“To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else’s hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means that living so that “I’m only human” does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”

Excerpt above from ——pp. 117-118 An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor HarperOne Publishers Copyright 2009

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010

Maybe it also means it’s OK to drop to your knees to shed a few tears when life kicks sand in your eyes…..by Bill Dahl

“Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down, and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.” – Page 150 – Greg Mortenson – Three Cups of Tea – One Man’s Mission To Promote Peace…One School at a Time

“The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”

Nouwen, Henri J.M.  The Wounded Healer- Ministry in Contemporary Society, IMAGE BOOKS DOUBLEDAY, NYÓ Copyright 1972 by Henri J.M. Nouwen  P.72

“First, everyone should be a heretic. Our times demand it. These are not times for conventional wisdom. New ideas for new times are needed now. All around us imaginative people are rethinking and re-imagining the possibilities of what it means to be human.”

Burke, Spencer and Taylor, Barry A Heretics Guide to Eternity, Copyright © 2006 by Spencer Burke. JOSSEY-BASS Publishers, A Wiley Imprint P. 225

The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong.  But by asking God to forgive you, you are willing to own your own crap.”

Miller, Donald.  Blue Like Jazz, Thomas Nelson Publishers Nashville, TN Ó Copyright 2003 by Donald Miller P. 53

Human beings are the only creatures capable of recognizing the gap between what they are and what they can be expected to be, and of being embarrassed by that gap.

Kushner, Harold S.  How good do we have to be-A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness, Little, Brown and Company Boston, MA  Copyright 1996 by Harold S. Kushner p. 35