RJ Powell:
CLASS OF 1998
Lee-Davis High SchoolClass of 1998
Mechanicsville, VA
RJ's Story
RJ is from Knoxville, Tennessee. RJ is married with Michaelangelo Martin. RJ's schools include Lee-Davis High School. RJ later attended James Madison University (Modern Foreign Languages, International Affairs). RJ works(ed) at St. James Episcopal Church of Knoxville, East Tennessee State University.
Music RJ likes includes Grizel, Lady Gaga, Orison. Books RJ likes include Kissing Fish, A Wrinkle in Time, Leo Tolstoy. Movies RJ likes include Alice Walker, Banjo Romantika, Millions Movie. TV shows RJ likes include The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, LeAnn And Eddie.
One of RJ's favorite quotes is:""Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled."
- Anonymous
"If you want to be holy, be kind."
- Frederick Buechner
"Christianity is a way, not a state, and a Christian is never something one is, only something one can pray to become."
- W. H. Auden
"The unending paradox is that we do learn from pain."
- Madeleine L'Engle
"If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice."
- St. John Chrysostom
“Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”
- Rumi
"Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God."
- Dr. Maya Angelou
"Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is."
- Hans Urs von Balthasar
To the query, 'What is a friend?' Aristotle's reply was, "A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
"Do well what you do."
- St. Benedict
"It is well to think well; it is divine to act well."
- Horace Mann
"Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is blooming there."
- W.B. Yeats
"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."
- Victor Hugo
"Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us; so be quick to love and make haste to be kind!"
- A Scottish Blessing
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.
- E.B. Browning
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
- T.S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages" in Four Quartets
In an interview of Mother Teresa by Dan Rather:
Dan Rather: “When you pray, what do you say to God?”
Mother Teresa: “I don’t say anything. I listen.”
Dan Rather: “Okay…When God speaks to you, then, what does he say?”
Mother Teresa: “He doesn’t say anything. He listens.”
"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."
- Khalil Gibran
"Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience."
- Fr. Thomas Merton
"In disarming Peter, Christ disarmed every Christian."
- Tertullian
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
- The 14th Dalai Lama
"Work is love made visible."
- Kalil Gibran
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."
- Oscar Wilde
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"We must remember that God is not a Christian. God is the God of everyone!"
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Love gives faith the reality of what it believes and hope the presence of what it hopes for, and the enjoyment of what is present."
- St. Maximos the Confessor
"…when the time comes to enter the darkness in which we are naked and helpless and...Expand for more
alone; in which we see the insufficiency of our greatest strength and the hollowness of our strongest virtue; in which we have nothing to rely on, and nothing in our nature to support us, and nothing in the world to guide us or give us light—then we find out whether or not we walk by faith."
- Thomas Merton
"A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No person can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”
- Thomas Merton
"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich."
- St. Ambrose of Milan
"The bread you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the person who is naked. The shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor. The acts of charity you do not perform are the injustices you commit."
- St. Basil the Great
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"You think the shadow is the substance: so to you the substance has become a cheap toy. Wait until the day when that substance freely unfolds its wings. Then you will see the mountains become as soft as wool, and this earth of heat and ice become as nothing; you will see neither the sky nor the stars, nor any existence but God - the One, the Living, the Loving."
- Rumi
"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."
- Thomas Merton (Thoughts in Solitude)
"When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
- John Milton, Sonnet 19
Jesus said:
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.
The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friend.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.
Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.
I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.".
More about RJ:"Curate, St. James Episcopal Church, Knoxville, TN
Priest, Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee
Oblate, Saint Meinrad Archabbey (O.S.B.)
Post tenebras lux. | Light after darkness.
Age quod agis. | Do well what you do.".
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