Those who wish to change things may face disappointment, loss, or even ridicule. If you are ahead of your time, people laugh as often as they applaud, and being there first is usually lonely. But our protection cannot come between us and our purpose. Right protection is something within us rather than something between us and the world, more about finding a place of refuge and strength than finding a hiding place.
Interpretation
Embracing change can come with challenges, but true strength and protection stem from within.
This quote by Rachel Naomi Remen emphasizes the inherent struggles that come with attempting to bring about change. Those who dare to innovate or pursue new ideas often encounter mockery and solitude, demonstrating that being ahead of one's time is fraught with challenges. However, the true source of strength and protection in the face of adversity lies within oneself, highlighting the importance of inner resilience rather than seeking external validation or safety.
In practice
In a motivational speech about dealing with adversity in pursuit of one's dreams.
Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.
Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.
We should not forget that in the '60s, George Wallace's motto was 'segregation forever,' and that he did nothing to deter bombings and other acts of violence and, by his actions, condoned them.
Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag.
I do think that you're starting to see young people pay attention to some longterm issues that they feel Washington has neglected.
Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.
Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you - you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.
Now we're in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change - we're doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change - inch by inch, day by day.
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