Long Time Gone

Wow, I can't even remember how long it has been since I visited The Saints Cry....let along how long it's been since I thought about writing here. It wasn't necessarily an issue of motivation, or inspiration, rather a question of validity and purpose.

I don't know exactly how many "bloggers" are out there, or the number of blogs that exist in the webisphere, but I do know that there are a lot more people who have blogs than those that take them seriously. While looking at the whole phenomenon, I've been forced to look at my own reasons for writing and discovered that this process MUST be about my desire to reflect what's going on and what I'm thinking about for myself, for me. Not because there are people out there who are reading this with any real interest on what I am thinking. To think otherwise is to mislead myself. To conjure up some grandeur and self-importance.

This place is my vent. It is my mind. It is my hope. It's a place where I can come to rant and rave, to place importance on issues that I wish were more important. To enlighten one insignificant, imaginary locale with words of blessing, wisdom and clarity. If the only soul that is affected by such words is mine? Then thank God for that place.

All that being said, I'm back. More quotes, articles, thoughts to follow.

Is it right?

Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency 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 he must take it simply because conscience tells him it is right.

-- Martin Luther King Jr., from his address, "To Chart Our Course for the Future" (1968).

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

- Alice Walker

You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in ... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.

- Henri Nouwen

Dear President Obama...

We join people in your country and around the world in congratulating you on becoming the President-elect of the United States. Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place. We note and applaud your commitment to supporting the cause of peace and security around the world. We trust that you will also make it the mission of your presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere. We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead. We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream, making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all.

- Full text of a message from Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, to Senator Barack Obama

Without Love

If there is love, there is hope to have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost, if you continue to see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education you have, no matter how much material progress is made, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

- The Dalai Lama

So let me tell you: I intend to protect my home. Praying -- not a curse -- only the hope that my courage will not fail my love. But if by some miracle, and all our struggle, the Earth is spared, only justice to every living thing (and everything is alive) will save humankind.  

- Alice Walker, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in aTime of Fear

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. 

- Etty Hillesum,
died in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. From An Interrupted Life, a compilation of her diaries and letters.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions. - Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Lead me from death to life,  from falsehood to truth. Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead me from hate to love,  from war to peace. Let peace fill our hearts,  our world, our universe. Peace, peace, peace.

- Satish Kumar

I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.  - Mother Teresa

Strength to Love

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart – intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

- Martin Luther King Jr., from Strength to Love, a collection of Dr. King's sermons.

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

-- Plato

It is no wonder that just the touch of another human being at a dark time can be enough to save the day.

- Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

-- Oscar Wilde

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous,
tranquil contribution of all
to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

-- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Sometimes I wish we all walked around with this sign hanging from our necks, so I wouldn't feel like the only one who has blown some really important things in his/her life.

Regret is funny, and sad, but still funny. So much is said about moving on, "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" answers to pacify those gut wrenching moments, where right and wrong stands before you and you dig deep to find you don't have the strength. At least I haven't had the strength. More times than I am comfortable with.

More than anything, the things that I have done to lose or push away those who meant and continue to mean a lot to me, hurts the most. I think I'm found at times asking what if I had just done a little more, explained a little less, been more vulnerable.... It is those questions, those "what if's" that seem to haunt long after a situation has come and passed. Who knows these things? Even more, who can afford to dwell on them? But that's the nature of kicking oneself I suppose.

I'm just looking for a way to stop the beating.

Injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others.

-- Amelia Barr
All the Days of my Life

Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace, it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice.

-- Corazon Aquino, political leader and President of the Philippines (1986-1992)

Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

-- Marian Wright Edelman, Families in Peril