The value of truthfulness.
March 20, 2019A liar no longer needs to feel that his lies may involve him in starvation. If living were a little more precarious, and if a person who could not be trusted found it more difficult to get along with other men, we would not deceive ourselves and one another so carelessly.
But the whole world has learned to deride veracity or to ignore it. Half the civilized world makes a living by telling lies. Advertising, propaganda, (politics) and all the forms of publicity that have taken the place of truth have taught men to take it for granted that they can tell other people whatever they like, provide that it sounds plausible and evokes some kind of shallow emotional response.
-Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island [1955]
Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out. We have only to breathe to remember our place as al living inlet. Experience in, feelings out. Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out. In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off. For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how humankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirt that sets us free.
-Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening [2011]
There is something in me that knows what to do. It not only knows what to do, It impels me to act upon what It knows. This very acceptance flows forth into action through me. Always there is an inner, quiet, persistent confidence, a nonresistant but complete acceptance, an inward flowing with the stream of Life, knowing that It carries me safely and surely to my destination and to the accomplishment of every good purpose.
-Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind [2001]
We are guided continually. We choose to follow what is good, and right, and just.
Straws into waves.
This Artist Turned Thousands of Plastic Straws Into Stunning Ocean Waves
The installation highlights the problem of plastic pollution.
Plastic straws have become one of the great scourges of the ocean, and in a massive installation by artist and activist Benjamin Von Wong, they’ve been transformed into majestic waves with all the verve that entails.
The “Stawpocalypse” features green, blue, and black straws for water, clear straws for the surf’s froth, and yellow straws for sand. Von Wong came up with the idea after learning more about the problem of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. He wanted to create a dramatic scene that conveyed the scale of the problem.
“Numbers, statistics, and facts hit the mind, but art has the potential to hit the heart,” Von Wong told Global Citizen. “I personally see my role as an artist to give people convenient excuses to talk about the problem.”