24 - 31 May 2009

To help us through the struggles of life we need something or someone to make hope a reality. This realisation is behind this week’s quotation:

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”.

Raymond Williams (1921-1988, novelist, cultural theorist).

Williams does not say how we make hope possible. Religion or spirituality has played a major part in many people’s lives in helping them when despair could easily get the upper hand. My experience is that religion or spirituality needs a human face for this to be effective.

17 - 24 May 2009

Over the last few weeks the quotations have been about the struggles of life. This week’s quotation follows the previous one which described the power struggle between humans as a virus. It is by a French palaeontologist, who I would also describe as a mystic, Teilhard de Chardin:

“The persons in the street get in my way because I collide with them as possible rivals. I shall like them as soon as I see them as partners in the struggle.”

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955, Jesuit priest, palaeontologist and geologist). If you want to find out more about Teilhard de Chardin, there are links at www.bolton.ac.uk/Chaplaincy/Thought/.

3 - 10 May 2009

Throughout history many have expressed the realisation that through life's struggles our characters can grow stronger. In our own time, a well-known media personality put it very simply:

"Where there is no struggle, there is no strength".

Oprah Winfrey (born 1954, actress, literary critic and American talk-show host).

Related Oprah quotations

"What I learned at a very early age was that I was responsible for my life. And as I became more spiritually conscious, I learned that we all are responsible for ourselves, that you create your own reality by the way you think and therefore act. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because you are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything".

"What other people label or might try to call failure, I have learned is just God's way of pointing you in a new direction".

26 Apr - 3 May 2009

The general theme for the next few weeks will be in the areas of struggle and also of pain: how do we continue to have a positive attitude if we are struggling with work (a project, research revising for exams or routine tasks), or when life becomes difficult. I will begin with a quotation from an unlikely source, Dolly Parton; and yet she expresses an attitude which can be found in many religions:

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain”.

Dolly Parton (born 1946, singer-songwriter and actress).

You may like to respond with a quotation or idea from your own world-view or religion.