Shellen Lubin's Monday Morning Quote

13 Apr, 2026 - #RecoveryPeriod

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 UTC

RECOVERY PERIOD

"If you desire healing
let yourself fall ill."
Rumi

"The medicine is already within the pain and suffering. You just have to look deeply and quietly."
Thomas Hubl

I actually haven't been sick this last week, and yet ...

the body has been depleted.

In between the minimum things I've gotten myself to do,

all I want to do is rest.

And I've been trying to give myself over to that.

Because I know.

I've learned.

If I don't give myself over to retreat, reflection, and recovery the second I feel that first tickle or burn or hint of some kind that something nefarious is there to tackle me and take me down, inhabit me and own me, it will revolt and take me over completely, for far longer than I'm inclined to allow it.

Not everything is healed by rest, but most require moments of retreat and reflection in order to begin recovery.

I am in a period of retreat, reflection,
and 65279;recovery.

Shellen Lubin
April 13, 2026

6 Apr, 2026 - #ResistanceMaking

Mon, 6 Apr 2026 00:00:00 UTC

RESISTANCE MAKING

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
Elie Wiesel

"It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles."
Claude M. Bristol

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
Alice Walker

We can learn from the grass,
tiny fragile blades that somehow manage
to push through the cracks
in the cement of
the sidewalk.

We can learn from water, wearing down
mountains
into sand,
from little droplets becoming floods,
oceans,
tidal waves.

We can learn from all upheavals from struggles for justice
because they only seem inevitable in hindsight--
while they are happening they feel grueling
if not impossible.

We can learn from Elie Wiesel, who
shared his bread in the concentration camp so more people
could eat some
instead of hording it so he
could eat fully.

It's interesting that most of my MMQs about resistance
in the first fifteen plus years of these quotings
and writings
are about negative resistance,
resistance to change, to shifting perspective,
to honoring other people's voices and visions
as well as one's own.

Now, since 2016, we experience resistance more and more
from the other side,
resistance to reactionary forces, authoritarian forces,
the powers-that-be's desperate attempts
to pull the country and all of us
back into
the worst version of ourselves.

We cannot become the worst version of ourselves
in our attempts at resistance, for
even that is a way of their triumphancy.
We must resist,
as we do,
with all the strength and persistence in us, but also
with all the grace, empathy, and humility we
65279;can muster.

It is the only way we can save not just the country
but our selves.

Shellen Lubin
April 6, 2026

30 Mar, 2026 - #HopeMaking

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 UTC

HOPE MAKING

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."
Barbara Kingsolver
ANIMAL DREAMS

"In a time of destruction, create something."
Maxine Hong Kingston

We are in a time of destruction,
perhaps the worst destruction many of us
have ever known.

So many of us are at risk,
some paying with their livelihoods,
some with their lives,
with their ability to stay here, be here, with
their will to persist ...
some of us just with our time and energy,
peace of mind,
sanity.

So many, so much has already been destroyed.
The cost of this period of our history piles on daily,
even as the signs of its end seem to beckon to us
from the horizon, from the end
of this dark tunnel.

Despair manifests in multiple ways--
illness, exhaustion, indulgence, malaise--
some days I just have to let it be,
whatever form it takes.

We have to do what we can, all we can,
to turn the tides.
But ... but ...
Sometimes despair overwhelms
and what we need is to do, to create, to make
hope.

How do you make hope?
For me, it's writing,
reading, researching,
rehearsing, teaching, coaching,
loving--partnering, parenting, friending,
all those things that take me outside of myself
and take me deeper inside myself at the same time,
a beautiful contradictory co-existing reality.

We do not know yet what is still to come,
but we do know what we can do to find our way through it.
Keep making things,
keep making hope.
It's the least we can do.
It's the most we can do.

Shellen Lubin
March 30, 2026

23 Mar, 2026 - #SharingStories

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 UTC

SHARING STORIES

"An enemy is someone whose story you haven't heard."
Gene Knudsen-Hoffman

Sharing stories.
Is there anything more
powerful?
More illuminating?
More
connecting?

It can change you forever,
really hearing others' journeys,
really being heard.
Having each person's journey honored,
validated,
and, yes, questioned as well,
is fundamental to being fully
alive.

And, too, our understandings of our journey
can and should
continue to change
as we understand the world differently,
as we unravel
the mythology,
as we understand others'
journeys, perspectives.

I am continualy surprised by who people are
and what they have been through
when you can be in a place and a time
where and when
65279;they are open to sharing
stories.

Shellen Lubin
March 23, 2026

16 Mar, 2026 - #TheSecret of #TheLand

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 UTC

THE SECRET OF THE LAND

"Here is the Secret: There are those among you who held fast to the land; suffering for it just as others among you suffered in Exile. Only when you understand that you both belong here, have always belonged here, will you begin to heal the scars inflicted by your warring sons.... You must take one another's hands now--there is no time to lose--and begin to make amends to one other. Be humble, be kind, ask forgiveness, and walk together into a new tomorrow, where you and your children can live side by side once more."
Lynne Robinson
THE LAND

8202;
We suffer holding on.
We suffer letting go.
As long as we see each other as enemies,
as long as we are at war,
as long as we think one must lose
so the other can win,
we suffer.

I can't believe we are here again,
another insane, unnecessary war
in the Middle East of all places, again,
with so many people dying,
starving,
at risk,
lost.
It tears me to pieces,
especially when so many of us see another way,
try to work and struggle and create
another way,
and still the way of the warmongers and profiteers
holds sway.

Working on this provocative play
for a reading next Monday (3/23) -
if you're in the NYC area and want more info,
please reach out to me for details.
The Palestinian Israeli Amirah
and the Jewish Israeli Tamara
try to find another way
guided by the Shekinah.

The reading will be followed by a moderated conversation
about the Middle East, women, and art.
Art shows us how the world could be painted, sung,
danced, brought forth
in all its potential hues and shades of colors,
instead of crushed
by the black and white of win/lose warfare.
And women ... life-givers, child-carriers and caretakers ...
if women were the negotiators ...
what a different land it might be.

Shellen Lubin
March 16, 2026

9 Mar, 2026 - #TerribleTimes

Mon, 9 Mar 2026 00:00:00 UTC

TERRIBLE TIMES

"We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things."
Annie Proulx
THE SHIPPING NEWS

"It's funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places."
Karen Marie Moning
DREAMFEVER

"Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes."
Tom Robbins
STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER

Even in terrible times,
we must live,
find joy and beauty and laughter
where we can,
grow things,
grow ourselves and each other,
appreciate the beauty in
watching things grow.

These are terrible times
but people have lived through worse--
ages and eons, hundreds of years, worse--
worse laws, worse petty tyrants,
worse restrictions, reservations, incarcerations,
slavery.

And still we find a way to live,
to breathe,
to drink water, to make food and relish it,
to appreciate the changing seasons.
Still we find ways both to push back
and to push up through the cracks,
speak out, sing out,
love, laugh,
do what we can
to make a life.

I've been thinking about that a lot this week--
if he succeeds,
if we become a true and complete dictatorship,
if worse comes to and becomes worst--
what then?--
and I know we will still find any way possible
to live, to make our lives
have meaning and value,
until we take our last breath.

Shellen Lubin
March 9, 2026

2 Mar, 2026 - #FortunesWheel

Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:00:00 UTC

FORTUNE'S WHEEL

"How swiftly fate can make or unmake kings."
Nathaniel Lee

"Allow cycles to unfold before the goal can be achieved."
Carol Lee Campbell

"I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
Herman Hesse

The wheel of fortune is spinning,
spinning.
So fitting
that's the stone I chose
from the gift of the crones--
smooth, opaque, stones--
themselves another wheel
to spin,
and through the rock
that's the one that called
to me.

I opened the book to read the message
but I couldn't find the page--
every page I turned was "Let go"--
said "Let go"
and I heard, I heard.

And so I carry them together,
the wheel and the letting go:
ride the vicissitudes,
the circles and cycles of choice, chance,
and circumstance,
each in their own time,
all in time;
and
let go
let go
let go all expectation.

Shellen Lubin
March 2, 2026

23 Feb, 2026 - #ShiningThrough

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 UTC

SHINING THROUGH

"Because I know so little I grope for more.
If I knew as much as you, I'd be afraid to
try my luck. I'd be stuck on the sticks of
reason, information that comes to naught.
You, who tell me life is useless rubbish,
and you can prove it with a twirl of diagrams,
heavy numbers. I can't concentrate on that.
I search through my dumb old feelings. And
trust and plough into what I'd like to be
true, mysteries, dark, unending, and all the
black night of search and dreaming, always
open, unanswered, shining through."
Jane Mayhall
THE NAME OF THE ROSE

"So, you're wrong about something. You are. You're not going to know for awhile the thing you're wrong about... but you're wrong about something. You might be wrong about a lot of somethings. And maybe we should all be reminding ourselves of that on the daily."
Heather S. Orr
hopepeddler

We know so little
and the more we open to what there is still to know
to find
to find out
the more we can learn.

We know so little
and oh how we suffer if we're not willing to
admit that,
own that,
revel in the reality of our ignorance
as much as our knowledge.

We know so little.
And isn't that wonderful?
As long as we have humility
and curiosity,
there's so much still to discover.

Shellen Lubin
February 23, 2026

16 Feb, 2026 - #LyingLiar

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 UTC

LYING LIAR

"Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality."
Hannah Arendt

"When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says."
Harry G. Frankfurt
ON BULLSHIT

"Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light."
Kamand Kojouri

"The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."
George Bernard Shaw

The consummate liar
doesn't lie
every time they speak
doesn't lie to the same degree
every time they lie.
That would actually be
simpler to process,
easier to comprehend.
But no.

A consummate liar
a pathological liar
a bullshit artist
a snake-oil salesman
lies all the time
but not every time
and certainly not
to the same degree each time.

And so you need to
test everything--
doubt, research, vet
everything.

It's exhausting.
Every declaration brings on
mountains of work.

And maybe that's the point, really.
If the lying liar keeps you exhausted
keeps you hunting for the truth in everything
(within or without the lie),
you don't have the time or energy left
to hold them
to account.

Shellen Lubin
February 16, 2026

9 Feb, 2026 - #StillFunctioning

Mon, 9 Feb 2026 00:00:00 UTC

STILL FUNCTIONING

"American faith in institutions: we imbue institutions with magical qualities--self-repair, independent functioning--so perfectly designed ... If they're allowed to function, they'll always have a perfect result.... (They) function only as well as they're enabled and allowed to function."
Masha Gessen
8202;
"It's crucial right now to keep the institutions alive. They're the anchors of any community. No, not the anchors. The harbors. The places people go and know they're safe."
Louise Penny
BURY YOUR DEAD

"When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art."
John Trudell

Every time a court pushes back against the looming autocracy,
we celebrate.
But the looming autocracy often
ignores the ruling of the courts.

The question, day by day, becomes
how well are all the institutions
we need, we trust, we rely on
still functioning?
The answer, day by day, becomes
only as well as the looming autocracy
feels and hears and responds
to the pushback against their destruction.
(But even then, the response is sometimes just
in the messaging
and in the media.
Keep looking deeper, harder
for what's really happening.
There are still daily planes of immigrants out of Minneapolis,
not Texas, but Minneapolis, not enforcement, but punishment.)

Of course, the institutions never had a perfect result
(can you say Dred Scott?
Ethel Rosenberg? Leo Frank?
just to name a few)
and yet they are as close as we can get
especially if they aspire to justice,
(even if it's a hypocritical aspiration,
infused as it is with all the prejudice
of the people, the law, and the time).

So we have the institutions.
Can the ones still standing hold?
(The next ones to watch and fight for
are the post office and voting rights,
inextricably intertwined.)

And we have the reporting on the institutions
(can they throw reporters in jail?
they're certainly trying).

And then we have the artists.
We artists can't be stopped because we live and breathe
to speak our truth
to write our truth
to paint, and sing, and dance
what we see,
what we feel,
what we know inside.
And we will always keep trying
to find a way to
reach some kind of audience,
even if it's in a dingy basement.

And for those whose art is the jest?
Our beloved jesters
(can they eliminate the comedians' platforms)?
They dance on the line between reportage and art.
But they may be the most dangerous of all
to the looming autocracy,
because they make people laugh at the king
(the one thing he most cannot stand).
And as the people laugh, they're also learning the truth:
the king has no clothes.

Shellen Lubin
February 9, 2026