Sophia's Children

Here’s a trio of Museworthy quotations or excerpts from one eloquent and visionary leader, and two inspired writers of different generations, but all “born into interesting times.”

Two were born in the mid to late 1920s, and the third was born in the mid-1960s when the first two were writing and speaking, inspiring and planting consciousness seeds.

Each has inspired me and stirred that sense of heartful, core-deep ‘courage of one’s convictions‘ in the last week or so, as I’ve come back across their words and work.

The theme of humanity and that which invites, invokes, stirs, and reflects our humanity and innate humaneness is but one thread that weaves through these three inspired perspectives.

Another might be courage … that “courage of (y)our convictions” theme again, which all three of these men live(d) with and exemplify as well as write and/or speak about.

Given the rather marked lack of humanity and inhumaneness so often emphasized on ‘the news’ (and by many who deliver ‘the news’), it’s always a fine, fine thing to share inspiration on the virtues-in-action as medicine for the vices/shadow-in-action.

“But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself.”

“The precise role of the artist (creative seers of human truth), then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”

“The human beings whom we respect the most, after all — and sometimes fear the most — are those who are most deeply involved in this delicate and strenuous effort, for they have the unshakable authority that comes only from having looked on and endured and survived the worst.”

“… a higher level of consciousness among the people is the only hope we have, now or in the future, of minimizing human damage.”

~ James Baldwin (1924-1987), as quoted in Maria Popova’s Brainpickings article.

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The writer and professor Chris Abani, shared this in a TED Talk (and various other talks he’s given since):

“In South Africa, they have a phrase called Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

“…the world is never saved in grand, messianic gestures but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion; everyday acts of compassion…”

~ Chris Abani on Humanity (I shared this TED Talk here)

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And the third of these inspiration-stirring Museworthy Quotations – a very Uranian-Promethean theme and wording:

“Do not conform” is difficult advice in a generation when crowd pressures have unconsciously conditioned our minds and feet to move to the rhythmic drumbeat of the status quo.”

“Many voices and forces urge us to choose the path of least resistance, and bid us never to fight for an unpopular cause and never to be found in a pathetic minority of two or three.”

“Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.”

“We are called to be people of conviction, not conformity; of moral nobility, not social respectability. We are commanded to live differently and according to a higher loyalty.”

~ The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his sermon on Transformed Nonconformists and Creative Nonconformists – read it here, and related Sophia’s Children posts here.

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Very powerful, heartful, evocative, and stirring, yes?

Big Love & Stirred-Inspiration,

Jamie