Friday, October 31, 2014

Quotes that Have Me Thinking - revisited

So in an effort to get back on track with posting, here is a post from 2010 that has been getting a great deal of traffic lately:  Quotes that Have Me Thinking

I have been doing a fair amount of reading so today I will share some quotes that have me thinking. 

So I just fell in love with this wonderful quote in Parker J. Palmer's book, The Courage to Teach.  This is the second Florida Scott-Maxwell quote in one of his books that I have just fallen in love with.  I am thinking I may have to see what she has written.

Here is the quote and it is about learning to hold paradox:
"Some uncomprehended law holds us at a point of contradiction where we have no choice, where do not like that which we love, here good and bad are inseparable partners impossible to tell apart, and where we--heart-broken and ecstatic--can only resolve the conflict by blindly taking it into our hearts.  This used to be called being in the hands of God.  Has anyone any better words to describe it?" (Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 90)

Here is the other quote from her that I love:
"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly posses all you have been and done..you are fierce with reality." (Palmer, Let Your Life Speak)

I am now on a quest to become "fierce with reality."

Finally a quote shared with me by a friend about vocation:
"Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about---quite apart from what I would like it to be about---or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.... Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear." Herbert Alphonso, SJ

Here are a couple of more to add:

"...Leadership is about individuals. In fact, leadership is a distributed or collective capacity in a system, not just something that individuals do. Leadership is about the capacity of the whole system to sense and actualize the future that wants to emerge." 
— C. Otto Scharmer (Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies)- note I will be taking an edX course with Otto Scharmer on this book and this book is high on my "to read" list.

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." 
— Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah) - one of my favorite books of all time.



What are some of your favorite quotes?  Share them in the comments!




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