There are times in our lives when we choose our challenge, and there’s times when the challenge simply chooses us. It’s what we do in the face of those challenges that really defines who we are, and more importantly, who we can and will become.
I ask this… If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out.
If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door… And that’s all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power… it’s about the “us’s” out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s.
Without hope, the us’s give up - I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you… You gotta give em’ hope… you gotta give em’ hope.
— Harvey Milk #nationalcomingoutday
Posted October 11, 2011 at 9:15am
Love your art and it will love you back.
There are so many noises going on inside of you, so many echoes of all sorts, so many internalizings of the rumble and the traffic, the confusions, the disorders by which your environment is peopled that I wonder if you can get still enough—not quiet enough—still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom the sound of the genuine in you.
— Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, “The Sound of the Genuine”
Posted October 10, 2011 at 10:29pm
People who learn to love themselves also become more autonomous, not in the sense of being socially isolated but in being able to resist the self-defining messages they receive from other people.
— Robert Wuthnow
After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s
After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s
In those days,
we finally chose
to walk like giants
& hold the world
in arms grown strong with love
& there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.
we finally chose
to walk like giants
& hold the world
in arms grown strong with love
& there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.
Posted September 11, 2011 at 3:21pm
It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical.
Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death.
I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again.
— Anne Frank
Posted September 11, 2011 at 8:05am
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
— From W. H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939”
Posted September 10, 2011 at 7:42pm
Gospel music opens up doors that the audience doesn’t even realized are closed.
— Mackie Spradley, our gospel choir director.
Posted August 16, 2011 at 10:19pm
Let it be said of us this day that our agenda will be to pour love into the world in a rainbow of colors, whatever it costs us.
My friends, you are the one the world has been waiting for. Your voice, your hope, your promise, your dreams… YOU are the one that the world has been waiting for.
— Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson, Cathedral of Hope, “The Gay Agenda”
Posted June 28, 2011 at 10:47pm
A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man’s social conditions. Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Posted June 15, 2011 at 10:16am
#KeepCalmAnd: Mixed a meme with some Harvey Milk. This is the essence of my job.
Posted June 12, 2011 at 11:06pm
Living a success-obsessed life can lead us to forget that ultimately it is neither about us nor up to us, it is about God, who is creator, sustainer and redeemer of this cosmos.
It is our job to partner with God’s work however we can discern it. If the cross of Jesus Christ, and the wounds that the Risen Christ showed to those disciples in that upper room teach us nothing else, it teaches us that success will not always look like success, and victory may often come disguised as defeat.
The question isn’t whether we will be successful, but whether we will be faithful.
— Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson - “There Is A Fire In The Auditorium”
Posted June 12, 2011 at 6:34pm
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
— Kurt Vonnegut
