"What we are is a set of walking contradictions...we cannot always tell where our light ends and our shadow begins or where our shadow ends and our darkness begins."
-Lewis Smedes
"In an ego-centered culture,
wants become needs (maybe even duties),
the self replaces the soul,
the human life degenerates
into the clamor of competing autobiographies."
-C. Plantinga
"To find out what we now are, we need to examine what we have been... we are a product of our heritage and history, just as much as our personal choices."
-Anderson + Milbert
"The greatest mistake history has ever made is not telling the truth."
-anonymous
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength... people feel its inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness."
-Rachel Naomi Remen
"Communities are a place that focus on individuals capabilities and not their deficiencies. Unifying communities is not about just doing what is necessary to serve a group but doing what is necessary to incorporate everyone. We should not being doing for others what they can do for themselves. We need to find another's gifts contributions and capabilities and use them. Give them a place in the community. We need to fight for what the poor need, to be empowered. We need to renew our obligations to strangers, and renew hospitality."
-John McKnight
