I see Your hands, not white and manicured, but scarred and scratched and competent, reach out - not always to remove the weight I carry, but to shift its balance, ease it, make it bearable. Lord, if this is where You want me, I'm content. No, not quite true; I wish it were. All I can say, in honesty, is this: "If this is where I'm meant to be, I'll stay. And try. Just let me feel Your hands." - Eddie Askew

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T.E. Lawrence

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. - Mother Teresa

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. - Frederick Buechner

You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. - A.A. Milne

Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison and the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up every once in a while and admit the truth that when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful. Possibly even me. - My So-Called Life

Until the ending of our days, we will be part of one another's lives. However far apart, however different, we are essential to each other. - Pam Brown

For babies people have to pay a heavy price from day to day - there is no way to get one cheap. Why sometimes while they're fast asleep you have to get up in the night and go and see that they're alright. But what they cost in constant care and worry does not half compare with what they bring of joy and bliss - you'd pay much more for just a kiss. - Edgar Guest

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty. Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a timetable. - C.S. Lewis

There is something about the snow-laden sky in winter in the late afternoon that brings to the heart elation and the lovely meaninglessness of time. Whenever I get home - whenever - somebody loves me there. Meanwhile, I stand in the same dark peace as any pine tree, or wander on slowly like the still unhurried wind, waiting, as for a gift, for the snow to begin - which it does at first casually, then, irrepressibly. Wherever else I live - in music, in words, in the fires of the heart, I abide just as deeply in this nameless, indivisible place, this world, which is falling apart now, which is white and wild, which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith, our deepest prayers. Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home. Red-cheeked from the roused wind, I'll stand in the doorway stamping my boots and slapping my hands, my shoulders covered with stars. - Mary Oliver "Walking Home from Oak-head"

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again and what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: "Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work - we must all work - to make the world worthy of its children." - Pablo Casals

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. - Douglas Noel Adams

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
And the little moments, humble though they be,
make the mighty ages of Eternity.

- Julia A. Carney

I pray You'll be our eyes, and watch us where we go, and help us to be wise in times when we don't know. Let this be our prayer, as we go our way: Lead us to a place, guide us with Your grace, to a place where we'll be safe. I pray we'll find Your light and hold it in our hearts; when stars go out each night remind us where you are. Let this be our prayer, when shadows fill our day: Lead us to a place, guide us with Your grace, give us faith so we'll be safe. We ask that life be kind and watch us from above; we hope each soul will find another soul to love. Let this be our prayer: Just like every child needs to find a place, guide us with Your grace, give us faith so we'll be safe. - David Foster and Carol Bayer Sager, "The Prayer"

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear. - Ghandi

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
- Denise Levertov, "The Avowal"

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson