James O'dea Quotes

Those who recognize our essential qualities are the true peacebuilders: they let us know that they see the significance of our lives. Meanness of spirit stems from a place of neglect and the absence of nurturance and love. When we have not been seen and loved for who we are, we can turn sour and even violent.

You can notice that those who are more loving and conciliatory do not try to force their truth upon us and have learned to express their truth in ways that still allow for others’ truth to be heard and felt. We can see in our daily experience that there are, in fact, many people who carry in their presence a magnanimity and life-enhancing energetic that invites tolerance, spaciousness for difference, and a capacity to be comfortable with ambiguity.

we are, in fact, designed for movement, progress, evolution, and new stories, even as we must recapitulate the wisdom transmitted to us by our forebears. As we gain new information, different perspectives, and fresh insight, we fire and wire new neural pathways; this phenomenon is referred to as the neuroplasticity of the brain. We are wired to explore, initiate, and create.

When you see what interrupts or aggressively assaults peace in your world, make a choice not to meet it in the form of equal but opposite aggression. Rather, meet it with insight about the cause of its condition, the way a doctor looks at disease or a scientist looks at a phenomenon.

How we obtain our rewards and how they are marketed are always moral issues.

In a world richly textured by new-meaning creation on such a scale as this, the question Who is right? seems a little quirky at best. The questions that seem more apropos to our time are, Who are the morally coherent, and how do they thrive in the midst of chaos and complexity?

Your values were packaged by religious, national, racial, and cultural identities, and the package contains both outmoded and very relevant material that you have to sort through.

The intergenerational transfer of wounds is the greatest threat to peace, just as it is the greatest cause of war.

Truth can arouse conflict by what it says to us or by what it implies, but once its veracity has been accepted in the body, it remains a secure reference point for our choices, decisions, and actions.

Be the guardian of truth process more than the messenger of truth claims.

How we behave is influenced by what we see within the limits of what we know.

Love is solar; it radiates.