This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love… Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
Bereavement | Challenge | Faith | God | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Trust |
Can anyone think of believing in God without trusting Him? Is it possible to trust in God for the big things like forgiveness and eternal life, and then refuse to trust Him for the little things like clothing and food?
Eternal | Forgiveness | God | Life | Life | Little | Trust | Forgiveness | God | Think |
If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.
A people only become unmanageable when one tries to lead them with a violent love…. Bit if one approaches them with trust and takes them by the hand, if one lures them forward with riches and drives them from behind with just punishment… there will not be a single one who will not adapt himself to the ruler.
Love | People | Punishment | Riches | Trust | Will | Riches |
Don’t judge. Just hear what the person has to say. Thoughtfully consider its meaning for him. When you attend to another’s speech in this way, you may come to recognize the miracle of words. This is sacred listening. To such an ear, story, in all of its forms, is transformed into a melodious language. When the listener is this receptive, both he and the teller are elevated to a new realm of communication. This is the foundation of building trust and safety in any relationship.
Language | Listening | Meaning | Relationship | Sacred | Speech | Story | Trust | Words |
Creativity is the retention throughout life of something that belongs properly to infant experience: the ability to create the world. . . . By creative living I mean not getting killed or annihilated all the time by compliance or by reacting to the world that impinges; I mean seeing everything afresh all the time… When we are surprised at ourselves we are being creative, and we find we can trust our own unexpected originality.
Ability | Compliance | Creativity | Experience | Life | Life | Originality | Time | Trust | World |
To dream anything that you want to dream, that is the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself, to test your limits, that is the courage to succeed.
Beauty | Courage | Mind | Strength | Trust | Will | Beauty |