Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth.

Though in obscurity…
Carry the water; deliver the food;
Cheerfully serve for another’s good.

J. R. Martin, Castorland, NY
beside the still waters, vol. 30, issue 3

beside the still waters, vol 30, issue 3

Some things about raising crops are similar to circumstances in everyday life. We can focus on eradicating weeds by cultivating or by using chemicals, or we can focus on sowing a lush cover crop to keep the weeds from growing. If we remove all the weeds, we may end up with bare ground. likewise, we can get engrossed in destroying evil when we should concentrate on promoting good. We have an example of that in today’s bible reading:

Romans 12:21
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

By dark of moon I recall may past
so sorrow, pain, and hurt I cast,
Into the void and dark abyss,
that my heart and soul be restored to bliss,
there to stay forever more,
by the power of the ancient lore.
I cleanse my heart, renew my soul,
by the power of the craft of olde.

Author unknown new moon 2001

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to hold no illusions and still hold the inner flame.

Many educators use the metaphor of a fish in water to capture the all-encompassing dimensions of culture.
A fish is born into water and so simply experiences the water as one with itself: a fish has no way of knowing that it is actually separate from the water. And although the fish is separate, it still cannot survive without water. In the same way that a fish cannot live without water, we cannot make sense of the world without the meaning-making system that our culture provides. Yet this system is hard to see because we have always been “swimming” within it: we just take for granted that what we see is real, rather than a particular perception of reality.
For these reasons, social justice educators name our positionality (the currents and waters we swim in) in order to make the socially constructed nature of knowledge visible and to challenge the claim that any knowledge is neutral.

pp. 16-17, Chapter 1, Is everyone really equal?, Sensoy and DiAngelo.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us.

The only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.