All my Thoughts ~ Thomas More

"Give me, good Lord, a humble, lowly, quiet, peaceable, patient, charitable, kind, tender,and pitiful mind, in all my works and all  my words and all my thoughts."    

 ~ Thomas More

More at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More

Our Community ~ Bill Mollison

"A people without an agreed-upon common basis to their actions is neither a community nor a nation. A people with a common ethic is a nation wherever they live. Thus, the place of habitation is secondary to a shared belief in the establishment of an harmonious world community. Just as we can select a global range of plants for a garden, we can select from all extant ethics and beliefs those elements that we see to be sustainable, useful, and beneficial to life and to our community."

~ Bill Mollison

More at https://www.facebook.com/fatherofpermaculture
Artwork by Grandma Moses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

I am a Quaker ~ A Member of Providence Meeting (RI)

"I am a Quaker for many reasons. Quaker practice is simple and deep. In this busy, complicated and noisy world, I appreciate and long for a regular “time-out” and my Quaker journey has provided me with a way to sit in silence and be reminded over and over again of the goodness in the world and the people around me despite the challenges we face. I am a Quaker because the practice demands a personal connection to and responsibility for my spiritual journey. My Quakerism is as much about service to a greater good, believing in and working towards a more perfect world and living in accordance with the world we know is possible. I am a Quaker because I believe in peace, in personal integrity and in community. I believe there is goodness in everyone and that it is part of my job to find that and to honor it – in myself and in others."

A Member of Providence Meeting (RI)

More at  http://providencefriends.org/About_Us/Voices/Voices.htm

John Everard ~ Find your Enemies

'You are bidden to fight with your own selves, with your own desires, with your own affections, with your own reason, and with your own will; and therefore if you will find your enemies, never look without.... You must expect to fight a great battle.'

John Everard  1650

More at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Everard_(preacher)

Peculiar People ~ Kathleen Quiring

"As I’ve researched and meditated on my ancestors’ history, I can’t help feeling a little guilty. They worked so hard to preserve their way of life so they could pass it on to their children. They made so many sacrifices to protect one of their greatest values: the freedom to educate their own children. They laboured to protect their descendants from the corrupting forces of the world, especially as manifested in the world’s education programs, which taught conformity, competition, and nationalism. And here I am now, a product of the public school system.

They worked so hard to protect me from the kind of person I’ve become. I sympathize with what the Mennonites were trying to do by isolating themselves. I often long for the same thing and have a similar impulse: to run far away from the dehumanizing effects of consumer culture. I agree wholeheartedly with their desire to remain set apart, and share their suspicion of modernization with its inevitable links to consumerism and materialism. But at the same time, I realize that you can’t ever be fully out of this world. God put us on this world, amidst other people, for a reason. We are called to be a peculiar people, but we still need to engage the rest of the world. We can’t run away forever."

Kathleen Quiring  (Mennonite Blogger) 

More at   (Well worth visiting)  http://becomingpeculiar.com/new-here/ 

Artwork from   Don Swartzentruber 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Swartzentruber

Scrub the Floor ~ D. H. Lawrence

"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."

~  D. H. Lawrence  1913

More at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence

Artwork from Felicity House http://www.felicityhouse.eu/index.htm

Inhabited Garden ~ Goethe

“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

More at   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe

Artwork from Sam Motherwell   http://sammotherwell.weebly.com/