“We must take care of our families, wherever we find them.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

“The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

“We are collectively responsible for the covenant of our faith.” —Rev. Dr. Michael Tino

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” —Cornel West

“That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” —Simone de Beauvoir

“Treating different things the same can generate as much inequality as treating the same things differently.” —Kimberlé Crenshaw

“When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.” —RuPaul

“Pluralism accepts the moral reality of different kinds of truth, but rejects the idea that they can all be placed on a single scale, measured by a single value.” —Timothy Snyder

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” —Maya Angelou

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” —Maya Angelou

“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.” —Nelson Mandela

“The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children.” —Philip Carr-Gomm

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.” —Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, we create global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act. —Church of the Larger Fellowship Mission Statement

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.” —Tom Stoppard

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” —Socrates

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” —Gloria Steinem

“The best way out is always through.” —Robert Frost

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” —Anaïs Nin

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” —Fannie Lou Hamer

“Rest is a beautiful interruption in a world that has no pause button.” —Tricia Hersey, The Nap Ministry

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” —Dorothy Day

“When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees.” —Joseph Joubert

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” —W.B. Yeats

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” —Mother Teresa

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. —Andre Gide

Where there is love there is life. —Mahatma Gandhi

“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.” —Antonio Porchia

All are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. —Thich Nhat Hanh

“If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer… If you’re a pretender come sit by my fire… For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!” —Shel Silverstein

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. —Anaïs Nin

Let peace begin with you. Let peace begin in your heart. Find your center, a little bit at a time. —Rev. Dr. Michael Tino

Prayer is not  asking. It is a longing of the soul. —Mahatma Gandhi

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. —Maya Angelou

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou

When we heal  our own trauma, individually and collectively, we don’t just heal our bodies. By refusing to pass on the trauma we inherited, we help heal the world. –Resmaa Menakem

There is no freedom with out justice. No divine peace without holy struggle. —CLF Lead Ministry Team

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.  —Barack Obama

We are already—each and every one of us—siblings to one another and to all that exists at  the level of spirit. —Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti

Each day we are invited to risk holy surrender to the call of life and love and liberation —Rev. Deanna Vandiver

January 2021

The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful.  —Joy Harjo

Just don’t give up what you’re trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong. —Ella Fitzgerald

Grief is just love with no place to go. —Jamie Anderson

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God. — Sidney Sheldon

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it—exactly and completely.  —Dainin Katagiri

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ―Albert Einstein

I cannot and will not cut my conscience   to fit this year’s fashions. ―Lillian Hellman

The receding wave does not despair; it knows it will rise again. ―Marty Rubin

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.  ―Mahatma Gandhi

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. ―J.K. Rowling

The threshold is the place of expectation. ―Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ―Samuel Johnson

Praise, my dear one. Let us disappear into praising. Nothing belongs to us. ―Rainer Maria Rilke

You can sacrifice and not love but you cannot love and not sacrifice. ―Kris Vallotton

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. ―Jerome K. Jerome

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge. ―Abraham Joshua Heschel

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. ―Ralph Ellison

There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. ―Mahatma Gandhi

All the beauty that’s been lost before wants to find us again. ―U2

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life. ―Virginia Woolf

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. ―George Orwell

In a time of destruction, create something. —Maxine Hong Kingston

Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself. —Charles H. Spurgeon

You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors. —Toba Beta

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable…. Habit is persistence in practice. ―Octavia E. Butler

Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world. —Terry Prachett

The Sabbath is the link between the paradise which has passed away and the paradise which is yet to come. —Andrew Wylie

You are imperfect; permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful. ―Amy Bloom

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her  shackles are very different from my own. ―Audre Lorde

A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. —Frederick Buechner

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. —Aleksandr  Solzhenitzyn

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. —Marshall McLuhan

Whenever you see a board up with “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” trespass at once. —Virginia Woolf

The essence of gift is that it creates a set of relationships.  The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity. —Robin Wall Kimmerer

You were not just blessed for yourself, you were blessed to be a blessing to others. ―Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

October 2017 edition of Quest Monthly – We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful. ―Eric Micha’el Leventhal

If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces. ―Shane L. Koyczan

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity. —José Martí

Stop acting so small. You are the Universe in ecstatic motion. —Rumi

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” —Henry David Thoreau

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. —Bill Moyers

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy… deathless song in the house of night. —Leonard Cohen

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred. —Walt Whitman

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. —Bertolt Brecht

Patience is not simply the ability to wait—it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. —Joyce Meyer

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. —Mahatma Gandhi

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” —James Baldwin

“Nourish beginnings… Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.” —Muriel Rukeyser

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” —Oscar Wilde

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anaïs Nin

“It is justice, not charity that is wanting in the world.” —Mary Wollstonecraft

“I wish that every human life might be pure, transparent freedom.” —Simone de Beauvoir

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” —Ernest Hemingway

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” —Hebrews 13:2

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. —Charlotte Brontë

“Hope is patience with the lamp lit.” —Tertullian

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” —André Gide

“My barn having burned down I can now see the moon.”—Mizuta Masahide

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly.” ―Henri J.M. Nouwen

In honor of Lorraine Dennis’s 15 years as Executive Director of the CLF, we asked her to choose some favorite pieces to share with us before she retires at the end of the summer. This issue, then, is a special “Lorraine’s Choice” edition.

“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.” —Elie Wiesel

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” —Scott Adams

“Healing yourself is connected with healing others.” —Maya Angelou

“Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. ” —Maya Angelou

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” —Zora Neale Hurston

“You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” —C.S. Lewis

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”—Socrates