FOP Leader Handbook

Whether on the trail, before dinner, or under the tarp on a rainy afternoon, we hope that they inspire thought.

Diversity

The way we structure community here doesn’t just affect us in this place, at this moment. It affects the kinds of powerful, scarily driven, sleep-deprived, sometimes demagogic people we as an institution are putting out into the world. This is a love letter to the labor—and it is labor, a long, slow slog—of creating spaces that welcome and empower, not intimidate and coerce. Of spaces that relentlessly address the way social power affects our daily lives. Because open spaces enable people to think better, to love freer, to do their work. Because when we don’t do this, we lose people. We lose people who are most vulnerable to social injustice in the world at large: to racism, sexism, class inequality, homo- or transphobia. We lose people who don’t or won’t or can’t play the game. We lose some of the most unruly people, the gutsiest, the most critical, people with things to say. That’s creativity we can’t afford to lose. Not as a community. Not as a world. - Reina Gattuso ‘15

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community. ― bell hooks

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. - Octavio Paz

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. - Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. - Audre Lorde

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. - Charles Evan Hughes

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. - Walt Whitman

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. - James Baldwin

The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another, and so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything. - Scott Woods

Sucking the Marrow

I suppose I should wish you success, but that is too easy. I would like to wish you something that is harder to come by. So I am going to wish you meaning in life. And meaning is not something you stumble across like the answer to a riddle or prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you; out of your own talent and understanding, out of things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something, the ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account. - Robert Gardner

One of the misfortunes of advancing age is that you get out of touch with the sunrise. You take it for granted, and it is over and done with before you settle yourself for the daily routine. That is one reason, I think, why, when we grow older, the days seem shorter. We miss the high moments of their beginning. - John Buchan

It is curious that physical courage should be so common, and moral courage so rare. - Mark Twain

To live is so startling it leaves time for little else. - Emily Dickinson

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset. - Crowfoot of the Blackfoot Nation, on his death bed, 1890

If I had my life to live over again, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I would be sillier than I have been on this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies. - Nadine Stair

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. There are the things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top. - Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyways. - John Wayne

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. - Henry David Thoreau

Nature

You never conquer a mountain. You can stand on the summit a few moments; then the wind blows your footprints away. - Arlene Blum

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G—is connected. The soil needs rain, organic matter, air, worms and life in order to do what it needs to do to give and receive life. Each element is an essential component. “Organizing takes humility and selflessness and patience and rhythm while our ultimate goal of liberation will take many expert components. Some of us build and fight for land, healthy bodies, healthy relationships, clean air, water, homes, safety, dignity, and humanizing education. Others of us fight for food and political prisoners and abolition and environmental justice. Our work is intersectional and multifaceted. Nature teaches us that our work has to be nuanced and steadfast. And more than anything, that we need each other—at our highest natural glory—in order to get free. - adrienne maree brown

All of nature offers lessons on living, free of charge. One morning I noticed a dead tree supporting many living things–fungus, vines, lichen–which taught me that even after death we can continue to support those who live on. Living trees on our property teach other lessons. One tree has grown around a barbed wire fence. Another has grown around a nail, and a third through a chain link fence. These trees teach me how to accept irritation, absorb the pain and grow around problems. Nature teaches me how to find my place, grow toward the sunlight and bypass obstacles. To survive, we must be able to change in response to whatever is required by the challenge of the moment. Our bodies know this, but our minds often rebel when change is necessary. - Bernie S. Siegel

In this modern age, very little remains that is real. Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind and the stars, they have all been neutralized; the rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes fast and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its smell, its color, and the way it shimmers when the wind caresses it…we should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also know how to go slowly and contemplate. - Gaston Rebuffat

Always in the big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness; for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone. -Wendell Berry

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the water courses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will take as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen. - Thomas Merton, Earth Prayers

There is a fitness in natural experience, an intimacy that may not be superseded. How many, in this world of devices, now live through the lifetime of tides, nights of clean wind and clear stars above the rooflines, know the genuine exposure to cold rain, cold water, and stiff fingers, and know how to be steady there? - John Hay

I gave my heart to the mountains the moment I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again… It was rare and comforting to waken late and hear the undiminished shouting of the water in the night. And at sun up it was still there, powerful and incessant, with the slant sun tangled in its rainbow spray, the grass blue with wetness, and the air heady as ether and scented with campfire smoke. By such a river it is impossible to believe that one will ever be tired or old. Every sense applauds it. Taste it, feel its chill on the teeth: it is purity absolute. Watch its racing current, its steady renewal of force: it is transient and eternal. And listen again to its sounds: get far enough away so that the sound of falling tons of water does not stun the ears and hear how much is going on underneath a whole symphony of smaller sounds, hiss and splash and gurgle, the small talk of side channels, the whisper of blown and scattered spray gathering itself and beginning to flow again, secret and irresistible, among the wet rocks. - Wallace Stegner

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. – Desiderata

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

• Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

To honor and respect means to think of the land and the water and plants and animals who live here as having a right equal to our own to be here. We are not the supreme and all-knowing beings, living at the top of the pinnacle of evolution, but in fact we are members of the sacred hoop of life along with the tree and rocks, the coyotes and the eagles and fish and toads, that each fulfills its purpose. They each perform their given task in the sacred hoop, and we have one, too. - Wolf Song of the Abenaki tribe

In our way of life…with every decision we make, we always keep in mind the seventh generation of children to come…When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully, because we know that the faces of future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them. - Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onandaga Nation

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people… Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red men. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family… All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. - Chief “Seattle,” representing all American Indian Nations in 1854 at the tribal assembly concerning the sale of land in Washington to the government

I wondered how it was possible to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing of note. I who cannot see find hundreds of things: the delicate symmetry of a leaf, the smooth skin of a silver birch, the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: use your eyes as if tomorrow you will have been stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the songs of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never taste or smell again. Make the most of every sense. Glory in all the facets and pleasures and beauty which the world reveals to you. - Helen Keller

When despair for the world grows in me / and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. / I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought / of grief. I come into the presence of still water. – Wendell Berry

Individual

The call of action has long been with me; not action divorced from thought but rather flowing from it in one continuous sequence. And when, rarely, there has been full harmony between the two, thought leading to action and finding its fulfillment in it, action leading back to thought and a fuller understanding - then I have sensed a certain fullness of life and a vivid intensity in that moment of existence. But such moments are rare, very rare, and usually one outstrips the other and there is a lack of harmony, and vain effort to bring the two in line. - Jawaharlal Nehru

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. - e.e. cummings

The healthy and strong individual is one who asks for help when he needs it, whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul. - Rona Barrett

He who allows his day to pass without practicing generosity and enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows - he breathes, but he does not live. - Sanskrit Proverb

To be nobody but myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. - e.e. cummings

From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all must regard cultivation of the personal life as the root. A disordered root cannot grow into ordered branches. If what is near is neglected, how can one take care of what is far away? - Confucius

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman

In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose. - adrienne maree brown

Black feminist conceptions of love as a unifying political principle encourage us to ask about our deep responsibilities to each other, and our enduring connections to each other, by virtue of our collective inhabitation of the social world. This view, of course, entails risk. It is risky to view one’s self as bound up with others and to fully accept the responsibility and potential peril that are entailed in embracing and practicing a worldview of linked fate. But this is the visionary call of black feminist love-politics – a radical embrace of connectedness. - Jennifer Nash

Challenge

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again. Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement. And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. - Henry David Thoreau

The truth is that part of the essence of mountain climbing is to push oneself to one’s limits. Inevitably this involves risk, otherwise they would not be one’s limits. This is not to say that you deliberately try something you know you can’t do. But you do deliberately try something which you are not sure you can do. - Woodrow Wilson

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. - A.A. Milne

“If the person you are talking to does not appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.” - A.A. Milne

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. - Muhammad Ali

Teamwork/Service

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know about Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can help another without helping himself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are the way and the wayfarers. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Way, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone. - Kahlil Gibran

In a real sense all life is interrelated. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
-To be of use, by Marge Piercy

Leadership

A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, the people will say, “We did this ourselves.” - Lao-tzu

Leadership has to do with how people are. You don’t teach people a different way of being, you create conditions so that they can discover where their natural leadership comes from. - Peter Senge

Gentleness is a divine trait: nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength. - Ralph W. Sockman

Be the change you want to see in the world. - Gandhi

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. – John F. Kennedy

I used to feel all shivery-shuddery, all filled with wild, ragged hope when I walked through Harvard Yard. After a Lamont all-nighter, the pink mist just starting to clear… I realized that the thrill of possibility that used to shake my chest each time I stepped into Harvard Yard was nothing but the beating of my own heart. And your heart. And all of our hearts. I used to want to take Harvard inside of me, breathing it in so I would be different, changed. But I don’t think there really is anything magical in the air. I think the really magical thing is our own lungs. - Reina Gattuso ‘15

Learning

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again…So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing, always take note of difficulties along the way; for as you go up, you can observe them. Coming down, you will no longer see them, but you will know they are there if you have observed them well. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know. - Rene Dumal

Today is a new day; you’ll get out of it just what you put into it. If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you can make a new start whenever you choose. For the thing we call failure is not the falling, but the staying down. - Mary Pickford

Education is not preparation for life. Education is life. - John Dewey

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking for something and finding something else on the way. - Franklin P. Adams

The greatest wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. - Alexander Graham Bell

Strong people make as many and as ghastly mistakes as weak people. The difference is that strong people admit them, laugh at them, learn from them. That is how they become strong. - Richard Needham

OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah? - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. - Oscar Wilde

The Journey

Alice looked round her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree all the time! Everything’s just as it was!” “Of course it is,” said the Queen: “What would you have it?” “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

As you set out for Ithaka
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not be afraid of them:
such as these you will never find
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare
sensation touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raises them up before you.

Hope that your journey is a long one.
May there be many Summer mornings
when with what pleasure, what joy -
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations,
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensuous perfumes of every kind,
as many sensuous perfumes as you can;
may you visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn again from those who know.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. - Ithaka, by C. P. Cavafy

“What day is it?”
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh. - A. A. Milne

‘What is REAL?’ asked the rabbit one day… ‘Does it happen all at once or bit by bit?’ ‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’ - Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life had breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Climb mountains not so the world can see you, but so you can see the world. - Grace Aranow

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. - Lao Tzu

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all who wander are lost. - J. R. R. Tolkien

How we got there, we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what the wiser were they? Suffice it that here at the summit you and I stand. - Herman Melville, The Enchanted Isles

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. - Winnie the Pooh

Look well to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In it lies all the realities and verities of existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. - Sanskrit proverb

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. - G.K. Chesterton

It’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy. Let’s go exploring! - Calvin

Work

Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching. Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. – Kahlil Gibran

If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love. We would see that there’s no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea - but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential. - adrienne maree brown