| Inspiration: Quotes, Poems, Meditations |
The inspirational quotes below are presented with the beautiful music played by a friend of Deborah Dupre,′Peter Dudar, who with Sally Marr, produce some of the most important films of our time.
Peter, I agree that you are an inspirational peace activist, skilled
musician and master film-maker. Meeting you at the home of Jane and Frank Dorrel is a time for which I shall always be grateful to Jane and Frank Dorrel. As Cliff Olin wrote, "You
have a deft touch and communicate a range of emotions when you play."
I have deeply appreciated the piano since a girl, but rarely if ever have I known anyone to "coax the exquisite and sublime sound you get from the
piano" as Cliff wrote. May you and Sally be blessed for touching the hearts of many, especially our youth, our future, through your important film making, especially Arlington West (Arlington West) and Occupation 101. In love and peace, ~ Deborah Dupre′
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MAY YOU BE GRANTED INNER PEACE
Through daily dramas, amidst a world full of challenges, how can we stay centered and calm?
Below are activities I find helpful to change moments or days of chaos into ones of serenity and pleasure. You probably know what creates a feeling of love within you. List and use them.
1. Do a little something nice just for you every day.
2. Take time to smell the roses, study a bird, or watch ripple in a pool.
3. Do something nice for someone else needing something extra special in their life at this time - and tell nobody.
4. After a particularly strenuous day, try taking time to pamper before dinner: run a bath, use aroma therapy and or oils. Relax.
5. Keep a meditation book beside the bed. Read a page a day.
6. At some point in your life, find the child within. Learn to love and care for that child. Rent John Bradshaw tapes for this and/or seek professional counseling for this.
7. Turn off the radio and television and learn to love your own company; learn to love sounds of silence; and listen for special messages from within.
8. As soon you realize you have offended someone, ask for forgiveness!
9. Above all, find your passion. Spend time becoming skilled in that unique area of your life. It is your gift. To not share it is unhealthy and even selfish.
-- Deborah Dupre'
Peace through Beauty - A Navajo Prayer
Beauty is before me, and beauty behind me,
Above me and below me hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it, I am immersed in it.
In my youth, I am aware of it,
And, in old age I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.
In beauty it is begun. In beauty it is ended.
-- Navajo Prayer
Peace through Conviction
To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer,
is to have kept your soul alive.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
Peace through Creative Visualization
Those who lose dreaming are lost.
-- Australian Aboriginal proverb
Peace through Courage
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
-- Seneca
What comes to pass does so not so much
because a few people want it to happen,
as because citizens abdicate their responsibility
and let things be.
-- Gramscii
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
-- Seneca
Peace through Faith
You never test the resources of God
until you attempt the impossible.
-- F.B. Meyer
Peace through Faith is Free
Faith is free and available to all people at all times.
It only requires that one fully embrace possibility,
and the ultimate value
is in the depth of the embrace.
-- Patch Adams, M.D.
Peace through Holiness
Just to be is a blessing.
Just to live is holy.
-- Rabbi Abraham Heschel
Peace through Hope During Times of Sorrow
I am open to the guidance of synchronicity,
and do not let expectations hinder my path.
I find hope in the darkest of days,
and focus in the brightest.
I do not judge the universe.
-- Dalai Lama, The Millennium prayer
Peace through Love
The love of one's country is a splendid thing.
But why should love stop at the border?
--Pablo Casals
Peace through Love - Mastering Love
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves,
the tides and gravity, shall harness for God the energies of love.
Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
-- Teilhard de Chardin
Fear says, "I want you to be safe."
Love says, "You are safe."
-- Emmanuel
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.
That word is love.
-- Sophocles
All of us must discover for ourselves
that love is a force as real as gravity
and that being upheld in love every day,
every hour, every minute is not a fantasy --
it is intended as our natural state.
--Deepak Chopra
Peace through Granting All Peace and Goodness
Grant, O God/Goddess, Thy Protection;
And in protection, strength;
And in strength, understanding;
And in understanding, knowledge;
And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice;
And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it;
And in that love, the love of all existences;
And in the love of all existences, the love of God/Goddess.
God/Goddess and all goodness.
--Amended From: The Book Of Druidry by Ross Nichols
Peace through Creating Peace
The more man meditates upon good thoughts,
the better will be his world and the world at large.
-- Confucius
'You see things; and you say Why?'
But I dream things that never were;
and I say 'Why not?'
-- George Bernard Shaw
Peace through Halting Violence
Have great faith that we can stop this if we stand up and say no,
but have absolute certainty that it will go ahead if we don't."
Peace through Inner Peace
Who will hold my hand?
Who will send the energy on to weave a circle of light?
I call on the light,
I call to the Lord and the Lady, whatever you wish to call them,
I call to the four corners of the Earth,
Strengthen this circle and let the power grow,
Let the love flow!
--A Druidic Prayer
Peace: Irish Blessing for Peace
May we live in peace without weeping.
May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing.
And may our love fill the world, angel wings tenderly beating.
-- An Irish Blessing
Peace Through Unity
As you walk your path of life and love
guide yourself into spirituality
Be patient with yourself;
there is no rush when it comes to
advancing on whatever path you choose.
We have chosen to come again,
A new day dawns as WE awaken
to the marvel of heaven on earth.
WE are spiritual beings
wearing human cloaks.
Trust yourself and go within.
As the rambling begin to quiet,
listen to the whispers of your
inner self; your intuition; your spirit.
Keep what is good for you.
Love ALL unconditionally.
ONE becomes a Way of Life.
-- Mayan Code of Honor
Peace: Tools for Peace
Wars are poor chisels for
carving out peaceful tomorrows.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace through Patience and Courage
Have courage for the great sorrows of live,
and patience for the small ones;
and then when you have accomplished your daily task,
go to sleep in peace.
God is awake.
--Victor Hugo
Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers,
"Grow, grow."
-- The Talmud
Life shrinks or expands
in proportion to one's courage.
-- Anais Nin
Most of the shadows of the world
are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Peace through Love
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.
That word is love.
-- Sophocles
If you would learn the secret of right relations
look only for the divine in people and things,
and leave all the rest to God.
-- J. Allen Boone
While you are proclaiming peace with your lips,
be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.
-- St. Francis of Assist
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power.
Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
-- Gladstone
Basic Peace Work: Smiling
If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace: A Process
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace Within
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters,
compared to what lies within us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorrow
Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light,
so when we are in sorrow,
then this light is nearest of all to us.
-- Meister Eckhart
Truth
And Ye shall know the Truth,
And the Truth shall set you free!
--St. John the Gospel
Truth and Politicians
You can judge politicians by how they treat refugees; they do to
them what they would do to everyone else
if they could get away with it.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London
Peace through Speaking the Truth
Speaking the truth means a willingness to say what one believes,
defend it with facts and the integrity to modify our beliefs when provided new information.
Remaining flexible, tolerant of the approaches of others
and sometimes having to admit our own errors are the most difficult parts of the "secret weapon",
but the most valuable parts of the tool.
Dr. Nich Begich
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of
indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi
who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such
healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Maya Angelou
Subject: Young or Old?
"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years.
People grow old by deserting their ideals.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt;
as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear;
as young as your hope, as old as your despair."
-- Douglas MacArthur, General
Note: Have a favorite quote or meditation to share here?
Please send it to us here or email info@ecopeaceinternational.com.
We will include it here with "Compliments of (Your Name)" if you wish. Thank you.
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