Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Capital punishment as more evil than murder...

When someone talks to you, you know they are talking to you. When these flashes of light came to me, I knew someone was communicating messages to me. I did not know who, but I knew the messages were not mine. One insight in particular was shocking. I had always felt that capital punishment was theologically justified because it was allowed and prescribed in the Old Testament. But this new insight told me that when people execute someone, they are tearing that person out of God's hands and refusing to allow God to continue His unfinished work in that soul.

That thought frightened me; I began to see capital punishment as more evil than murder, because it was the act of the self-righteous intentionally snatching from the Creator a person whom God was still in the process of saving. From then on I saw execution as an arrogant ssault on God's control over human life and as a subtle denial of belief in God. I could see clearly then that the executioner and those demanding execution are no different in God's eyes from the murderer who tries to justify his crime. Both deny to the Creator control over human life, he right to finish the divine work of redemption in the souls of those they execute.

-Joseph F. Girzone

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers

What we know about individuals, no matter how rich the details, will never give us the ability to predict how they will behave as a system. Once individuals link together they become something different…Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become visible, even to ourselves.

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on...

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.

-Julia Alvarez

Superior leaders get things done with very little motion...

Superior leaders get things done with very little motion. They impart instruction not through many words, but through a few deeds. They keep informed about everything but interfere hardly at all. They are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit. And, because they take no credit, credit never leaves them.

-Lao-Tzu

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose...

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.

-Hadact Bejar

The journey of life is a liberation of a miniscule corner of the universe...

The journey of life is a liberation of a miniscule corner of the universe called [your name here], to unification with lives everywhere, to a compassion that extends to every being in existence and to the vast ocean of suffering that engulfs them simply because they were born into this world.

-Kabbalah

A human being is part of the whole called by us "universe"...

A human being is part of the whole called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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 the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-Albert Einstein

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul...

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

-Nelson Mandela

The entire ocean is affected by a pebble...

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

-Blaise Pascal

The universe responds to what you elect to radiate outward...

The universe responds to what you elect to radiate outward. If you say with kindness in your voice and in your heart, "How may I serve you?" the universe's response will be, '"How may I serve you as well?"

-Wayne W. Dyer

The test of our progress...

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much... it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I picked up one person...

I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.

-Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life...

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

-Frederick Buechner

Service to others is the way we break down the walls that keep us isolated...

Service to others is the way we break down the walls that keep us isolated in our own lives and in our own communities. It's how we grow as human beings.

-Robert Lawrence Smith

Let me light my lamp...

"Let me light my lamp,"
Says the star,
"And never debate
If it will help to remove the darkness."

-Rabindranath Tagore

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth...

The Sun Never Says

Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,

"You owe me."

Look what happens
with a love like that

It lights the whole sky.



-Hafiz