Ryan

“Don’t search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell.”
― Shams Tabrizi

“How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves; We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.”
― Shams Of Tabriz

“Pragmatism is but an experience, and idealism is but a dream. If we live solely by the force of experience, we fall captive to our limita-tions, and if we live solely by the force of dreams we fall captive to delusion.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“​There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill the certificates - died of malnutrition - because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

...and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath