Barry Lopez:
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?
If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.
One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.


Harry Nuowen:
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and

faces with us the reality of our powerlessness, who never puts down the phone and gives up on us.

That is a friend who truly loves, who truly cares.


Jessamyn West:
It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

Reinhold Niebuhr:
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtue from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is

forgiveness.

Helen Keller:
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.