HEART-FULL MOMENTS – Summer 2019

A monthly feature of “Listening with Heart” blog, sharing wise words, meaningful things read or good things found, to help warm your heart.

These are the most impactful quotes I have read or heard this month that give me pause, or uplift my heart. Wisdom spoken in just a few words. They reflect what I’ve been reading or learning, or values I share, or what’s been going on in our world.

It’s been another very challenging month, and I know we each need some insight and encouragement to keep carrying on. I am happy to share these quotes – that speak to inclusivity, immigration, solstice, freedom, sanctuary. I’ve included a couple of resources at the end to check out that are certain to warm your heart and delight your soul. Take a moment to go through them and maybe highlight a few that speak to you. Enjoy…

• “Rather than relying on a thin, idealized hope that we will all one day just get along, we can approach conflict resolution as an art form that we are privileged to develop and hone.” – Diane Musho Hamilton
• “I am here because I was loved, and invested in and protected and lucky, because I went to the right schools; I’m semi famous, mostly happy, meditate twice a day, and yet I walk around in fear because I know that someone seeing me as a threat can become a threat to my life and I am tired. I am tired of carrying the invisible burden of other people’s fears.” – Baratunde Rafik Thurston
• “It just really resonated with me—the idea that my actions, my speech, my way of thinking wasn’t necessarily going to change the paradigm or the world around me but it was going to change my relationship to it and to people. As a woman of color, I feel like I have a voice that I want to share. A big part of my voice is about inclusivity of all types.”
• “Diversity is good for business and is simply the right thing to pursue. Diversity is the opposite of sameness, and sameness is the enemy of innovation. If sameness permeates a company, unconscious bias can infiltrate more decisions, and companies risk missing other perspectives and abilities to drive change…If hiring for culture fit leads to unconscious bias in who we hire, that bias is probably going to carry through to the product they design…” – Delisa Alexander
• “Optimist: someone who figures out that taking a step backwards after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s cha-cha “ – Robert Braulio
• “Don’t be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous.” – Pir Viyalat Inayat Khan
• “Be OK with not being OK helps you let go.” – Yung Pueblo
• “Let silence be your first answer.” – Robyn Ruth
  Sangre Indígena “I defend my culture because my ancestors were killed, oppressed and brainwashed for trying to defend thousands of years of knowledge.” – Pilar Mejia
• “I am not looking to escape my darkness, I am learning to love myself there. “ – Rune Lazuli
• “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram. “The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it.”
• “Solstice comes from the Latin words sol, meaning sun, and sistere, meaning to come to a stop or stand still. On the day of the June solstice, the sun reaches its northernmost position, as seen from Earth. At that moment, it stands still at the Tropic of Cancer. It then reverses its direction and starts moving south again. When we flow with nature and the cycles of the seasons, the winter solstice marks a time of introspection, while summer solstice is a time of outward expression. The sunshine and warmth beckon us to come out to play.”
• “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” – John Paul Sartre
• “Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.” – Teju Cole
• “Above all, be the heroine in your own life, not the victim.” – Nora Ephron
• “Maturity is knowing that when your mood is down you should not trust the way you see yourself.” – Yung Pueblo
• “Freedom is not a gift to keep, it’s a baton to pass. Those who are free must use their freedom to fight for those not yet free.” – TogetherRising
• “I think [ICE raids] are a form of emotional, psychological violence,” – Rev. Tracy Howe
• “There very well could be fatal consequences to deportation,” Andersen says, adding that he worries many undocumented immigrants could be sent back to dangerous situations they tried to escape. “It’s also part of our sacred text, to welcome the sojourner in our midst.”
• “Offering sanctuary is a fairly ordinary act of humanity in the face of extraordinary acts of inhumanity,” said Rev. Mike Kinman, a rector at All Saints Episcopal Church, in a statement to TIME. “This is quite literally an instance of domestic terrorism—our president and government using fear as a weapon for political purposes.”

Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, or IM4HumanIntegrity mobilizes congregations to take a stand on issues of social justice and engages people of faith to develop their own leadership so they can stand up against racism, discrimination and the challenges to human dignity. IM4Human Integrity builds faith-rooted solidarity, direct actions and advocacy in partnership with frontline communities dedicated to immigrant justice and ending the criminalization of people of color.

• Peter McWilliams: Meditating often creates more time than it takes. I interpreted this to mean that meditation calms the mind in such a way that you actually feel less crazed and time-starved than before…Today, I don’t “meditate.” I simply make time in my life for daily moments of stillness and peace. That’s all. – Marianne Hayes
• “The motives for each uprising are unique. But experts say there is reason to believe they are also manifestations of a global trend in which masses of ordinary citizens are demanding more accountability from those in power.”
• “My dear child…I thought I was gonna teach you about the world, but instead you are teaching me about myself” – J. Milburn
• “The more you get in touch with the suffering, the more powerful the nurturing… If you really contact the vulnerability, you’ll find that you can then be very nurturing.” – Tara Brach
• “l want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed for where I am closed I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight.” – Rilke
• “Most women will agree that August 23, the day the Tennessee legislature finally enacted the federal suffrage amendment, is a day to begin with, not a day to end with. Men are saying perhaps “thank God, this everlasting women’s fight is over!“ But women, if I know them, are saying, “now at last we can begin.“ In fighting for the right to vote most women have tried to be either noncommittal or thoroughly respectable on every other subject. Now they can say what they’re really after; and what they are after, in common with all the rest of the struggling world, is freedom.” – Crystal Eastman one of the founders of the ACLU 1920
• “The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.” – Mark Manson
• “Humanity isn’t the darkness we see manifested time and again by those with hatred in their hearts. Humanity is the light of those who come together to save the lives of strangers.” – Upworthy
• “Part of the art of quieting yourself is also to honor the tears that you carry.” – Jack Kornfield
• “See yourself through the eyes of your ancestors, not through the hate of the colonizer.” – Dr. RosalesMeza
• “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” – Toni Morrison
• “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is connection.” – Johann Hari
• “When you pull your brain back from tomorrow and your heart back from yesterday, you find joy in today.“ – Relax Melodies
• “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” ~ Toni Morrison
• “There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.” – Toni Morrison
• “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” – Toni Morrison
• “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us.” – brobles8888
• “Her rebirth was stunning
  she lifted herself up
  from the depths of despair
  grasped her dreams,
  embedded them in her heart
  and walked forward into
  a future that only her will
  and vision could control.” – Yung Pueblo – Revival
• “We repeat what we don’t repair.” – @blackfemaletherapists
• “If we turn our heartbreak and our anger into action, I know we can take the power from the NRA and the lawmakers in their pockets and return it to the people. And I have a plan for that.” – Elizabeth Warren
• “We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is we only become more fearful, more hardened and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us—a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don’t close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.” – Waylon Lewis
• “Two of the great lessons humanity will learn in the 21st century will be:
  To harm another is to harm oneself.
  When you heal yourself, you heal the world.” – Yung Pueblo

Good things to check out:

• For guided meditations & community tips on getting better sleep (Free)
• Día Internacional de los pueblos indigenas – a video highlighting beautiful native and indigenous dance from around the world – dance as medicine.
• Totally heartwarming video clip of a dad and his toddler, that shows a wonderful example of how to engage with your kids.