OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Rise to Taste the Dawn
I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today.
– Ken Wilber
Wednesday of Hope – Hopefulness Is Not Romantic
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction./ And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
– Howard Zinn
Whole Worlds of Wonder even in a Single Drop of Water
Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water.
– Eihei Dogen
Wednesday of Hope – We Are Never Hopeless
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.
– John Green, Looking for Alaska
Animals Are People Too! And, of course, Trees.
Animals are people, too. As are plants. And water. And soil. This is the fundamental insight at the heart of all eco-spiritual work. But to get that insight, we have to get with the big picture. To get that insight, we have to climb a tree.
– Clark Strand, Trees, Butterflies, and the Buddhist Moral Life
Wednesday of Hope – Unfailing Love
What gives me hope is that life unfailingly responds to the advances of love.
– Nipun Mehta
God Never Made an Ugly Landscape
God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.
– John Muir
Wednesday of Hope – Don’t Stop Dreaming
We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.
– Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses
Plant Trees
Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books.
– A. Whitney Brown, Wall at bookstore – Chicago Botanic Gardens
Wednesday of Hope – the Winds Will Carry You
I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.
– C. JoyBell C.
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