"What you teach us to do is admirable, but what you teach us to believe is foolish."
Maha Mongkut (1804-1868)
"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than I do in the church."
Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1520)
"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a part of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect."
George Carlin (1937- )
"Next time you are too drunk to drive, walk to the nearest pizza shop and place an order. When they go to deliver it, catch a ride home with them."
-Anon.
Good advice, jjorge. I'll have to remember that.
Here's more advice:
"O, you who believe! Be careful of your duty to Allah with the proper care which is due to Him, and do not die unless you are Muslim."
Imraan; 3:102
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country."
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
"It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it, and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not."
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
"The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history."
Ray Bradbury (1920- )
"Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues."
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
"The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"The most outstanding cases of American success at nation-building and democracy-making are, of course, Germany, Japan and South Korea. It is not coincidental that American forces remain in those countries to this day."
Fareed Zakaria (1965- )
Newsweek 2/21/05
Hi Piffka--I hope to be like this grandmother as I age--I know you are only getting better, a concentration of the best you've ever been.
Her grandmother, as she gets older, is not fading but rather becoming more concentrated.
-- Paulette Bates Alden, 'Legacies,' Feeding the Eagles, 1988
I love that, Diane. I'll bet the book is great.
This is something I received a while back that deserves a much wider audience.
A HOPI ELDER SPEAKS
"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be consideredÂ…..
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader."
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled and said,
"This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and
our heads above water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment
that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Thomas Banyaca
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation
2002
Hi Piffka et al,
I'm mostly reading on A2K lately -popping in for a few minutes here and there- but I wanted to share a recent news story with you; and to share the quotation that my brother (in Virginia) sent back after I had e-mailed the story to him:
By Carol Morello Washington Post
(July 16 2005)
MIDDLEBROOK, Va. -- The rancid odor of smoke hung thick in the air as federal agents searched for clues in the sanctuary of the little church in the dell.
When investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives departed, the Rev. Dorcas Lohr locked the front door behind her. Suddenly, the church's bucolic location between a cemetery and a pasture where cows graze made her feel isolated and vulnerable.
Last weekend, someone broke into St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ. The perpetrator smashed a window of the fellowship room, then crawled in and set fire to a pew and the choir platform where the organist plays. The only clue to motive was anti-gay graffiti spray-painted on the red brick wall in the rear.
The arsonist's message -- and ire -- broke through a hodgepodge of poor spelling and abbreviations: "Gays lover," "Lesb hell," "UCC siners" and "Sinner."
Five days earlier, the General Synod of the national church announced its endorsement of same-sex marriage, though its decision is not binding on individual churches.
The St. John's congregation of 150 has never taken a position on the issue. By all accounts, most parishioners would oppose it. But as the only UCC church in the area, St. John's became a target.
"It's clearly a hate crime," said Lohr, sitting on a couch in the fellowship room where glass from the broken window still littered the floor. "It disturbs me deeply, that kind of hate message that says if you don't believe the way we believe, then we can destroy you."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The quotation:
"Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the 'ordinary' efforts of a vast majority."
( from the late Harvard paleontologist and author Stephen Jay Gould)
Oh Piffka, the Hopi elder spoke of everything the Hopi hold dear. As I was reading it, I was struck by the difference between their priorities and those of this country. Hopis and Zunis are two tribes that will never accomodate their culture to the general US culture. It reminded me of Dys's story of the Ghost Dance.
Jjorge, isn't it amazing how only bad news is reported. Good news is either put at the end of the news segment and read as if it is remarkable and rare, or it is left out entirely. What that does to so many people is to leave them depressed and focused on the worst in our society; or, like my ex mother-in-law, chronically focused on what she consideres the good, and easily led to believe something is good, if it is said often enough, true or not.
It is saddening and awful to think the pastor of the Vermont UCC church is likely in danger just for being a part of a church that supports gay and lesbian marriage, even though her church isn't in that number. I wonder what the psychiatric name would be for the condition of people with that much rage?
I so admire Stephen Jay Gould.
"Life....
It is the flash of a firefly in the night,
the breath of a buffalo in the winter.
It is the little shadow, which runs across
the grass, and loses itself in the sunset...."
-- Crowfoot
Blackfeet Elder
