“Dr. Howard Thurman is my mentor. I have his picture right here on the wall. He looks over me every day and this quote is a mantra for me. That’s why I do aromatherapy, make greeting cards, and write books about justice. All those things make me come alive. I think when we do what makes us come alive, we don’t burn out because we have energy and are rejuvenated on a daily basis. Burnout is when we are pushing against ourselves and using energy that really is not ours. That is when we are living somebody else’s life, which is a losing battle. I thank God and the angels who were good enough to allow me to meet him while he was still living and had a chance to spend some time with him, which was an amazing gift.”

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.

 Howard Thurman (1899–1981) was an American theologian,
mystic, author and educator.
Thurman is recognized as a key spiritual mentor
of the civil rights movement.

“This is one of the sinister aspects of technology. People are constantly looking at empty and false images. These impoverished images are filling up the inner world of the heart.”

When you really look deeply at something, it becomes part of you.

John O’Donohue, Irish author, poet, and theologian
from his book Anam Cara

“This quote is from my father-in-law, who had to deal with Hitler during WWII when he worked at Peenemünde from 1940–1944 on a remote-controlled glide bomb. He spoke this to me and my husband Christian just before he died. He’s the man that I admire the most. He came to the U.S. in 1947 and was Deputy Director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Astrionic Lab, which developed the guidance and control systems for the Apollo spaceflight mission to the Moon, both landing and return trips. They did get there and back. Wow, man on the Moon.”

 Beware the charismatic man.

Herman Kroeger (1908-1984)

More than being an inspiration as an artist, I would call this a mission statement. I’m very struck by his comment that without a global revolution in the sphere of consciousness nothing will change for the better. I firmly believe that the creative process as it manifests in art, photography, and music, can help enlarge consciousness. And, I further believe that consciousness alone is what’s needed to change the challenges that we face in the 21^st century.”

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in the sphere of consciousness nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans and the catastrophe toward which the world is headed, be it ecological, social, demographic or general breakdown of civilization, will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that we have definitely won. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all of our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success. Responsibility to the order of being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged.

Václav Havel, playwright,
President of the Czech Republic,
from an address to the joint session of
the U.S. Congress in March 1990

 “This quote is a line from a poem of the Sufi poet Attar, who lived a generation before Rumi. He’s famous for his book length poem called The Conference of Birds, I love that it points to the unnamable divine reality, and basically all the philosophy, all the different traditions, we’re all just guessing, The essential meaning is a classic Sufi metaphor: no matter how a single drop of water intellectualizes or theorizes about its own nature, the vast ocean remains what it is regardless. It points to the idea that ultimate reality (the sea, often standing for God or the Divine) is unaffected by the limited perspectives, opinions, or “philosophies” of the individual self (the drop).

The Sea
Will be the Sea
Whatever the drop’s philosophy.

Farid ud-Din Attar (c. 1145–1221) was a Persian Sufi poet
and mystic from Nishapur whose writings profoundly
influenced later Sufi masters including Rumi

“This quote is an invitation to extend our compassion, not just to our dogs, but to all animals, and to all living creatures and nature. And when we do that, not only do we become better people, but we create a better world.”

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison [of separateness] by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born
theoretical physicist best known for
developing the theory of relativity
and for his contributions to quantum theory, work
that earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Dhammapada is a text that is over two thousand years old and is rooted in the Buddhist tradition. It speaks of a fundamental power that we all have to use in our everyday experiences: to grow more happiness, more love, and more wisdom inside ourselves. This is truly important these days when people feel pushed around and are often running on empty.”

Think not lightly of good
saying, “It will not come to me.
Drop by drop is
the water pot filled. 

Likewise, the wise one,
gathering it little by little
Fills oneself with good.

Dhammapada: a collection of sayings
of the Buddha in verse form

“When I was growing up, I felt different, like most creative people do. I love books, poetry, and baseball in no particular order. And you think you’re alone, you think you’re crazy. I grew up in a household of books, books, newspapers, magazines, radio, a little bit of television, but it was mostly the writing. We took a lot of car trips in the old Ford station wagon when I was young, so I think I identified with Odysseus going on a long, long trip to find something exciting, and then the effort to get home again. Then I found Albert Camus, I found Emily Dickinson, I found Homer, and there is nothing that I have gone through that someone else hasn’t gone through before. Goethe once said, when you find the book you have been looking for, the one that gives meaning to your very existence, it’s like a lost sailor at sea clutching at last to a raft. You never forget those books. This is a way for us to find our way to our true north. We read, absorb, travel, study, but in the end we have to make all this work our own, which means our personal stamp on it reveals our own hurts, our own pains, but then our exaltation as well. It’s a combination.”

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

James Baldwin(1924-1987) to Life magazine, 1962.
James Baldwin was a writer and civil rights activist
who is best known for his semi-autobiographical novels
and plays that center on race, politics, and sexuality.

“This quote inspires me because we’re in a time in which we need a profound whole systems change. What we need now is so big that I don’t think any single individual can lead the revolution. We’ve been inspired by such leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. What is needed for such a big social change is a deep community of practice, a sangha around which that transformation can turn.”

The next Buddha may very well be a Sangha, a community of practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

“What I love about this quote is that it’s very much about presence, and the instant, and the equalizing power of the moment.”

There is no first or last in forever. It is Center there all the time.

-Emily Dickinson