Author: Rick Bellingham

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” —Martin Luther King A friend recently asked me why everyone called George Clooney by his real name and very few people knew that Fonzie’s real name was Henry Winkler.  My wife said, “that’s easy – George Clooney has been in Read More

“Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it’s not like you’re going to fix yourself and become a different person.  You remain the same person, but you become awakened.” —Jack Kornfield “To be, or not to be?  That is the question – whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, AND, by opposing them, end them?”  —Shakespeare, Read More

“We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.”  —Viola Davis “If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know not me.  Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.”  —Cat Stevens I’ve been thinking lately about how the narratives we create for our lives, or those that are imposed upon us, can limit or expand our possibilities.  The question is, “how Read More

“Ideologies separate us.  Dreams and anguish bring us together.”  — Eugene Ionesco “The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism.”  — Tom Robbins “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”—   Eleanor Roosevelt “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”  — Margaret Hefferman Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd.  Without innovation, it is a corpse.”  — Winston Churchill My Read More

“I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.” —Lady Gaga After reading the New York Times every morning, I need to find a sanctuary where I can recover from the daunting and depressing news around the world.  For me, that means retreating to my bedroom to meditate for 30 minutes and playing my guitar for 30 minutes more.  My little sanctuary helps me to Read More

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”  —Raymond Williams “Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”  —Angela Davis “A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they are dead.”  —Leo Rosten “America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest.”  —Harry Belafonte “A radical inner transformation and rise to a Read More

In French, the word for wine is vin.  If you want to order a glass of red wine, you say:  “Je voudrais un verre de vin rouge, s’il vous plait.”  In this post, I’m going to use VIN as an acronym to discuss the importance of finding connections with people according to Values, Interests, and Needs.  I like VIN as an acronym and vin as a drink because they represent the flavors of connections as Read More

 “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”  John Maynard Keynes “Old friends pass away, new friends appear.  It is just like the days.  An old day passes, a new day arrives.  The important thing is to make it meaningful:  a meaningful friend or a meaningful day.”  Dalai Lama “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”  George Bernard Shaw Read More

I joined the Army in 1967 identifying as an IBMer and was honorably discharged in 1970 feeling more like an SDSer. (Student for a Democratic Society).  I interviewed for a job at IBM before I started basic training at Fort Knox in the hopes they would keep me in mind when I got out.  The Army told me they would send me to Monterrey, California for 6 months of German language training and then on Read More

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.  And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”  Dalai Lama “Service is the rent we pay for being.  It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”  Marian Wright Edelman In my work with organizations, I am often asked to facilitate strategic planning sessions.  I always start the process with three questions: Why do you Read More

Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’And you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin’ Bobby Dylan In 1988, I spent a couple of weeks investigating the health and safety infrastructure in China because my employer at the time, Northern Telecom, was working with the Government of Read More

“Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer.  I feel stronger for confession.”  Mahatma Gandhi In a recent Krista Tippett interview with Elaine Pagels, Krista asked Elaine what great books she had recently read.  One of them was A Confession by Tolstoy.  I immediately purchased it on Kindle for $.99.   It was the best buck I’ve spent in a long time.  As a relevant Read More