"Being and edge-walker requires the willingness to have your motives questioned, to be held to a higher standard, to be critiqued more than you are encouraged, to become a lightning rod for all that hasn't worked in the past. In this work of creating what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the beloved community," whether you are a member of an oppressed minority or a privileged dominant oppressor, you must be willing to lose your membership in the world where you were most at home."
"Consistently we've done what we could in the place were we found ourselves, and this has been our radical invitation to others."
"The only way, as I can see it, to move forward in creating a better future is to show respect through our capacity to listen and our willingness to make ammends for what has happened in the past."
"At the core of our work has been the simple effort of helping very different people to take their best steps toward one another through the use of story and visioning together, by practicing respect and honoring the differences, and by building capacity for awareness, we are cultivating soil for new alliances and relationships. The challenges to our democarcy and our planet are too severe to be adequately addressed by great organizations alone; these challenges must be confronted meaningfully by great relationships; alliances and deep collaborations where each party sees how its success is tied up in the success of others."
"I imagine anyone reading this understands from their own life experience how fragmentation and isolation is institutionalized in our country right now. We are pitted against each other, divided by politics, by privilege, by race; and in our heart of hearts, most of us also recognize that this is the opposite of wholeness."
"If our objective is to reweave the whole, then we must be willing to delive into all issues of oppression that prevent that whole."
"We've shown courage in confronting models of conservation and environmentalism that have forgotten people and community, and in confronting models of community development that have forgotten land and creatures. We've held the courage to re-imagine the order of things, to point out that laws don't save places only people do. We've had the courage to stay on the long path of confronting the history of race, class, privilege and power in our own lives."
