"What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness. A personal with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pediatrician is more than a … Continue reading Much More
Tag: quotes
Complicated Details
Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good … Continue reading Complicated Details
Expectations
A friend wrote this to me in an email several months ago. I've been thinking about it as I trying to suss out what a healthy work life looks like. So ease up on yourself there, and expect much but season the expectations with a measure of patience and forgiveness, always doing what you can … Continue reading Expectations
Ashes of Your Old Fancies
In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. … Continue reading Ashes of Your Old Fancies
Other Eyes
Novels and stories are renderings of life; they can not only keep us company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or give us the courage to stay a given course. They can offer us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisers- offer us other eyes through which we might see, other ears with which we might … Continue reading Other Eyes
Sweeping Streets
If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets, even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.' ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Writing as a Way of Believing
I discovered that I had to write to explore this set of convictions. I continue to do so. My writing is exploratory because I have no idea what I believe until I force myself to say it. For me, writing turns out to be my way of believing. ------ Writing is hard and difficult work … Continue reading Writing as a Way of Believing
Three Words
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on. ~Robert Frost
Art and Alienation
This is what art does: it lets us escape our alienation temporarily. But some works of art do this better than others. Some banish our alienation; others distract us from it; some show it to us without any consolation. ~Paul Elie in The Life You Save May Be Your Own recounting Walker Percy's argument in … Continue reading Art and Alienation
Creative Altruism
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In For Good 