What if I told you that what the world needs right now is you - flawed, fumbling, wounded, trying-to-figure-it-all-out you? Because that's exactly what it needs, you know - more velveteen-real people who are a little worn and a little weary, but who bring a whole lot of warm and welcoming and wonderful to life.

Do not be hardened by the pain and cruelty of this world. Be strong enough to be gentle, to be soft and supple like running water, gracefully bending around sudden turns, lithely waving in strong winds, freely flowing over sharp rocks, all the while quietly sculpting this hard world into ever deeper beauty, gently eroding rigid rock into silken sand,tenderly transforming human cruelty into humankindness. Remember, true strength is not found in the stone, but in the water that shapes the stone.

I'm just a humanstanding in front of other humansreminding them that we're all human.

No child is born filled with hate. No child is born crippled by fear. No child is born inflamed by rage. Each life is a chance to make things better. Each generation has a chance to do things better. This is our time, our turn, our chance. Let's do better.

I don't want to stand before God and tell him that I religiously demanded morality from his children. I want to stand beside God and tell him that I religiously demonstrated love for his children.

If we slow down and take the time to listen every soul we encounter can teach us something new. Wisdom comes in every shape and size and color and language and form imaginable. The only true limitation is our own inability to see and hear and understand the infinite beauty and wisdom of the human spirit, regardless of its packaging.

Life doesn't always get better.But you do. You get stronger.You get wiser. You get softer.With tattered wings you rise.And the world watches in wonderat the breathless beauty ofa human who survived life.

Pieces of who I wasshatteredreassembledinto who I am;Shards shaping into prisms casting arcs of soul-fireinto who I will be;I am a kaleidoscopeof all the versionsof myselfI was and amand will become.

The job of each generation is to solve more problems than they create and to lift up the next generation to be better than the last. Simply repeating the past does neither.