“Rainbow,” Anna W. Edwards, oil on canvas
On Justice & Love
“Justice is Love correcting that which revolts against Love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West
“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“I have the need to understand why we are so good at passing on violence and so poor at passing on love.” – Marie Deans
“It is not enough for us to possess human nature, we have to act as humans, we have to exercise all the deepest capacities of our nature. More than this, we have to act as persons—freely! As soon as we come into existence we begin to obey the Law of Love.” – Thomas Merton
“It’s in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.” – Van Jones
“Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society.” – Cesar Chavez
“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.” – John O’Donohue
“In the end a nation can only be as conscious, integrated, and moral as its individual citizens.” – Michael Gellert
“Some day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
On Connection
“In our relationships we need to uphold that aspect of the person which is the real person and the soul beyond their own self-doubt.” – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
“When we change the conversation, we change the future.” – Juanita Brown
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Jalaluddin Rumi
“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions?” —Terry Tempest Williams
“We will be well to the extent that we move back into relationship with one another, whether as individuals and families or as nations and species.” —John Philip Newell
“We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders.” – Desmond Tutu
“If we do not transform our pain we will most certainly transmit it.” – Richard Rohr
“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Noticing that everything is interconnected, that love and light exist amid the darkness, and that not all is lost can nourish us on our paths.” – Rose Zonetti
Addressing Injustice
“Condemn not and you shall not be condemned.” – Luke 6:37
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.” – Maxine Hong Kingston
“Punishment is justice for the unjust” – St. Augustine
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. – Interpretive translation of Talmudic texts
Forgiveness
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” – August Wilson
“When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.” – Bryan Stevenson
“Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.” – Anonymous
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Louis B. Smedes
“We are all on a life long journey and the core of its meaning, the terrible demand of its centrality is forgiving and being forgiven.” – Martha Kilpatrick
“Without forgiveness life is governed by… an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.” – Roberto Assagioli
“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.” – Alice Duer Miller
“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” – Louis B. Smedes
“He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.” – George Herbert
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