Though spring begins slowly and tentatively, it grows with a tenacity that never fails to touch me.  The smallest and most tender shoots insist on having their way, coming up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again.  The crocuses and snowdrops do not bloom for long.  But their mere appearance, however brief, is always a harbinger of hope, and from those small beginnings, hope grows at a geometric rate.  The days get longer, the winds get warmer, and the world grows green again.

–Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak:  Listening for the Voice of Vocation, 2000

The hardest thing about really seeing and really hearing is that then you really have to do something about what you have seen and heard.

–Frederick Buechner, as quoted in In Constant Prayer (page 71) by Robert Benson, 2008

“The contemplative mind is not just something you do, it’s a way of seeing.”
–Fr Richard Rohr, Spiritual Direction Colorado 2009 Spirituality  Conference, 16 January 2009, Arvada

What we see, and like to see, is cure and change.  But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the participation in the pain, the solidarity in suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.  And still, cure without care is as dehumanizing as a gift given with a cold heart.

–Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude, 1974

Today is former President Jimmy Carter’s birthday. These are his words:

“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”

“There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul, a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Listen carefully, my son [and daughter}, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.

—RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English, edited by Timothy Fry, O.S.B.