Living in Community

While reading Parker Palmer's "The Company of Strangers" I came across this provocative quote:

"Community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives!"

Palmer adds a corollary:

"And when that person moves away, someone else arises to take his or her place!"

If you find God too easily

Thanks Andy for posting this thought/prayer from Thomas Merton:

If I find Him with great ease, perhaps He is not my God.
If I cannot hope to find Him at all, is He my God?
If I find Him wherever I wish, have I found Him?
If He can find me whenever He wishes,
And tells me Who He is and who I am,
And if I then know that He Whom I could not find has found me:
Then I know He is the Lord, my God:
He has touched me with the finger that made me out of nothing.

An old warning

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Thomas Jefferson 1802

Top 10 Quotes for 2007

I know the year isn't over, but that doesn't stop Time magazine from making its determination already!

Top 10 Quotes taken from Time.com
#1. "I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, 'Oh gosh, I'm worried about my legacy.'"
- President GEORGE W. BUSH, when asked about his falling approval numbers and mounting criticism of the Iraq War during an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes (Jan. 14, 2007)

#2. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."
- MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, president of Iran, responding to a question about the treatment of gays and lesbians in Iran during a visit to Columbia University in New York City (Sept. 24, 2007)

#3. "This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period."
- San Francisco Giants slugger BARRY BONDS, after breaking Hank Aaron's Major League Baseball all-time home-run record with his 756th career homer amid rampant speculation that he has used steroids. Bonds has always denied that he ever "knowingly" used performance-enhancing substances, but he was indicted in November for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury about using them (Aug. 7, 2007)

#4. "If you didn't like Darfur, you're going to hate Baghdad."
- Gen. DAVID H. PETRAEUS, warning of the consequences of an early troop withdrawal from Iraq (Aug. 14, 2007)

#5. "This is it. This is where it all ends. End of the road. What a life it was. Some life."
- Virginia Tech gunman CHO SEUNG-HUI, in a chilling video he made and sent to NBC News before killing 32 people and committing suicide in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history (Apr. 16, 2007)

#6. "I don't think they're piling on because I'm a woman. I think they're piling on because I'm winning."
- HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, on intensifying criticism by rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination (Nov. 2, 2007)

#7. "The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. We have to ask ourselves what is going on here?"
- AL GORE, in an interview with the British paper The Sun, before adding that he believes in 10 years it will be too late to save the planet (June 18, 2007)

#8. "I spent the better part of the past three months enduring criticism that is normally leveled at some kind of genocidal tyrant."
- RUPERT MURDOCH, News Corp. owner, on the outcry over his purchase of the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 8, 2007)

#9. "Hello, Condoleezza Rice? You have me to deal with now."
- A MASKED HAMAS GUNMAN, joking into the telephone of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after taking control of his government compound (June 15, 2007)

#10. "Why don't you just shut up?"
- KING JUAN CARLOS, of Spain, to Hugo Chávez at a summit in Chile after the Venezuelan President called former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar a fascist (Nov. 10, 2007)

It's Election Day in Australia

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.- George Bernard Shaw -