“Forgiving is a choice that brings healing–probably more to the giver than to the recipient. When we forgive, we do not change the circumstances or injustices of the past. What we change is the future–for ourselves and for the ones we have forgiven. It is the most freeing choice we can make.”
–Carol Kent, A New Kind of Normal
“I finally figured out that I had a choice: I could suffer a great deal, or not, or for a long time. Or I could have the combo platter: suffer, breathe, pray, play, cry, and try to help people. There was meaning in pain; it taught you how to survive with a modicum of grace when you did not get what you wanted.”
–Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“It really is easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. When things break up and fences fall over, desperation and powerlessness slink in, which turns out to be good: humility and sweetness often arrive in your garden not long after.”
–Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“But I actually knew a few true things: I had figured out that truth and freedom were pretty much the same. And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That’s what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.”
–Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“You must always believe that God’s power to forgive is greater than your power to sin.”
–Brother Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, quoted in Prayer, by Richard J. Foster, p. 151.
“Our greatest joy, no matter what our role, comes from creating.”
–Robert Quinn, interviewed by Dennis Sparks in “Change: It’s a Matter of Life or Slow Death,” Journal of Staff Development, 22 (4), Fall 2001, p. 51.
“Paul and Silas’s discipline of praying and praising not only broke their own chains, but it also broke the chains of every other inmate in the prison.”
–Karen Beck, quoted by Carole Kent in A New Kind of Normal, p. 98
“Rule #1: Aspire. Everything starts with the desire to be more than you are today.”
Keith Yamashita and Tara Bodden, “Designing for Cosmic Change,” Design Management Journal, Spring 2002, p. 66.
From I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online, by Frances Jacobson Harris:
“Online communication has great potential for increasing intimacy and closeness in human relationships.”
(page 50)
This reminds me of what I used to say when we first got e-mail–“Somebody finally found a way to get men to write letters.”
I’m also reminded of how, before she died, I got to know my grandma better than I ever had before–after I moved to Germany and began posting pictures of castles. She was my biggest fan.
Here’s how Frances Jacobson Harris led up to the above quotation:
“While new technology takes away some things, it also gives back others. In the virtual environment, we lose visual cues, changes in tone of voice, and other subtle nuances that are clear in face-to-face interaction. But the virtual setting brings along its own cues and conventions. Participants are often more direct with one another, more candid, and so more “honest” than they would be otherwise. Contacts may be more frequent and spontaneous, if only because they are easier to initiate. There is simply less inertia to overcome, less start-up time. Everyone is infected by this ease, not just teenagers. Using e-mail and instant messaging, I have kept up with my far-flung middle-aged cousins as well as my teenaged nieces. One no longer needs a “reason” to make the contact or, as my nieces would say, it’s just not such a big hairy deal any more.”
From I Found It On the Internet: Coming of Age Online, by Frances Jacobson Harris:
“Librarians do not have to be cool themselves to provide cool library services.”
(Thank goodness!)
(page 12)