UU Speak Peace

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

There is a field... out beyond right and wrong ... I will meet you there ...

We cannot hold a torch or hold a flame to enlighten someone's else's path without also brightening our own.

To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

It's important not to mix up empathy and sympathy, because when someone is in pain and then I say, "Oh, I understand how you feel and I feel so sad about that," I take the flow away from them, and bring their attention over to me.

In our culture most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.

Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.

The first component to empathic connection is what Martin Buber calls the most precious gift one human being can give to another: presence. You make yourself fully present to what was alive in the other person now, in this moment. You don't think of what you're going to say next, or what happened in the past.

The first step in healing, whether we want to heal ourselves or help someone else to heal, is to put the focus on what's alive now , not what happened in the past.