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It is much cheaper to make friends than to fight enemies. — David Hartsough

I took part in organizing a silent worship service in the gallery of the U.S. Senate, while the legislators below us debated and voted for more funding for the war [in Vietnam]. When the vote was over, we were arrested on a charge of "praying without a permit." — David Hartsough

I remembered Bayard Rustin, a conscientious objector who had served time in prison during the Second World War and then became a leader in the civil rights movement, saying that being a pacifist is one-tenth conscientious objection and nine-tenths working to do away with the things that make for war. — David Hartsough

The surprise came at the end of a banjo lesson. Cary Fridley, my teacher, began describing the ​work involved in “cutting” her next CD: recruiting musicians, practicing privately, practicing ​together again and again — all in preparation for the final recording session coming up ​the next week. ​“I get increasingly anxious as we approach the recording,” she admitted. ​“Well,” I asked, “what helps you with your anxiety?” ​Her response was profound beyond her knowing.“When I can get to that place within myself and with others where the music is more important than me, then I am not anxious.” — Mahan Siler, quoting his banjo teacher

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become breakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. — C.S. Lewis

Ultimately, we believe that there is a need for new discourse for how we talk about public policy that needs to be rooted in our moral values. How we treat the poor, women, children. which, he says, extends beyond party lines or religious affiliations. — Rev. William Barber, NC NAACP director and leader of the state’s “Moral Monday” movement

The secret essence of the soul that knows the truth is calling out to God: Beloved . . . strip me of the consolations of my complacent spirituality. Plunge me into the darkness where I cannot rely on any of my old tricks for maintaining my separation. Let me give up on trying to convince myself that my own spiritual deeds are bound to be pleasing to you. Take all my juicy spiritual feelings, Beloved, and dry them up, and then please light them on fire. Take my lofty spiritual concepts and plunge them into darkness, and then burn them. Let me only love you, Beloved. Let me quietly and with unutterable simplicity just love you. — Mirabai Starr

Why am I drawn to desert and mountain fierceness? What impels me to its unmitigated honesty, its dreadful capacity to strip bare, its long, compelling silence? It’s the frail hope that in finding myself brought to the edge…I may hear a word whispered in its loneliness. The word is ‘love,’ spoken pointedly and undeniably to me. It may have been uttered many times in the past but I’m fully able to hear it only in that silence — Belden Lane

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake. — C.S. Lewis