Carl Holmes

“To transform our lives and the world, we need to come from a place of love and compassion, even as we act to “fight” injustice. We need to let our being inspire our doing. When our hearts are filled with love and a genuine desire to be of service to others, then whatever needs to be done will naturally arise in the most helpful way possible. More than that, it will be exponentially more helpful than if we angrily wage internal and external war on injustice, seeing the perpetrators in the same light that they see the people they oppress. Each of us has chosen to come into this life with a certain set of talents that can be used to be of service to others. It could be something as simple as being a patient and nonjudgmental listener. It could be that you are artistic and your art touches people on a deep level. It could be that you are a great leader who can effect real, meaningful change. Or, you may have a gift of writing or making music or cooking or healing. The list is endless. But no natural talent or skill is fundamentally more important than another, even if one skill seems to touch thousands of people and another only a few, because the reality is that separation is only an illusion anyway, and there’s really only One of us here appearing to be many. Keeping this very real science and spirituality in mind will help to keep you from falling into the trap of feeling like you need to do something big and far-reaching to be of true service.”
― Ziad Masri, Reality Unveiled

“New strategies, better programs, skinny jeans, louder music, and hipster beards won’t rescue the church from the sticky position we now find ourselves in. We need a new imagination. An imagination that understands what Paul means by “new creation.”
― Sean Palmer, Unarmed Empire: In Search of Beloved Community

“Dynamism occurs in two matrixes of sequence. I mean matrix in the same sense as in the movie The Matrix—an environment or context in which things happen. Water is the matrix of tea, meaning that tea happens in water. Cyberspace is the matrix of e-mail, meaning that e-mail happens in cyberspace. The matrix of sequence in space is time, meaning that everything that happens happens in time. The matrix of sequence outside of space is eternity. Many people think that eternity is infinite time, but that isn’t how the Bible describes it. Eternity is a separate matrix of sequence in that every point of time is present to every point of eternity. That is why prophecy is possible. God lives in eternity, and from every point of the dynamic matrix of eternity, all of time is present.”
― Ellis Potter, 3 Theories of Everything

“Wherever there is distance, there is longing. Yet there is some strange wisdom in the fact of distance. It is interesting to remember that the light that sustains life here on earth comes from elsewhere. Light is the mother of life. Yet the sun and the moon are not on the earth; they bless us with light across the vast distances. We are protected and blessed in our distance. Were we nearer to the sun, the earth would be consumed in its fire; it is the distance that makes the fire kind. Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. No thing is ultimately at one with itself. Everything that is alive holds distance within itself. This is especially true of the human self. It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance. There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate.”
― John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong