Getting Ready for the Action of God

"Ellen spoke of caring in terms of a quality of attention, a total commitment to looking and listening,....No one is more attentive than a mother trying to learn to recognize and responsd to the needs of the newborn. She sleeps, of course, but she is sensitive to cries even when she is busy or sleeping..."

-Mary Catherine Bateson

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"Building and sustaining the settings in which individuals can grow and unfold...empowered to become all they can be, is not only the task of parents and teachers, but the basis of management and political leadership– and simple friendship.

[....] To be nurturant is not always to concur and comfort, to stroke and flatter and appease; often it requires offering a caring version of the truth, grounded in reality. Self-care should include the cold shower as well as the scented tub. Real caring requires setting priorities and limits."

-Mary Catherine Bateson

"One morning at breakfast, [Virginia Woolf] asked the young boy to tell her everything since getting out of bed. Once he had, she warned him: 'Unless you catch ideas on the wing and nail them down, you will soon cease to have any.' It was advice that I was to remember all my life.

-Nigel Nicholson