"You want to do what?" her friend said. "But you can’t, you can’t, what difference could you make. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard!" "But if someone doesn’t do something, how many more people will be killed, maimed or starve to death because of the war?" Emily answered. "But two...

Take a moment right now to visualize in your mind’s eye the first American Thanksgiving feast which our Pilgrim forebears shared with their Native American neighbors on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in the Fall of 1621. If you’re like me, you imagined a pretty pleasant and peaceable scene—a...

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a commissioning is "the act of granting certain powers or authority to carry out a particular task or duty." In many churches there is a common misconception that the leaders of the church run things—that the Board or the Council of Chairs has all...

"She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and to know her was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them....

"She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time."...

"I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty....

"The ship struck at ten minutes after four A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifted the forecastle roof and...

"The position I early was enabled to take was one of self‐reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or...

"What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded."...

"Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, ʹShe has a masculine mind.ʹ This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone...

"We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty....

"I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether a spirit‐world projects...

"All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural....

"Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom."...

“Her specter haunted all who knew her, and many who did not. Henry James, born in New York in 1843, stood beside his father on a Hudson River excursion boat and heard Washington Irving tell that Margaret Fuller had been drowned the day before. Even at the age of seven this small boy was resolved...

I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

Long ago the chalice of communion wine was set apart for priests alone. We would have all share in the bounty of the earth: wind and milk, bread and meat, that none may go hungry. Long ago those who spoke their minds freely were put to death by fire. We would use fire to warm all bodies and light...

The church is a body. May this body breathe and be together in the spirit of hope May it feel held by comfort. Those who seek consolation, may they find it in the solace of this moment. The church is a body. It is as strong as all the people who have ever gathered within its walls....