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"Keep
your
face
to
the
sunshine
and
you
cannot
see
the
shadow.
It's
what
sunflowers
do."
~Helen
Keller |
“Have
no
fear
when
darkness
falls
because
there’s
a
light
that
shines
within
us
all.
There’s
a
flame
that
burns
in
every
heart.
It’s
the
will
we
have
that
lights
the
spark.
Once
in
every
lifetime,
there’s
a
chance
to
stand
apart."
~
Theme
song
from
2002
Winter
Olympics
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"I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower - the Light in the darkness, the Voice in silence."
~Helen Keller
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“Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.”
~William Wordsworth |
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"Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers."
~Mary Sarton
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“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
~Chinese Proverb |
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"Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together."
~Vesta M. Kelly |
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
~ Ecclesiastes |
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The soul is a metaphor for the place where transformation takes place.
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“Water is God’s gift to living souls, to cleanse us, to purify us, to sustain and renew us.”
~From a Jewish ceremony |
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"Hope can and will come from the least suspected quarters, whether in the secret corner of our own hearts or of others.”
~L. Stuhl Mueller C.P. |
"There is a source within us that always works to bring things into the light."
~John A. Sanford |
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"I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place."
~Rufus Jones |
“I have called you by name, you are mine… you are precious in my sight.”
~Isaiah 43:1-4 |
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Mysterious as it may be, there is something wonderful at the heart of our existence, and it is about nothing other than love; love for God, love for one another, love for creation, love for life itself.
~Gerald May |
People with mental problems are our neighbors. They are members of our congregations, members of our families; they are everywhere in this country. If we ignore their cries for help, we will be continuing to participate in the anguish from which those cries for help come. A problem of this magnitude will not go away. Because it will not go away, and because of our spiritual commitments, we are compelled to take action.
~Rosalynn Carter |
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Presence is what we are all starving for. Real presence! We are too busy to be present, too blind to see the nourishment and salvation in the crumbs of life, the experience of each moment. Yet the secret of life is this: There are no leftovers! There is nothing -- no thing, no person, no experience, no thought, no joy or pain -- that cannot be harvested and used for nourishment on our journey to God.
~Macrina Wiederkehr |
Letting go of the need to control our spiritual path is especially helpful in the dark night because in these times we do not choose a path. We experience the path as given. Walking in trust, along the path that is given, is our way of saying yes to God.
~Sondra Cronk |
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The fullness of one's soul evolves slowly.
We're asked to go within to gestate the newness
God is trying to form; we're asked to collaborate
with grace...
...Spirit needs a container to pour itself into.
Grace needs an arena in which to incarnate.
~Sue Monk Kidd |
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to lived them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without knowing it, live along some distant day into the answers.
~Rainer Maria Rilke |
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For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and know its inexplicable agony, their return from the upward out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as "the shining world".
~William Styron |
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
~Psalm 139:7-12 |
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