This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Parents belong to the world of the past; children belong to the world of the future. Both share the world of the present, but neither can enter or fully understand the other’s world and time. It is easier to communicate across miles than across years. We meet and laugh awhile; we separate and grieve awhile. And then we remember.
Children | Future | Parents | Past | Present | Time | World | Understand |
Joan Chittister, fully Sister Joan D. Chittister
Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.
Abuse | Children | Commitment | Conscience | God | Individual | Law | Morality | Obedience | Sin | Soul |
The mystic vision of God, or ecstasy of felt union with Him, is, to those who attain it, an affair of ravishing emotional intensity, of vivid intellectual illumination, and on both of these counts of supreme value.
T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton
Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning.
Ability | Children | Esteem | Future | Learning | Parents | Reading | Research | Self | Self-esteem | Smile | Trust |
[A] society that pulls the needs of its children dead is a society “progressing” rapidly toward moral ruin.
Tiny children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. They keep this attitude until we adults convince them that learning is not fun.
Children | Distinguish | Fun | Learning | Learn |
The primary business of school is to train children to co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence.
Business | Children | Consciousness | Business |
Adolescence begins when children stop asking questions – because they know all the answers.
Adolescence | Children |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Man’s ultimate aim is the realization of God, and all his activities, - social, religious – have to be guided by the ultimate aim of the vision of God. The immediate service of all human beings becomes a necessary part of the endeavor simply because the only way to god is to see Him in His creation and be one with it.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be mere seekers, would have become one with God, for Truth is God. But being only seekers we prosecute our quest and are conscious of our imperfection.
God | Imperfection | Truth | Vision |