This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The best way to teach our young people the meaning of our democratic freedoms is to demonstrate, by our own example, that we have mastered the 'three R's of citizenship' - Rights, Respects, and Responsibilities.
If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth.
Proximity to death wakes us up. Death dispels the most potent illusion about life – that it belongs to us, and that we have all the time to we need to arrange it the way we want. But in many ways it is a gift that our life is limited, impermanent. We hold it more dear because this is so.
To seek to give life meaning is to seek to transcend the limits of one’s individual life.
Individual | Life | Life | Meaning |
Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?
Earth | Family | Kindness | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Practice | Will |
More and more, we are all becoming aware that our lives are being lived for us by influences that, however numerous they appear, are in fact only so many reflections of one kind of movement in the life of man, a movement toward externals, toward needs and gratifications that, however justified in their own right, become destructive when they pretend to represent the whole meaning of human life.
Children do not extract meaning from what they hear others saying; they try, instead, to relate what has been said to what is going on.
Our life is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be opened… If we are preoccupied with what is missing and what is broken and wrong, we lose the miraculous harvest of all these tiny gifts, piled on upon the other, that accumulate without our acknowledging them. If we listen more carefully for the infinite blessings of a single day, this will not discount or obliterate our sorrows. But it will help us remember how strong and rich we can be, even in the midst of suffering.
The joy and meaning of life is enhanced through increased self-realization, through the fulfillment of each being’s potential. Whatever the differences between beings, increased self-realization implies broadening and deepening of the self… Part of the joy stems from the consciousness of our intimate relation to something bigger than our own ego, something which has endured for millions of years and is worth continued life for millions of years.
Consciousness | Ego | Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | Self | Self-realization | Worth |
Human life has positive meaning only if (1) it contains some purposes the person who live it takes to be nontrivial and achievable; (2) these purposes have positive value; and (3) it also contains actions that are directed toward achieving purposes and are performed with zest.
Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings… Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God’s gift to the world of space.
Beginning | God | Innovation | Sense | Space | Time | Unity | World | God |
Maggie Ross, pen name for Martha Reeves
The pain that gives us self-knowledge, willingly sought and moved through, is at the heart of repentance of any kind. Pain is… the open space - one meaning of the ancient Hebrew word for salvation - the point of intersection and integration of our selves with one another and all the Creation.
Heart | Integration | Knowledge | Meaning | Pain | Repentance | Salvation | Self | Self-knowledge | Space |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
Charity is above all a hymn of love. Real, pure love is the gift of oneself; it is the desire of diffusion and complete donation that is an essential part of goodness.