlam almin:
    
    	"From you is born all ruling will, the power and the life to 
    	 do, the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews, truly 
    	 power to these statements -- may they be the source from which all 
    	 my actions grow."
    
    10.	Ameyn:
    
    	"Sealed in trust and faith -- Amen."
    
    Translation and transliteration derived from the Peshitta, the 
    Syriac-Aramaic version of the biblical texts.

    "The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to
     deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."


                                                 -Abraham Lincoln

     	I was born and grew up in a state that not only claims it knows why
    I live but also takes upon itself the trouble of forcing me down the
    only true road toward my designated place in society, even dictating
    the course of my private life.
    
    	I believed that the meaning of my life and work came from following
    this idea.  For a long time I was a novice in this ideological
    monastery, but with time I developed a deep distrust and my vision of
    the falsity of this system of "values" became clearer.  At first I
    thought, "One can change things without changing one's faith."  And I
    tried.  Then I came to realize that the faith was faulty.  Or, to put
    it exactly, I realized that the fault lay in the practical implementa-
    tion of this ideal of seeking social justice;  by appropriating monopoloy 
    to the socialist ideal, certain people had distorted it completely.
    
    	I have not betrayed my faith.  Other people have.  And, as a
    result, our roads have parted.  Now I find meaning in my life by
    helping people understand how these paths have diverged so they can
    choose the right road themselves.
    
    	There must be some supreme, universal design.  Each of us comes to
    life and stays in the world for a predestined period.  Some leave
    forever, sometimes without a trace;  others stay a long time, both in
    life and in memory.  We remain longest -- we make a difference -- when
    we manage to act not for ourselves but for others.
    
    	It is possible to create good and evil.  The greatest and most
    important thing a person can do is to understand that where good
    exists, evil also resides;  what's more, one must strive to stay on the
    side of righteousness, doing one's best to promote good in the world.
    
    	Only you can make this choice.  You alone will be held responsible
    -- by other people, by your progeny and by history.  I grieve over the
    fact that I did not come to understand this universal truth earlier in
    life.
    
    		-- Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet Foreign Minister
    		   under Mikhail Gorbachev, founded the opposition Democratic 
    		   Reform Movement.

    "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman...
     a rope stretched over an abyss."

                                               -Friedrich Nietzsche

    	The meaning of life lies in the oneness of all creation, which
    combines supreme diversity with supreme interdependence.
                                                           
    	It is only now that people are learning that whatever we do as
    individuals carries a consequence in society and whatever societies do
    affects the whole world.  We can no longer allow ourselves to pursue
    ends that merely further immediate gain.  We have depleted the planet's
    resources, its wealth of flora and fauna.  We have reduced populations
    to famine and sickness.  We have exploited children in the workplace
    without a further thought of the consequences.  Today, these
    consequences have caught up with us and we are indeed threatened with
    the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
    
    	There may still be time to think of the welfare of our children. 
    We are one with creation in time and space.  We cannot hope for a
    future without understanding our past.  We cannot hope for health
    without understanding the sources of sickness.  We cannot hope for joy
    unless we understand inevitable pain.  We bear a great responsibility,
    as much to ourselves as we do to everything that lives on air and
    water.
    
    		-- Yehudi Menuhin, American violinist, made his debut with
    		   the San Francisco Orchestra at age seven.

"An age is called 'Dark' not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it."
    
				-- James Michener, "Space"

    "Are there then more dispensations of life and mercy than one?
    
    	"Yes.  For though the life and mercy in itself is but one; yet it
    	hath several ways of seeking-out after, and gathering into itself, 
    	the lost sons of Adam."
    
    		-- Isaac Pennington (1617-1679)

    "O the rapes, fires, murders, and rivers of blood that lie at the doors
    of professed Christians!  If this be godly, what's devilish?  If this
    be christian, what's paganism?  What's anti-christian, but to make God
    a party to their wickedness?"
    
    		William Penn

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."

					-- Adlai Stevenson

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

					-- Lennon & McCartney

    
"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

					-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
    

    
"A person's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original
dimensions."

					-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

    

    
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures."
					-- Daniel Webster

    
	"A witty saying proves nothing."
					-- Voltaire

    

    "Again and again men have tried to tell us various things about God;
    how he is and what he is and how he created the world and how Jesus
    became his revelation.  Men have put together their accounts out of the
    Bible or out of their heads, and again and again we have to recognise
    that God is too great a mystery for us to comprehend.  He is dwelling
    in the Light unto which no man can approach.  The creative mystery of
    the world cannot be known through man-made doctrines and teachings. 
    God put in the midst of history a simple man, pure in heart and strong
    in truth, giving in him the message of what we shall be and what
    mankind will be.

    "And behind this man stands the history by which God taught a nation to
    come to an understanding a great goal roused in the inward being of its
    prophets and leaders.  In this history the Bible tells us of Abraham,
    who had to go out from his father's house in a higher search; of Moses,
    who had to take the shoes from off his feet; of Isaiah, who saw God in
    the Temple; of Ezekial, who saw him by the river Chebar; of all the
    prophets and poets, who denounced unrighteousness and sang redemption.

    "What all these men saw of God and can tell of him is the image of the
    eternal mystery in the human mind.  We know that they experienced his
    challenge to them and his call to their people; we know that the
    continuing reality of his self-revealing leads to Jesus.

    "So we read the Bible, not to construct doctrines about God or laws
    about society, but to experience with men and women before us the way
    God spoke to them.  We hear his message and we hear how the word, the
    terrifying challenge--came to them and how they obeyed, had to obey,
    and how the word became and overpowering force in their lives.  We do
    not have to dispute with men about doctrines, and we do not have to
    argue whether this or that church or this or that religion is right;
    none of that matters.  What matters is that people heard the word and
    tried to live obedient to the light of truth, hope and love in which
    the living God showed himself."

    		Emil Fuchs, from "Christ in Catastrophe"

"...He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday"

		--Ian Anderson (on the Jethro Tull album _Aqualung_)

    
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."

					-- Jane Wagner

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."

					-- Sean O'Casey

    When Jesus came to the neighborhood of Ceseara Pilippi, he asked his
    disciples this question: 

    "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

    They replied, "Some say John the Baptizer, still others Jeremiah, or one
    of the prophets."

    "And you," he said to them, "who do you say that I am?"

    "You are the Messiah," Simon Peter answered, "the Son of the
    Living God!"

    Jesus replied, "Blest are you, Simon son of Jonah!  No mere man has
    revealed this to you, but my Heavenly Father.  I for my part part
    declare to you, you are 'Rock', and on this rock I will build my church
    and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it.  I will entrust to
    you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you declare bound on
    earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth
    shall be loosed in heaven."

    Then he strictly ordered his disciples not to tell anyone he was the
    Messiah.

    Mt 16:13-20 NAB

 "I am only one; but still I am one.  I cannot do everything, but still I can
  do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

						- Helen Keller

    Can the wind bring out
    and publish for others
    the fragrance
    in the little bud?

    Can even begetters, father and mother
    display for onlookers' eyes
    the future breast and flowing hair
    in the little girl
    about to be bride?

    Only ripeness
    can show consequence,

    Ramanatha.

    		Devara Dasimayya

	The church doesn't need to get caught up in theology.  It needs to
get caught up in compassion.

	Love bears all things.

	Love believes all things.

	Love hopes all things.

	Love endures all things.

	If you have any inclination to turn your backs on your sisters and
brothers, turn around.  Face them with compassion.

	It's compassion time.

						- Rev. Cecil Williams
	

"So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.
Love the Lord.  Love the world.
Work for nothing.  Take all you have and be poor...
Expect the end of the world.
Laugh.  Laughter is immeasureable.
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."

					-  Wendell Berry
					   (from his poem:
					   _Manifesto: The Mad Farmer
					   Liberation Front_

    On the Church: "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, diversity; in
    all things, charity."

    St Augustine (354-430 AD)

Jesus Walking, by Anne Sexton

When Jesus walked into the wilderness
he carried a man on his back,
at least it had the form of a man,
a fisherman perhaps with a wet nose,
a baker perhaps with flour in his eyes.
The man was dead it seems
and yet he was unkillable.
Jesus carried many men
yet there was only one man --
if indeed it was a man.
There in the wilderness all the leaves
reached out their hands
but Jesus went on by.
The bees beckoned him to their honey
but Jesus went on by
The boar cut out its heart and offered it
but Jesus went on by
with his heavy burden.
The devil approached and slapped him on the jaw
and Jesus walked on.
The devil made the earth move like an elevator
and Jesus walked on.
The devil built a city of whores,
each in little angel beds,
and Jesus walked on with his burden.
For forty days, for forty nights
Jesus put one foot in front of the other
and the man he carried,
if it was a man,
became heavier and heavier.
He was carrying all the trees of the world
which are one tree.
He was carrying forty moons
which are one moons.
He was carrying all the boots
of all the men in the world
which are one boot.
He was carrying our blood.
One blood.

To pray, Jesus knew,
is to be a man carrying a man.

"...be patient towards all that is unsolved on your heart and try to love
the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given
to you because you would not be able to live them.  Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant
day into the answer...."

					- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

    Surveying 200 middle class Americans, the eminent UCLA psychology
    professor Robert Bellah discovered that people seek _personal_
    advancement from work, _personal_ development from marriage, and
    _personal_ fulfillment from the church.

    Everything - their perspective on family, church, community, and work -
    was utilitarian; it was measured by what they could get out of it. 
    Concern for others was secondary.

    Why America Doesn't Work, Colson and Eckerd, with reference to Habits
    of the Heart, Robert Bellah

      "Nirvana, the waterfall, our life and death are the same thing.
    When we realize that we will have no fear of death any more, nor
    any actual difficulty in our life.
       I went to Yosemite National Park and I saw some huge waterfalls.
    The highest one there is 1,340 feet high and from it the water comes 
    down like a curtain thrown from the top of a mountain. It does not
    seem to come down swiftly like you might expect; it seems to come down
    very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down
    as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From the
    distance it looks like a curtain. And I thought it must be a very
    difficult experience for a drop of water to come down from such
    a high mountain. It takes a long time you know, a very long time for
    the water to finally reach the bottom of the waterfall and it seems to
    me our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences
    in our life. But at the same time I thought the water was not originally
    separated, but was one with the whole river. Only when it is separated
    does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not
    have any feeling when it is one whole river. Only when it is separated 
    into many drops does it begin to have or express some feeling. When we
    see one whole river we do not feel the living activity of the water,
    but when we dip part of the water into a dipper, we experience some 
    feeling of the water, and we also feel the value of the person who 
    uses the water. Feeling ourselves and the water in this way, we cannot
    use it in just a material way. It is a living thing.....

    ...When the water returns to its original oneness with the river, it
    no longer has any individual feeling; it returns to its own nature
    and finds composure. How very glad the water must be to come back to the
    the original river ! If this is so, what feeling will we have when we
    die ? I think we are like the water in the dipper. We will have composure
    then, perfect composure. It may be too perfect for us just now, because
    we are so attached to our own feeling, to our individual existence. For
    us just now, we have some fear of death, but after we resume our true
    original nature, there is Nirvana. That is why we say, "To attain Nirvana
    is to pass away." "To pass away" is not a very adequate expression. 
    Perhaps "to pass on" or "to go on" or "to join" would be better. Will 
    you try to find some better expression for death ? When you find it you
    will have quite a new interpretation of your life. It will be like when
    I saw the water in the big waterfall. Imagine ! It was 1,340 feet high !
        We say "everything comes out of emptiness". One whole river or one
    whole mind is emptiness. When we reach this understanding we find the
    true meaning of life. When we reach this understanding we can see the
    true beauty of human life. Before we realize this fact everything that we 
    see is just a delusion. Sometimes we over estimate the beauty; sometimes
    we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in
    accord with reality
        To talk about this way is quite easy, but to have the actual feeling
    is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen you can cultivate this
    feeling. When you can sit with your whole body and your whole mind, and
    with the oneness of your whole body and your whole mind under the control
    of the universal mind, you can easily attain this kind of right  under-
    standing. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to
    your old erroneous interpretation of life. When you realize this fact
    you will realize how meaningless your old interpretaion was and how much
    useless effort you had been making. You will find the true meaning of life,
    and even though you will have have difficulty falling upright from the
    top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy life"

                  
            
                                                   -Shunryu Suzuki
                                         From: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind  

From:	CRL::"QUAKER-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu" "Quaker concerns re community, consensus process, spirituality, etc..." 22-MAR-1993 00:31:15.86
To:	Multiple recipients of list QUAKER-L <QUAKER-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>
CC:	
Subj:	Friendly Thoughts No. 9

/* Written  9:30 pm  Mar 21, 1993 by jsax@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.quaker */
/* ---------- "Friendly Thoughts No. 9" ---------- */
==================================================================
FRIENDLY THOUGHTS No. 9                             Joel GAzis-SAx
21 March 1993                                       Copyright 1993
==================================================================

Sometimes on my speaking tour, I walk into a room and find an
audience which was smaller than my organizer had hoped for.  I
find that this true story lends power to the event nonetheless:

A few years ago, I organized a very successful Northern California
tour for Mubarak Awad, the Palestinian nonviolence advocate.  When
my friend and fellow Palo Alto Meeting member Carmen Broz asked me
to arrange a talk for her about her work in El Salvador, I agreed.
I did everything I could to publicize the event:  I made posters.
I made calls to local newspapers.  I put out press releases.

Sunday morning came and three people came to hear Carmen.  Two of
them were my wife and me.  The third was a stranger, a woman whom
none of us knew who had seen one of my ads in the paper.  I felt
sick with embarassment and, towards the end of Carmen's talk, I
went into the kitchen to feel sorry for myself.  Carmen finished
and came in.  I turned around, gushing with apologies.  "I did
everything I should have," I said, "but somehow it was not enough.
I'm so, so sorry for the bad turnout Carmen.  I could have done
better!"

Carmen stopped me.  "But Joel," she said.  "I've never met this
woman before!"

I had forgotten what undergirds Friendly activism.  Our witness
values every human life, every human mind, every human voice.  The
process of our own conversion to faith in the power of God begins
with our witness to one another.  We must take the time, even if
only one person comes to listen.
==================================================================
Copyright 1993 by Joel GAzis-SAx.  This article is distributed for
use of Friends through the Alliance for Progressive
Communications.  Permission to download for personal or Meeting
use granted.  If you use this in your Meeting or Church
newsletter, please send a copy to me.  Financial support for this
work is appreciated.  Send checks or money order to Joel GAzis-
SAx, 2727 Midtown Court #37, Palo Alto, CA    94303.
==================================================================

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% From: Joel Sax <jsax@IGC.APC.ORG>
% Subject:      Friendly Thoughts No. 9
% To: Multiple recipients of list QUAKER-L <QUAKER-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>

    Don't know if this was posted earlier or not...
    
    If anyone wonders why I, as a Jew, am interested in Christianity, I
    think this quote sums it up...I really think a lot of human potential
    is summed up in these lines...and I wish people lived them more often
    as well....
    
    If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am
    a noisy gong or a clapping symbol.  And if I have prophetic powers, and
    understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith, so as
    to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away
    all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I
    gain nothing.
    
    Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not
    arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not
    irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in
    the right.  Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all
    things.
    
    Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for
    tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For our
    knowledge is imperfect and our philosophy imperfect; but when the
    perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.  When I was a child, I
    spoke as a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when
    I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror
    dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall
    understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.  So faith, hope
    love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

    	"A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. 
    Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.  Until we really feel
    this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He
    came to save, we are not part ofthe audience to whom His words are
    addressed.  We lack the first condition for understanding what He is
    talking about.  And when men attempt to be Christians without this
    preliminary consciousness of sin, the result is almost bound to be a
    certain resentment against God as to one who is always making
    impossible demands and always inexplicably angry.  Most of us have at
    times felt a secret sympathy with the dying farmer who replied to the
    Vicar's dissertation on repentance by asking 'What harm have I ever
    done Him?'  There is the real rub.  The worst we have done to God is to
    leave Him alone - why can't He return teh compliment?  Why not live and
    let live?  What call has He, of all beings, to be 'angry'?  It's easy
    for Him to be good!
    	Now at the moment when a man feels real guilt - moments too rare in
    our lives - all these blashpemies vanish away.  Much, we may feel, can
    be excused to human infirmities: but not this - this incredibly mean
    and ugly action which none of our friends would hav done, which even
    such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of,
    which we would not for the world allow to be published.  At such a
    moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this
    action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are
    powers above man, to them.  A God sho did not regard this with
    unappeasable distate would not be a good being.  We cannot even wish
    for such a God - it is like wishing that every nose in the universe
    were abolished, that smell of hay or roses or the sea should never
    again delight any creature, because our own breath happens to stink.
    	When we merely say that we are bad, the 'wrath' of God seems a
    barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears
    inevitable, a mere corollary from God's goodness."
    
    
    C.S. Lewis, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
    
    

	Still the old unrest - yet it is Easter!  The dawn of hope for
humankind, and a day when from people's troubled hearts the shrouded
darkness should be rolled away.

	The stone should move from the dark space that held Him for a
brief while within its sheltered close.  The old amaze should be as
great this Easter as it was when Christ arose.

	Alas! how sadly we of earth have blundered!  We have forgotten
in our race for power that avarice and greed can blot out sunshine from
any glorious hour.

	Arise within our midst, O blessed Master, quiet or fears, and
bit the tumult cease.  Call out our names within this ancient garden
and help us find Thy peace.

					- Grace Noll Crowell

	"There can be no Kingdom of God in the world
		without the Kingdom of God in our hearts."

						- Albert Schweitzer

  If your heart is not full of God,
        you won't see God anywhere.
        But if your heart is soaked
                     with the sense
             of God's presence, you
            will see that presence.
          That has do to with heart
              speaking to heart and
       spirit speaking with spirit.
           If you have love in your
                heart, wherever you
                      are going you
                       create love.


						- Henri J. M. Nouwen

	". . .We should say to our children: Do you know what you are?  You
are a marvel. . . You have the capacity for anything. . . And when you grow
up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?  You must cherish
one another.  You must work - we all must work - to make this world worthy of
its children."

						- Pablo Casals
						  "Joys and Sorrows"

	A PRAYER FOR TODAY
	==================

	May the LOVE of God so fill my heart that no part 
	of my true nature is obscured by darkness.

	May the LOVE of my brothers and sisters be with 
	me at ALL times that we shall never feel separate.

	May the PEACE of Heaven fill my days that I may 
	share it with those I meet.

	May I realize my own strength and courage that I 
	would go beyond FEAR, knowing wherever I am, I am 
	safe in HIS LOVE.

	May I express ONLY gentleness, tenderness and 
	compassion to ALL with whom I share this planet, 
	that we would truly understand and accept one another.

	May I SEE NO differences between myself and anyone 
	else.  No matter what the external appearance is, may 
	I see ONLY our Oneness.

	May the pure, holy light of the Christ shine through 
	me to clarify my thoughts and words, allowing them to 
	be helpful to others.

	May the energy of the Holy Spirit flow through my 
	hands that they may be used to HEAL those who truly 
	wish to be healed by His Blessing.

	May the Real source of LOVE, PEACE, COURAGE, 
	COMPASSION, CLEAR SIGHT and HEALING always be apparent 
	to me, that I may constantly FEEL His presence and 
	KNOW that my body and MIND are to be USED to "Learn" 
	and to "share" His ways.

	May I know that I am joined with Him in eternal 
	PEACE that I may be eternally grateful.   AMEN.......


"Be Still an Instant" - A Spiritual Journal by Chandra Holsten

    "The arguments of religious men are so often insincere, and their 
    insincerity is proportionate to their anger.  Why do we get angry about
    what we believe?  Because we do not really believe it ourselves?  Or
    else what we pretend to be defending as the "truth" is really our own
    self-esteem?  A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the
    truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth is
    clearly seen, it can very well take care of itself."

                                       - Thomas Merton
                        		 from "No Man Is an Island"

			Imagine there's no heaven
			it's easy if you try
			No hell below us,
			above us only sky
			Imagine all the people 
			living for today......

			Imagine there's no countries 
			it isn't hard to do
			Nothing to kill or die for
			and no religion too
			Imagine all the people
			living life in peace......

			Imagine no possessions
			I wonder if you can
			No need for greed or hunger
			a brotherhood of man
			Imagine all the people 
			sharing all the world......

			You may say I'm a dreamer,
			but I'm not the only one
			I hope someday you'll join us,
			and the world will be as one......


        			                      John Lennon, 1971
	

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all,
to see life as it is
and not as it should be.

					The Man of LaMancha

"It is my conviction that all the great faiths of the world are true,
are God-ordained and that they serve the purpose of God and of those
who have been brought up in those surroundings and those faiths.  I do
not believe that the time will ever come when we shall be able to say
there is only one religion in the world. In a sense, even today there 
is one fundamental religion in the world.  But there is no such
thing as a straight line in nature.  Religion is one tree with many
branches.  As branches, you may say religions are many, but
as a tree, religion is only one.

By religion, I do not mean formal religion, or customary
religion, but that religion which underlies all religions, which
brings us face to face with our Maker.

Supposing a Christian came to me and said he was captivated by the
reading of Bhagavat and so wanted to delcare himself a Hindu, I
should say to him: 'No.  What Bhagavat offers, the Bible also offers.
You have not made the attempt to find it out.  Make the attempt and
be a good Christian.'"

Mahatma Gandhi
      

 "I am the way and the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the father
 but my me"


        Jesus Christ


"ALL things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into
 being that has come into being"  John 1:3








 

	"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil,
nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope
to enjoy its own in the end.  Its hope is to outlive all wrath and
contention, and to weary out all exhaltation and cruelty, or whatever
is of a nature contrary to itself.

	It sees to the end all temptations.

	As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts
to any other.  If it is betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring
is the mercies and forgiveness of God.  Its crown is meekness, its life
is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and
not contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind.

	In God alone can it rejoice, though none else regard it, or
can own its life.  It's conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without
any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression.  It never
rejoiceth but through its sufferings; I found it alone, being forsaken.
I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate
places in the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and
eternal holy life."

				the last words of James Nayler

    "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you
    can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can."
    
    						- John Wesley
    

	"We are called to walk in the storm, sooner or later coming face to
face with fear.  And when we recognize fear in ourselves and others, faith
calls us to do the one thing that is truly radical: to love rather than hate.
Surely, reaching out is the essential challenge of faith in these times of
fear."

						- Kay Whitlock
						  Friends Journal

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.
Let us become God's for his sake, since he for ours became Man.
He assumed the worse that he might give us the better; he became
poor that we through his poverty be rich; he took the form of 
a servant that we might receive back our liberty; he came down
that we might be exalted; he was tempted that we might conquer;
he was dishonored that he might glorify us; he died that he
might save us; he ascended that he might draw to himself us, who
were lying low in the fall of sin.  Let us give all, offer all,
to him who gave himself as a ransom and a reconciliation for us.
But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the mystery,
and becoming for his sake all that he became for ours."

			- St. Gregory of Nazianzus, "Oration 1"
    

     			Success

		To laugh often and much;
	to win the respect of intelligent people
		and affection of children;
	to earn the appreciation of honest critics
	and endure the betrayal of false friends;
		to appreciate beauty,
	    to find the best in others,
	to leave the world a little bit better,
	    whether by a healthy child,
	a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
	  to know even one life has breathed easier
		because you have lived.

		This is to have succeeded.

				- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
 people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
 teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we
 must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus
 said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic -
 on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be
 the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is,
 the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for
 a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His
 feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronising
 nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to
 us.  He did not intend to." 
    
    C.S. Lewis

    "Faith is comparable to the feet by which one journeys to God,
    	and love is like one's guide."
    
    					- St. John of the Canticle
    					  Spiritual Canticle I, II
    

    "Faith inspires, but love does the work."
    
    					- Rev. Jeff Huber
    					  sermon 9/5/93
    

    "A man should be ashamed to die until he has made a contribution to
    society."

    	Horace Mann

    "A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. 
    Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.  Until we really feel
    this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He
    came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are
    addressed."
    
    C.S. Lews, The Problem of Pain
    

    "It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to
    convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion."
    
    C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
    

    "I willingly believe that the dammed are, in one sense, successful,
    rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."
    
    
    C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
    

    "Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about `man's search for God.' 
    To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's
    search for the cat."
    
    
    C.S.Lewis, Surprised by Joy
    

		"Reality is just a collective hunch."

					- Trudy, the bag lady

    "It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."

						- e.e. cummings

    As my prayer became more attentive and inward
    
    	I had less and less to say.
    
    	I finally became completely silent.
    
    	I started to listen
    
    	--which is even further removed from speaking.
    
    I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
    
    	I then learnt that praying is hearing,
    
    	  not merely being silent.
    
    This is how it is.
    
    	To pray does not mean to listen to oneself
    
    	   speaking.
    
    	Prayer involves becoming silent,
    
    	 and being silent,
    
    	 and waiting until God is heard.
    
    
    			Soren Kierkegaard

    No defeat is made entirely of defeat---since
    the world it opens is always a place
    
    	formerly
    
    	     unsuspected.
    
    
    A world lost,
    
    	a world unsuspected,
    
    	    beckons to new places.
    
    
    			___William Carlos Williams

For some strange reason I find the following inspirational (or, perhaps to
be more precise, enlightening):

        Naturally, we feel that mentally ill people are not what we are
        looking for when we hire programmers - although there are no empirical
        data to support or contradict that view.

                        - Gerald M. Weinberg
                         ("The Psychology of Computer Programming").

    Well, it certainly helps in valuing differences   :-)

    Tom

	Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
	on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and 
	dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
	equal.

	Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
	that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated 
	can long endure.  We are met on a great battlefield of 
	that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that 
	field as a final resting place for those here who gave 
	their lives that that nation might live.  It is alto-
	gether fitting and and proper that we should do this.

	But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot 
	consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground.  The brave 
	men, living and dead, who struggled here have conse-
	crated it far above our poor power to add or detract.  
	The world will little note nor long remember what we 
	say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  
	It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here 
	to the unfinished work which they who fought here have 
	thus far so nobly advanced.

	It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
	task remaining before us--that from these honored dead 
	we take increased devotion to that cause for which they 
	gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here 
	highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in 
	vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
	birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by 
	the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln wrote this speech for the occasion of dedicating the National 
Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19th, 1863, 5 months 
after the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War.  It was a little
speech that received little applause, but cut to the heart of the pain and
struggle the United States of America was experiencing at the time. 

Today, we have many "civil wars" occuring in the world, some of them in the 
classic sense of meaning, for example in the provinces of the ex-Soviet Union, 
to more ideological wars concerning abortion, women's rights, gay rights, 
human rights, racism, to the civil war of gang rivalries spreading violence 
from our inner city ghettoes to our doorsteps.

Notice that in his address, Lincoln never mentions which side anybody is on, 
he makes only one distinction, between the living and the dead.  The dead have 
already made their sacrifice, and he charges the living with attending to 
their unfinished work.  Not the violence, but the struggle for liberty and 
equality.

Peace,

Jim

    
     "There is a strong schismatic energy at work in our 
      Church on both sides of the Atlantic.  The drive towards
      schism, the compulsion to create tidy, homogeneous
      ecclessial units of the usually angry and like-minded, is
      essentially anti-catholic and sectarian."
    
    		The Rt. Rev. Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh
    		(and former Rector, Church of the Advent, Boston, MA)
    
    

    	"A great many people think they are thinking when they are
    	    merely rearranging their prejudices."
    
    						- William James
    

	"Pray as though everything depended on God.
		Act as though everything depended on you."

						- Rabbi Hirsch (maybe?)

    
       "The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of
    it's spiritual life than on it's level of industrialization. Neither a
    market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning 
    achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been 
    exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect 
    government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a 
    rotten core cannot stand."
    
                                               Alexander Solzhenitzen
    
    
    

    Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have
    submitted to them.  The rights of conscience we never submitted, we
    could never submit.   We are answerable for them to our God.

    The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are
    injurious to others.  But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say
    there are twenty gods or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks
    my leg.  If it be said, his testimony in a court of Justice cannot be
    relied on; reject it then and be the stigma on him.  Constraint may make
    him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer
    man.  It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them.
    Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
    
					-Thomas Jefferson
					 Notes on the State of Virginia. 

"The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of
extremists we will be.  Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or for the
extension of justice?"

				 - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily
given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

				- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of
the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty
of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no
meaning for the twentieth century."

					- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    
    
           "Disobedience is in fact idolatry, because it elevates 
    	    self-will into a god." 
    
    					A. F. Kirkpatrick
    

"We must somehow believe that unearned suffering is redemptive."

				- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you are cut down in a movement that is designed to save the soul of
a nation, then no other death could be more redemptive."

				- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A person who won't die for something is not fit to live."

				- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size
of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and
relationship to humanity."

				-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Love is the most enduring power in the world.  This creative force, so
beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent
instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security."

				-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Every person must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative
altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness.  This is the judgment.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for
others?"

				-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve.  You don't have to have
a college degree to serve.  You don't have to make your subject and verb agree
to serve.  You don't have to know Aristotle or Plato to serve.  You don't
have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve.  You don't have
to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.  You only
need a heart full of grace.  A soul generated by love."

					- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one
day we will win our freedom.  We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we
will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process,
and our victory will be a double victory."

					- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend."

					- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    "The best thing a father can do for his children 
    is to love their mother."
    				- Some guy interviewed on NPR, 14 Feb 94

    It Matters What We Believe
    
Some beliefs are like walled gardens, They encourage
     	exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper
     	sympathies.

Some beliefs are like shadows, darkening children's days with
     	fears of unknown calamities.
other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth
     	of happiness.

Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved,
     	friends from enemies.
Other beliefs are bonds in a universal (community), where sincere
     	differences beautify the pattern.

Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose
     	one's own direction.
Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration

Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood.  They blight the growth
     	of resourcefulness.
Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of
     	personal worth.

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a
     	changing world.
Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with
     	the upward thrust of life.
						Sophia Lyon Fahs
							

    
    "I don't have to have faith.  I have experience."
    
    			- Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

    "Political revolutions produce organizers --
    		Cultural revolutions produce outlaws."
    
    						- origin uncertain
    

     "Yesterday is already a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision; but today,
well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a
vision of hope."

    						- unknown
    

        "A man is not finished when he is defeated, he is finished when he
    quits."

    	Richard M Nixon

    "O my Lord," she cried, "I thank thee for leading me here.  Behold me,
    here I am, empty as was this little cove, but waiting thy time to be
    filled to the brim with the flood-tide of Love."
    		Hinds' Feet on High Places, p. 97


    Happy are those who long to be just and good, for they shall be
    completely satisfied.
    		Matthew 5:6  TLB

    "Show me who makes a profit from war and I'll show you how to
     stop the war."
    
    						- Henry Ford
    

	 "Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable 
	  portion of those who 'keep to themselves,' and stand apart,
	  judging, analyzing the things which they have never truly
	  known."

					 -Evelyn Underhill

"Our purpose as Christians is not to impress persons with how good we
 are, but to love them so they will know how good they are."

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
 of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

					- Former U.S. Supreme Court
					  Justice Louis D. Brandeis

    "I believe I've finally learned what submission really means to us
    women.  It means to duck low enough so God can let the men have it!"
    
    Author Unknown

    The message for May 20th on my perpetual calendar (Hinds' Feet On High
    Places, Daily meditations from Hannah Hurnard):



    Only when we know and share in desires of our Lord Jesus Christ, can we
    really pray in his name, and not in our own.
    						God's Transmitters, p. 27



    Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do, that the Father may
    be glorified in the Son.  If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will
    do it.
    						John 14:13-14 (KJV)

    
    Re.555
    
    I really like that one...
    
    Cindy

        "We have been caught up in what Georgetown Professor  Deborah
        Tannen calls a culture of critique.  One sure way to get 
        instant public standing in our popular culture is to slam 
        somebody else.  If you work on bringing people together and
        you talk about it, you're likely to elicit a yawn.  But if
        you bad-mouth people, you can get yourself a talk show."

        			Bill Clinton, May 20, 1994

    I found faith in the pouring rain
    I found faith in a sweet refrain
    I found faith in the sermoneer
    Until assured I could persevere
    I found the Lord when I could not see 
    Or could it be that the Lord found me.

    		A.J. Croce
    		from his song "I Found Faith"

A thought from an early Jewish New_Ager:

	"With all my heart, I believe that the world's present system
of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war and inhumanity,
and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized, peaceful
community."

					-- Albert Einstein

    	The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
    people to do nothing.
    
    						-  Edmund Burke
    						   1795
    

    	"Without love, the Earth is but a tomb."
    
    					-  Robert Browning
    

	"The truth will make you odd."

				-  Flannery O'Connor

			The Canticle of Brother Sun

			Most high, all powerful, all good, Lord!
			  All praise is yours, all glory, all honor
			  And all blessing.
			To you alone, Most High, do they belong.
			  No mortal lips are worthy
			  To pronounce your name.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, with all
			  That you have made, and first my Lord
			  Brother Sun, who brings the day,
			  And light you give to us through him.
			How beautiful is he, how radiant in all
			  His splendor!  Of you, Most High,
			  He bears the likeness.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Sister Moon and Stars; in the heavens
			  You have made them, bright
			  And precious and fair.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Brothers Wind and Air, and fair
			  And stormy, all the weather's moods,
			  By which you cherish all that
			  You have made.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Sister Water, so useful, lowly,
			  Precious and pure.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Brother Fire, through whom you
			  Brighten up the night.
			  How beautiful is he!  Full of power
			  And strength.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Sister Earth, our mother, who feeds us
			  In her sovereignty and produces various
			  Fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Those who grant pardon for the love of you;
			  Through those who endure
			  Sickness and trial.
			Happy those who endure in peace,
			  By you, Most High, they will be crowned.
			All praise be yours, my Lord, through
			  Sister Death, from whose embrace
			  No mortal can escape.
			Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
			  Happy those She finds doing your will!
			  The second death can do no harm to them.
			Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,
			  And serve him with great humility.

						- Francis of Assisi

"The little town of Assisi provided the backdrop and inspiration for the 
spirituality of Francis Bernardone.  With eyes to *see*, Francis experienced 
the presence of God in all of creation.  Assisi, located in the Umbrian region 
of Italy, was surrounded with natural beauty.

"Dreaming of knighthood, Francis soon realized that temporal goods could not 
fulfill his dreams, but the love and service of God and God's creatures would 
allow him to reach his potential.

"For Francis, even in the tiniest flower, one could see the Hand of God at 
work.  He saw his mission:  to sing the praises of God, to serve the poor, and 
call upon all creation to pour forth their praises of God.

"The _Canticle_, begun in 1225 and finished shortly before his death in 1226, 
captures the spirituality, the essence, and the wisdom of Francis.  A gift, 
treasured by all generations since the 13th century, the _Canticle_ transcends 
time and speaks to the heart of all men and women.

"Near the end of his life, Francis was losing his eyesight.  He experienced 
such pain in so many ways.  To see God's created world caused so much joy for 
him, but because of the disease any source of light caused pain.  A special 
room was built for him, one that no source of light could penetrate.

"Francis experienced severe depression.  He could no longer see God's created 
world.  There was controversy over his simplicity and love of poverty, he felt 
a failure.  He even thought that God had left him!  A dark night had befallen 
him.

"Legends tell us that in this state an angel of God appeared to Francis and 
told him that he would play upon the harp as the angels do before the throne 
of God.  Such joy he experienced!  Once again Francis was aware of the 
presence of God.  In his own pain and suffering he had temporarily lost sight 
of God who is always with us.

"Now out of this state of depression, Francis responded with his life and his 
joy, singing the praises of God, composing... the _Canticle_!

...

"Upon Mother Earth, Francis, the little poor man from Assisi, lay dying.  With 
nothing to call his own, he was the wealthiest of all; the love of God and of 
his brothers surrounded him.  He requested the brothers to sing for him the 
_Canticle_, the melody of which he himself had taught them.  After they had 
done so, Francis praised God for Sister Death...and completed the _Canticle_."

					Commentary by Edd Anthony, OFM

"I have great respect for theologians.  They are trying to make the Christian
faith coherent and consistent.  Of course, I don't think the Christian faith
*is* consistent or coherent, but that's another issue."

						- Cornel West

    "America is great because she is good.  If America ceases to be good,
     she will no longer be great." - Alexis de Tocqueville
    
    "If God doesn't judge America, He'll have to apologize to Sodom and
     Gomorrah." - Billy Graham

	"One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of a
pure regard for the truth.  Christ likes us to prefer truth to him
because, before being Christ, he is truth.  If one turns aside from
Christ to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into
his arms."

						- Simone Weil

    "God is great because she is good.  If she seizes to be good she will
    no longer be great"
    
                                A "Flanagan" paraphrase of Alexi De Tocqueville
                                and William Ellery Channing
    
    I'm thinking of a quotation from Channing that says something like
    
    We worship God not because he is all powerful but because he is good.  
    
                                             Patricia

"But God really exists," said the old man, and my faith was restored
for I knew that Santa Claus would never lie.

					- Someone's .signature from an
					  Internet posting

	"The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which
we live.  Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.  We have
guided missiles and misguided men."

					- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
					  Strength to Love

	"We should never forget that everything that Adolph Hitler
did in Germany was 'legal.'"

				- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
				  "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

    "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his
    creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short,
    who is but a reflection of human frailty.  Neither can I believe that
    the individual survives the death of the body, although feeble souls
    harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."
    
    					-- Albert Einstein
    

		We are all of us all the time
		coming together and falling apart.
		The point is, we are not rocks.
		Who wants to be one anyway?
		Impermeable, unchanging,
		our history already played out...

					-- John Rosenthal
					   "Insisting On Love"

	Taking in alot of Bible knowledge
	may give oneself a big head, 
	but by sounding it down into ones 
	heart one may gain a big heart.


		-- something I once heard someone say.