OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Wednesday of Hope – Love Brings Us to Hope
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
– Maya Angelou
Let Your Soul Be Alive!
If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
– Eleanora Duse
Wednesday of Hope – Hopeful Eyes
Hopeful Eyes.
Hope looks at all things the way a mother looks at her child, with a passion for the possible. That way of looking is creative. It creates the space in which perfection can unfold. More than that, the eyes of hope look through all imperfections to the heart of all things and find it perfect. The eyes of hope are grateful eyes. Before our eyes learned to look gratefully at the world, we expected to find beauty in good looking things. But grateful eyes expect the surprise of finding beauty in all things.
– David Steindl-Rast
Not Shielded from the Wind
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Wednesday of Hope – Ash Wednesday
On this Ash Wednesday, what more can we hope to be than this?
Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving force, to be a steward of substance.
– Maria Popova
In Harmony with Earth
First thing in the morning, before you meet or greet anyone, remember to greet all of nature, all visible and invisible creatures. Say to them: “I am grateful for your work, I love you and want to be in harmony with you!” At this very moment, in response to your greeting, all of nature will open to you and send you energy for the entire day.
– Omraam Mikhael Aivanho
Wednesday of Hope – Hope in the Dark
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and. work: you don’t give up.
– Anne Lamott
What Is Life?
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.
– Crowfoot, a leader of the Blackfoot nation
Wednesday of Hope – Resilience, Resistance, Tenacity
Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.– Jane Hirshfield, Given Sugar, Given Salt
Music Gives Wings
Music…gives wings to the mind, a soul to the universe, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, a life to everything.
– Plato
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