A Quote by John Updike
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
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One-planet living means not only seeking to reduce our own consumption, but also mobilising against the system that promotes the great tide of junk. This means fighting corporate power, changing political outcomes and challenging the growth-based, world-consuming system we call capitalism.
The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about something is usually not our own but only the current one pertaining to our class, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim on the surface.
We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds - our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance.
Writing is an outward expression of instinctive insight that must be summoned from the vastly deep of our mysterious selves. Therefore, it cannot be taught; indeed, it cannot even be summoned; it can only be permitted.
When you own a car, you want to keep it looking good, maybe even give it a wash once a week. When you own a house, you try to keep it maintained and don't let the rot set in. When we own something, we look after it. We need to make the same choices with our bodies.
I try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I'm not sure of truth.
It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.
A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something.
If you keep at it long enough, one day you may witness some greater disturbance, some rushing breach of the water's surface so startling and violent and exhilarating that you too will suddenly, and always thereafter, believe in monsters.
In fact, if you look at people within our government, they seem to be quite enthusiastically fighting the war against their own people at the behest of the United States. So it doesn't seem to me that the strong way to oppose this is by joining politics at all, but just to keep speaking and to keep talking about it.
In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.
Forgiveness, in some cases, is a flipping miracle in the sense that you're fighting, and suddenly something happens. It's a kind of grace. Whether you believe in God or not, something happens, and it's transformative.
It feels like for a long time we, in the LGBTQ community, have been fighting for our role, sort of fighting for our visibility and fighting for our stories.
I thought my mountain was coming this morning. It was near to speaking when suddenly it shifted, sulked, and returned to smallness. It has eluded me again and sits there, puny and dull. Why?
We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.
People that don’t know and hear about it, they start to think that all the people that do jiu-jitsu smokes pot, is a drug addict. Here I am fighting for something good, and the guy is fighting for something bad, in my point of view. I can’t agree with that, what he represents. Nothing to do with his jiu-jitsu, his school. If you want to do something like that, do it in private. Keep it to yourself.
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