A selection of sunbeams from the SUN Magazine March 2014

"This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now:... there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know...," and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway." 

David Foster Wallace

"The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple." 

Rebecca West 

"You must begin by assuming responsibility. And you alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify des visions and to consume." 

Noam Chomsky

"Revolution does not begin with a group. It begins from the heart."

Shahla Khan 

"Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts.... To unbind what is bound, to bring the underground waters to the surface: mankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that."

Albert Schweitzer 

"If we should be so lucky as to touch the lives of many, so be it. But if our lot is no more than the setting of a table, or the tending of a garden, or showing a child a path in a wood, out lives are no less worthy." 

Kent Nerburn  

Musings

Life as battle or quest? Or something else entirely?
Life as battle, war; everything is won or lost, everything is a struggle and a fight, an upward climb and tearing of the heart and soul and flesh. You can only ever conquer or fail, pulling yourself up a cliff's edge by your fingernails and teeth, crashing down onto the rocks below when you falter and lose your grip. Life as some great thing you must win, only one pathway, only one right. Inflexible, binding and restrictive.

But life as quest, a wending pathway of discovery, exploration, learning and seeking, is a beautiful living. Then life is stream and pathway and wind about your ears. Then you can shine and love and really see, really understand, and understand that, honey, you're really never going to get it all, and that's perfectly okay. Life as quest; life as play and happiness, life as learning to be with sadness, tears as rain on the ground, nurturing growth and further beauty. Being in emotion, all emotion, acknowledging and allowing it. Life as flowering, a great opening up and unfurling and shedding color and light. Giving, not taking. Creating; not only destroying. Life as pulse, wave, flow; up and down and back and forth.




Rumi;
"Great lions find peace in a cage.
But we should only do that as a last resort.

So those bars I see that restrain your wings,
I guess you won't mind if I pry them open."

And Hafiz;
"How did the rose ever open its heart and
give to the world all of its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against
its being, otherwise we all remain too
frightened."


If I let it be, and don't try really hard to fit it all together, it will fall into place in its own structure. 

A selection of Sunbeams, The SUN magazine issue 237

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. "

Henry David Thoreau

"Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself."

Dean Inge 

"Whatever our point of view or frame of reference, the world is richer and more amazing than we realize. All frames of reference are limited. All points of view can be supplemented by further experience under new and various conditions."

Donald Granger 

"Both class and race survive education, and neither should. What is education then? If it doesn't help a human being to recognize that humanity is humanity, what is it for? So you can make a bigger salary than other people?"

Beah Richards 

"In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door-neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block." "

Freda Bright 

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them."

Benjamin Jowett

A selection of Sunbeams from the SUN Magazine August 2013

"All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished."

Marshal Rosenburg

"Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.... The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul."

Carl Jung

"In our struggle to restrain violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that us it also a crucial survival tool."

Katherine Dunn

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."

Mahatma Gandhi 

"You have to want to lose your appetite for violence or aggression. And to do that, you have to lose your self-righteousness."

Pema Chödrön 

"Even fighting in self-defense is wrong, though it is higher than fighting in aggression. There is no "righteous" indignation, because indignation comes from not recognizing sameness in all things." 

Vivekanada 

"Peacekeeper missile." Doesn't that sound like "ax-murderer baby sitter"? 

Elayne Boosler 

"Through violence you may murder the lier, but you cannot murder the lie, now establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Martin Luther King Jr. 

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

Mother Teresa