Apiarian

"Were I to be the founder of a new sect,

I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee,

advise them to extract the honey of every sect."  

- Thomas Jefferson

“If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future,

we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence,

here and now, in the present.”

~Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing

but that we cannot prevent from barking.

-Nicolas de Chamfort

"Ultimately the resurrection is a call to universalism.

Go to all the world, go beyond the boundaries of your fears.

Go to those you have defined as unclean, unworthy, unsaved,

uncircumcised and unbaptized.

Go to those you have reduced to being the object of your prejudices.

Go to those who are different.

Go to the rejected of the world and teach them what I have taught you,

namely that God is love and that love embraces all that God has made,

that love has no boundaries, that love rejects no one

and that love is the essence of the gospel.

The Great Commission was never meant to be a charge

to us to convert the heathen, as it has so often been interpreted to be.

It was and is a call to see everyone as living inside the love of God. “ ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong

"Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will;

a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work

and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that,

in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve,

we have not yet investigated.

Silence is the soul's break for freedom."

~David Whyte (b. 1955)

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd

and precious life you have been issued.

Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good

and creating the illusion that you have power over people

and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it,

enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are."

~Anne Lamott (b.1954)

Peace is a precious gift, which must be promoted

and protected.

Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake.

War begets war, violence begets violence.

~Pope Francis

"The old woman was the kind who would not cut down

a large old tree because it was a large old tree."

~Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

“I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace;

I was trying to disturb the war.”

~Joan Baez

“In a few decades, the relationship between the environment,

resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious

as the connection we see today between human rights,

democracy and peace.”

~Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize award