Quotes, Poems, & Sayings...

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

As we collectively express and experience love and kindness in every aspect of our lives, we will create immense healing and positive change in the world.

When kindness becomes pandemic to humanity, the world and our entire existence will experience both subtle and extreme changes on all levels. Kindness is not a ‘cloak’ to be put on and taken off at will…but our true nature that yearns to be shared. In our fast-paced and competitive world, we have become so used to ‘dressing up’ and changing ‘face’ to suit the situation and circumstance, that we have forgotten who we really are.

To receive and share kindness is the birthright of every person and creature on the planet and real change in the world comes with relating from the heart and teaching children and each other by example. We need to slip into the habit of being kind in all areas of our lives and watch for opportunities as we go about our day, where a meaningful smile and ‘hello’ or offering a helping hand to a stranger, can lift a mood and possibly save a life.

This time of year heralds for many people, thoughts of distant friends and relatives and perhaps the sending and receiving of that ‘once a year’ communication with ‘best wishes and an update on life’. For some, it’s a time of sadness, loneliness and longing for people and situations passed. The jovial ‘season’s greetings’ and ‘holiday wishes’ made in passing, may cheer a dreary day but when the ‘cloaks of festive kindness’ have been put away for another year, those lives still go on, sad and alone, in need of love and support.

Deep down we know that the true expression of who we are is not in seasonal or spasmodic acts of kindness but in constant care and concern for all living beings. Once we recognise and acknowledge our instinctive, authentic nature and begin to truly relate and interact from the heart, our thoughts and behavior will become consistently kind. When we each live by example in all we say and do, the loving nature of humanity will continue to expand and permeate all corners of the globe and as we collectively express and experience love and kindness in every aspect of our lives, we will create immense healing and positive change in the world.

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

You have no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What's the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.
It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
So I've brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.
~ Rumi

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

I have been having dreams about sleeping through my alarms lately. The dreams always end the same way – in them, I wake up startled, realizing what has happened, but by then it is already too late.

In my waking life, I hear alarms all the time.

I study climate change. I am a budding scientist. I am a community organizer. I am a twenty-two year old who is all too aware of what greenhouse gases mean for my generation: we will be living the consequences of a problem so monumental, it will affect every aspect of our future.

Most of my research has been in the Arctic. I remember the first time I saw glaciers calving in Greenland.

It was 2AM. The sun was out – as it always was in summer – and low on the horizon. I was hiking with other research assistants, walking along treeless tundra. I could see for miles. Every step I took left a deep imprint in the grasses. I felt the weight of my feet – knowing the Arctic landscape, I was acutely aware that those footprints would last for years, at least.

We perched on a mountain ridge and sat facing the ice sheet.

We waited.

And, then, it came – immense thunder in a cloudless sky. Then, a piercing crack.

Before it could even register, five skyscrapers tore off and turned into icebergs. Never in my life have I felt more like a speck of dust.

Most of us know all too well what climate change means for our generation. We are told by the most respected, serious, and intellectual people that we will have no future to live for unless society comes together as one common humanity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then, we are told by decision makers, adults, this same society, that our youth renders us powerless. How can we live with the grief of knowing we have no lives to look forward to? Should we even consider bringing children into this world when we know the world is betraying their own right to live?


Today, world leaders gathered in Paris to kick off the COP 21 United Nations climate talks – the biggest climate change conference of this decade. More Heads of State were in one place today than any other time in history.

I sat with other young people in these same halls. We collectively held our breath as we watched Barack Obama, François Hollande, Vladimir Putin, and Justin Trudeau speak.

“I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late,” President Obama said. “And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won’t be too late for them.”
All the while, the United States is still a country deliberately undermining the U.N. climate process.

We are young, and terrified.

Our fear is rooted in the immense love we have for this world.

My biggest fear in life is to see our world leaders act on climate change – to see our governments acknowledge what it means to be human and to feel the suffering of others, to show compassion – to cry happy tears, and then to wake up.

We are all young and seeking meaning – we have barely established our own identities.

How can we love ourselves, love each other, in such a broken world?

How can we love this world if it is so broken? How can we hope when, as we speak, world leaders are holding hands as they walk into oblivion? They are negotiating our futures away.

Love this world till it hurts. Foster an aching love for everything around us – clear skies, dandelions, untouched snow, sunshine, the feeling of bouncy grass against our bare soles.

Find it within you to love this world in spite of its brokenness. Love it because it is broken.

In the face of climate change, love is all we have left. There is hope at the heart of this all – we are young, but we know what the future can look like, and our love for the world pushes us to continue working on making it better.

The alarm bells are ringing...

[Electrocell]

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
― Lao Tzu


“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”
― Lao Tzu


“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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