Rachel Singh

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“And how she regretted, watching his face locked in grief even as he slept, his lip trembling, that she’d frittered hours away reading about socialists and unions and progressives and politics and corporations, fighting about a meaningless flag that said “I’m proud to be an American,” when it should have said “I’m happy to be alive,” and what the difference was, and how one’s tribe cannot be better than another tribe because they were all one tribe. An extraordinary wisdom came upon her, one she had not imagined possible, and she wanted to share it with him in those first—or perhaps last—moments of her consciousness. But after seeing his lovely face, she felt yet again an enormous”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.
Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.
Let us be aware of the source of being,
common to us all and to all living things.
Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,
let us fill our hearts with our own compassion—
towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be
the cause of suffering to each other.
With humility, with awareness of the existence of life,
and of the suffering that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh