Lakota notion

"The Lakota notion of living creatures is that trees, buffalo and man are temporary energy swirls, turbulent patterns...You find that perception registered so many ways in archaic and primitive lore. I say that it is probably the most basic insight into the nature of things, and that our more common, recent Occidental view of the universe as consisting of fixed things is out of the main stream, a deviation from basic human perception."
-- Gary Snyder

the hour of new clarity

"You must give birth to your images. / They are the future waiting to be born...
Fear not the strangeness you feel. / The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.
--Rainier Maria Rilke

The "Truths" of Systems Thinking

Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back Behavior grows worse before it grows better The easy way out usually leads back in The cure can be worse than the disease Faster is slower Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space Small changes can produce big results--but the areas of highest leverage are the least obvious

from The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

The Souls of Women

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of wo/men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe, and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of women."
Black Elk

No words necessary

Some doors

"Some doors only open from the inside."
Sufi Proverb