This weekend I have had the great fortune to enjoy community on an island off the coast of Washington, directly across from Port Townsend. While much of my time was spent gazing across the sound, listening for the nesting eagles just off the balcony, I still had the chance to see first hand community in…
I just want you to love me for who I am; I am my hair. – Lady Gaga This week I have been thinking about the formation of my self-concept in community. The decision to know myself, to have a rich internal life, is part of that equation. Another part of the math is knowing…
May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away. After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly…
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting…
He felt as if all of this had happened before. He covered his heart with both hands to keep anyone from hearing the noise it made. But nobody heard it. – Eudora Welty, Death of a Travelling Salesman, 1941 Lately I have been thanking people for their vulnerability. It has occurred to me…
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what I was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone…
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the…
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth. – Abraham Maslow Over the past several days, the governor of Indiana has been defending his decision to sign into law a bill delivered to him by the state legislature. Perhaps most remarkable about his comments are these: The religious people of…
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. – Aldous Huxley The spirit of the child. Hmmm. We put a lot of psychic burden on children. They are our hope for the future. They are our reason for living. They keep us…
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1967 was a year for learning perseverance. I had understood that financial aid would be coming like clockwork in the first weeks of the year. Eager to show my ability to be responsible, I…
Creating Community for Everyone 