When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.
–Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 2nd ed.
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“…before we speak, we can choose silence and then look honestly at what the urge to speak is telling us about ourselves.”
—Norvene Vest, No Moment Too Small, 1994
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“When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention [...]
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More from The Healing of America by T.R. Reid (p.87):
Everyone in Japan is required to sign up with a health insurance plan. This is a “personal mandate,” an issue that became controversial during the 2008 presidential election in the United States. Every nation that relies on health insurance has that requirement (except the USA), and [...]
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Another quote from T. R. Reid’s The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care:
“…it seems certain that the French will continue to emphasize equal access to medical care–the basic rule that anybody, regardless of race, income, or occupation, can go to any doctor and get the same treatment as [...]
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As part of my quest for information about health care issues for the poor, homeless, and underserved, I read T. R. Reid’s new book, The Healing of America. In it Mr. Reid profiles the health systems of France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada with additional information about Switzerland and Taiwan. Mr. Reid describes [...]
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Read this…it sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
“What makes a saint?
Extravagance. Excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection, exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope, inordinate love.”
–from Barbara Brown Taylor’s article “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” in Weavings III/5, September/October 1988, pages 32-33, 34-35.
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As I continue to read Jim Wallis’ Faith Works, I draw your attention to the second section which includes these three chapters:
Do the Work and You’ll Find the Spirit
Recognize the Three Faces of Poverty
Listen to Those Closest to the Problem
The third chapter of this section really affected me. It ended with this:
“It’s difficult to [...]
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On my reading agenda now is Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change by Jim Wallis.
The first three chapters, which he has organized as lessons, have me hooked:
Trust Your Questions
Get out of the House More Often
Use Your Gift
If we started with these three lessons, what might happen? [...]
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“Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and create profitable diseases and dependencies – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, [...]
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