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ethics and philosophy

my thoughts are sometimes better expressed by others.....

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Fascists use lies as a weapon, to demonize minorities and incite hate and violence.

Oliver Markus Malloy, Atheist Guide: Atheism in a Nutshell

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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If you withdraw your consent
from the rich fool’s human system of wealth,
if you transfer your trust
to the larger system,
if you seek first and foremost
the divine ecosystem,
you will end up with everything you need.

Brian McLaren
(1956 to pres., Author, activist,
theologian, teacher. and pastor)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights.
We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights.
We must step into the reality of natural rights
because all of the natural world
has a right to existence
and we are only a small part of it.
There can be no trade-off.

John Trudell
(1946-2015, Santee Dakota author, poet, actor,
musician, and political activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

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People do meditation to find psychic alignment.
That's why people do psychotherapy and analysis.
That's why people analyze their dreams and make art.
That is why some contemplate tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum,
make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up their prayers.
That's why we do all the things we do.
It is the work of gathering all the bones together.
Then we must sit at the fire
and think about which song
we will use to sing over the bones,
which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn.
And the truths we tell will make the song.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés
(1945 to pres., writer and Jungian psychoanalyst)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

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posted 2 weeks ago

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Natural warmth is our shared capacity to love,
to have empathy,
to have a sense of humor.
It is also our capacity to feel gratitude
and appreciation and tenderness.
It’s the whole gamut
of what often are called the heart qualities,
qualities that are a natural part of being human.
Natural warmth has the power
to heal all relationships—
the relationship with ourselves
as well as with people, animals,
and all that we encounter every day of our lives.

Pema Chodron
(1936 to pres., Buddhist Teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

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posted 2 weeks ago

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Imagine a country whose citizens—
maybe even its leaders—
are brave, calm, and open towards each other;
a country whose people realize
that all human beings belong together
as one family and must act accordingly.

Br. David Steindl-Rast
(1926 to pres., Benedictine Monk)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

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posted 2 weeks ago

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If you look at the facts of something
and write down your thoughts,
you find that those thoughts
lead to certain feelings,
and those feelings
lead to action.
If you can practice new thoughts,
you can change outcomes for yourself.

Catherine Burns
(artistic director at The Moth, storyteller, Buddhist writer)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

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posted 2 weeks ago

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"Three things in human life are important.
The first is to be kind.
The second is to be kind.
And the third is to be kind."

Henry James
(Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902;)
quoted in Leon Edel,
Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 2 weeks ago

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The one who plants trees,
knowing that he will never sit in their shade,
has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 2 weeks ago

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"Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life."

Wu-men

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

M Ljin

master gardener

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Location: Zone 5

731

I like...

posted 2 weeks ago

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I pledge allegiance to the streams
And the beaver ponds of America
And to the renewal for which they stand,
One river, underground, irreplaceable,
With habitat and wetlands for all.

—Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.,
president of Worth a Dam

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 2 weeks ago

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Invite the Sacred to participate
in your joy in little things,
as well as in your agony over the great ones.
There are as many miracles to be seen
through a microscope as through a telescope.
Start with the little things
seen through a magnifying glass of wonder,
and just as a magnifying glass
can focus the sunlight into a burning beam
that can set a leaf aflame,
so can your focused wonder
set you ablaze with insight.
Find the light in each other
and just fan it.

Alice O. Howell
(1922-2014, writer, poet, astrologer, and Jungian Scholar)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 week ago

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“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all,
he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth,
impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility,
plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor,
blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism,
and sadism into justice.
Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all.
It merely required no character.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 week ago

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Spiritual ecology is, at its core, achingly simple.
It is the recognition of the universal spirit
that imbues all living things—
a recognition that must be embodied
through conscious spiritual engagement with the Earth.
It is not about learning something new
but remembering something very, very old.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
(1979 to pres., filmmaker, composer, author,
Naqshbandi Sufi teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 week ago

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Grateful living
is important in the world
because in our constant pursuit
of more and better
we can easily lose sight
of the riches
that lay right in front of us
and within us.

~Guri Mehta
(co founder of Service Space, pilgrim, and social activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

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When love is the ground of our being,
a love ethic shapes our participation in politics.
To work for peace and justice
we begin with the individual practice of love,
because it is there
that we can experience firsthand
love's transformative power.

bell hooks
(1952-2021, AKA Gloria Jean Watkins,
feminist, author, social activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

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HIDING
is a way of staying alive.
Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light.
Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time.
Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose,
the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.
Hiding is underestimated.
We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world;
to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.

Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence,
as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.

We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others.
What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening.
What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us,
to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control.
Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.

Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself.
Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

David Whyte
From CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 week ago

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A higher purpose sets your priorities
for how you choose to act in the world daily.
For example, a higher purpose may simply be
“I will be compassionate.”
It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

Hersch Wilson
(Writer, retired firefighter, dog lover, Buddhist teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 week ago

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Skillfully engaging in the practice
“be curious, not furious”
means to feel and act with a sense of greater safety
instead of scanning for threats.
It means to feel more satisfied
instead of focusing on what is lacking or needed.

Marc Lesser
(Zen teacher and author,
CEO of ZBA Associates executive
coaching, consulting)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 6 days ago

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The ultimate touchstone is witness,
the privilege of having been seen by someone,
and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another,
to have walked with them,
and to have believed in them,
and sometimes, just to have accompanied them,
for however brief a span,
on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

David Whyte

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 5 days ago

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Sadly, because our culture has devalued the feminine,
we have repressed so much of her nature,
so many of her qualities.
Instead we live primarily masculine values;
we are goal-oriented, competitive, driven.
Masculine values even dominate our spiritual quest;
we seek to be better, to improve ourselves,
to get somewhere.
We have forgotten the feminine qualities
of waiting, listening, being empty.
We have dismissed the deep need
of the soul, our longing,
the feminine side of love.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
(1953 to pres., Sufi Mystic)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 4 days ago

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“There are men and women who make the world better
just by being the kind of people they are.
They have the gift of kindness, courage, loyalty, or integrity.
It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck,
running a business, or bringing up a family.
They teach the truth by living it.”

James Garfield

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 3 days ago

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You do not need to chant all night in a temple in the Himalayas.
You don't have to be the newest incarnation of Mary Magdalene.
It is not necessary to read or write spiritual books.
You are not required to know the difference
between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism
or memorize the Beatitudes.
All you have to do to walk the path of the ordinary mystic
is to cultivate a gaze of wonder and step onto the road.
Keep walking. Rest up, and walk again.
Fall down, get up, walk on.
Pay attention to the landscape.
To the ways it changes and the ways it stays the same.
Be alert to surprises and turn with the turning of the seasons.
Honor your body, train your mind,
and keep your heart open against all odds.
Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable
or embarrassing or heartbreaking.
Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops
and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace
all over you, all around you, and settles deep inside you.

Mirabai Starr
(1961 to pres., author, philosopher, counselor,
teacher of contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 2 days ago

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Love changes the way we know things.
Love is not blind affection or mere satisfaction.
Rather, love is the highest good
that seeks and desires the highest good in another.
The wise person is one whose knowledge
is shaped by love
and who sees the world
through the eyes of love.

Ilia Delio
(Franciscan nun, theologian, author)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 1 day ago

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Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it
—grieving is a sign of spiritual health.
But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes;
we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again.
Even a wounded world is feeding us.
Even a wounded world holds us,
giving us moments of wonder and joy.
I choose joy over despair.

Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9875

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3025

posted 6 hours ago

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I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Douglas Adams,
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently, #2)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

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