Been reading some good stuff lately...

Last week, I read some of the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Here's a quote that Rosenberg uses:
...the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need o possess and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-large souled. (Same Keen, philosopher)

Then I watched the documentary 180 Degrees South. And it made me want to rock climb every day of my life, and mountaineer, and surf. And mostly, it made me super interested in Patagonia, and my dreams are running wild with images of Patagonia. And it got me thinking about maybe going there for my Global Learning Term (a semester where I can pretty much go wherever I want).

Then I got to do a little hiking this weekend, and some rock climbing and star gazing and back country cooking. And it was just what I needed to make me excited about life and learning again.

I just read this speech ("Leading from Within") by Parker Palmer, found in his book "Let your life speak: listening for the voice of vocation." And it was so stinking good, here's a quote:
We share a responsibility for creating the external world by projecting either a spirit of light or a spirit of shadow on that which is other than us. Either a spirit of hope or a spirit of despair. Either an inner confidence in wholeness and integration, or an inner terror about life being diseased and ultimately terminal. We have a choice about what we are going to project, and in that choice we help create the world that is. Consciousness precedes being.
There is a fantastic quote by Annie Dillard and a speech given by Vaclav Havel (the president of Czechoslovakia) to the US Congress .

Before heading to bed, I have been reading a book by a professor I had last semester called "Monk Habits for Everyday People" by Dennis Okholm. It challenges a lot of my Protestant comfort zones, and makes me see how enriched my life could be by such simple habits that the Benedictine monks had.

Then there's all the stuff I'm reading for school...Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides. I'm learning a bit from those guys too.
Then there's all these people around me who teach me something in every interaction with them.

good stuff is happening here.