Saturday, December 21, 2019

Saturday ~ December 21, 2019

Certainly, I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.

(Helen Keller, 1880 - 1960)

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Wednesday ~ September 25, 2019

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

(Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968)

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Tuesday ~ September 24, 2019

We all have these moments when the rose loses its color for some reason, or the music no longer stirs us, or the sweet, gentle soul across from us no longer seems to soften our heart. To move in and out of meaning is as natural as moving in and out of light because clouds form and dissipate... It reminds me of a man who built a home on a cliff bu sea, only to have a month-long fog roll in. He cursed the place and moved away, but a week after he'd gone, the fog cleared. being human, we all have fogs roll in around our heart, and often, our lives depend on the quiet courage to wait for them to clear.

(Mark Nepo, b. 1951)

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Sunday ~ September 22, 2019

Thou hast nor youth, nor age,
But as it were an after-dinner's sleep
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
To make thy riches pleasant.
What's yet in this
That bears the name of life?

(William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616)

Friday, September 20, 2019

Friday ~ September 20, 2019

Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surprises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude,
Can play upon it.

(William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616)

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Thursday ~ September 19,2019

I am not what I have nor what I do;
But what I was I am, I am even I.
Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live.

(Christina Rossetti, 1830 - 1894)

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Saturday ~ September 14, 2019

Here is a mystery: If sweeping through the door of my heart there moves continually a genuine love for you, it bypasses all your hate and all your indifference and gets through to you at your center. You are powerless to do anything about it. You may keep alive in devious ways the fires of your bitter heart, but they cannot get through to me. Underneath the surface of all the tension, something else is at work. It is utterly impossible for you to keep another from loving you.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Friday, September 13, 2019

September ~ 13, 2019

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

(Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979)

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Tuesday ~ August 13, 2019

I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling.
Save what is pure and will survive.

(Roy Campbell, 1901 - 1957)

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Wednesday ~ June 5, 2019

Soul is something creative, something active. Soul is honesty. I sing to the realists, people who accept it like it is. I express problems; there are tears when it's sad and smiles when it's happy. It seems simple to me, but to some, feelings take courage.

(Aretha Franklin, 1942 - 2018)

Monday, May 6, 2019

Monday ~ May 6, 2019

Two kinds of ideals are always at work in our lives. There are those ideals that are ultimate and in a very real sense always far out beyond anything that can be achieved. Or as one person puts it, they are like far-off lighthouses whose glow is far away in the distance... There are those ideals that seem to be created out of the stubborn realities, in the midst of which we work and live.

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Sunday ~ May 5, 2019

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage is sweet.

(Annie Dillard, b. 1945)

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Saturday ~ April 13, 2019

The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out.

(John M. Mason, 1770 - 1829)

Friday, April 12, 2019

Friday ~ April 12, 2019

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bio
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

(Li-Young Lee, b. 1957 )

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Thursday ~ April 11, 2019

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with human beings; if they are not virtuous, they become vicious.

(Jean de la Bruyere (1645 - 1696)

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Wednesday ~ April 10, 2019

Lord, bless those hands, the harvesters. Bless the travelers who gather our food, and those who grow it, clean it, cook it, who bring it to our tables. Bless the laborers whose faces we do not see - like the girl my grandmother was, walking the rails home; bless us that we remember.

(Natasha Trethewey, b. 1966)

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Tuesday ~ April 9,2016

Does the news bother you? Do you worry about things out of your control? Then take the time to concentrate your mind in the acquisition of some new and useful knowledge and stop it from flitting about. By the same token, guard against making the mistake of those who keep themselves so busy trying to gain control that they wear themselves out and lose their sense of direction, having no purpose to guide their actions or even their thoughts.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Monday, April 8, 2019

Monday ~ April 8, 2019

Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.


(Jean Toomer, 1894 - 1967)

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Tuesday ~ April 2, 2019

It is important to look deeply into the suffering of others. Someone whose actions are unkind, whose thoughts are unwholesome, whose speech is unwholesome is certainly suffering a lot. When you look deeply and see this suffering, your heart will open and the key of understanding will reveal itself.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, b. 1926)

Monday, April 1, 2019

Monday ~ April 1, 2019

Many things in the world already happened. You can go back and tell about them. They are part of what we own as we speed along through the white sky. But many things in the world haven't yet happened. You help them by thinking and writing and acting. Where they begin, you greet them or stop them. You come along and sustain the new things.

(William Stafford, 1914 - 1993)

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Sunday ~ March 31, 2019

i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

(e.e. cummings, 1894 - 1962)




Saturday, March 30, 2019

Saturday ~ March 30, 2019

All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest...
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882)


Friday, March 29, 2019

Friday ~ March 29, 2019

The prayer of our souls is a petition for persistence; not for the one good deed, or single thought, but deed on deed and thought on thought, until day calling unto shall make a life worth living.

(W.E.B. DuBois, 1868 - 1963)

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Thursday ~ March 28, 2019

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster;
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

(Elizabeth Bishop, 1901 - 1979)

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Wednesday ~ March 27, 2019

Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the [most menial] duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant? Pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.

(Margaret Fuller, 1810 - 1850)

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Tuesday ~ March 26, 2019

Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, you will see the things that are in heaven; for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul... Dive into yourself, and in your soul you will discover the stairs by which to ascend.

(Saint Isaac of Nineveh, 7th century)

Monday, March 25, 2019

Monday ~ March 25, 2019

Here let us sit, and bless our stars
Who did such happy quiet give,
As that removed from noise of wars
In one another's hearts we live.
Why should we entertain a fear?
Love cares not how the world is turned:
If crowds of dangers should appear,
Yet friendship can be unconcerned.

(Katherine Philips, 1632 - 1664)

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Sunday ~ March 24, 2019

Let us all resolve. First, to attain the grace of silence; Second, to deem all fault-finding that does no good a sin... Third, to practice the grace and virtue of praise.

(Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811 - 1896)

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Saturday ~ March 23,2019

One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of the sublime mystery which constantly envelops us. All one needs to do is notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling.

(Simon Greenberg, 1901 - 1993)

Friday, March 22, 2019

Friday ~ March 22, 2019

It is love that fashions us into the fullness of our being - not our looks, not our work, not our wants, not our achievements, not our parents, not our status, not our dreams. These are yhe fodder and the filler, the navigating fuels of our lives; but it is love: Who we love, how we love, why we love, and that we love which ultimately shapes us.

(Daphne Rose Kingma, b. mid-20th century)

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Thursday ~ March 21, 2019

Like as the armed knight
Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight,
And faith shall be my shield.
Faith is that weapon strong
Which will not fail at need;
My foes therefore among
Therewith will I proceed.

(Ane Askew, 1621 - 1646)

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Wednesday ~ March 20, 2019

There is a sort of duality in each of us, a discussion within our innermost thoughts. The nobler voice will be said by some of us - myself, for instance - to be the voice of God. Not literally, of course, but in source and spiritual vitality. Others of us will call it our better nature. But no matter what it be called, its presence is a firm reality. We cultivate our inner lives, and thereby raise the quality of all our living, by giving definite times to such discipline. And to the extent that we see the world more clearly and ourselves and our part on it more plainly, we gain wisdom and sureness of direction; and this, in turn, relieves the tension that the world imposes on us - much of which is due to vacillation and uncertainty - and brings us closer to serenity.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Tuesday ~ March, 2019

We are running
running and time is clocking us...
Oh pray that what we want is worth this running
Pray that what we're running toward
is what we want.

(Lucille Clifton, 1936 - 2010)

Monday, March 18, 2019

Monday ~ March 18, 2019

All people are children when they sleep.
There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them...
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees would drift in.

(Rolf Jacobsen, 1907 - 1994)

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Sunday ~ March 17,2019

The most alive thing about us is what we are when thought breaks off and our minds can go no further - for that is where our yearning begins, our inconsolable yearning, and the loneliness that begets compassion, the forlornness that prepares the heart for love. And that is the wilderness where all is tested, where doubt can go no further...

And in the mind's dimness a light will shine; in the spirit's stillness it will be as though a voice had spoken; the heart that was lonely will know who it was it yearned for, and the life of the soul will be one with the life that is God.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Saturday ~ March 16, 2019

If you stay in comfort too long
you will not know
the weight of a water pot
on the bald head of a village woman...
If you stay in comfort too long
you will not know the pain
of childbirth without a nurse in white...
You will forget
the unfeeling bare feet
gripping the warm soil turned by the plow
You will forget
the voice of the season talking to the oxen.


(Chenjerai Hove, 1956 - 2015)

Friday, March 15, 2019

Friday ~ March 15, 2015

It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else's private world with our own.

(Joyce Carol Oates, 1938 -  )

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Thursday ~ March 14, 2019 - Happy Birthday Albert Einstein

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose we know not, though we sometimes think we sense it. But even without deeper reflection, one knows from daily life that one exists for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

(Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Wednesday ~ March 13, 2019

Nothing forced works. The Gordian knot just worsens if it's jerked at by a person. One of the main stations of the cross is patience. Another, of course, is impatience. There is such a thing as too much tolerance for unpleasant situations, a time when the gentle teasing out of threads ceases to be pleasing to a woman born for conquest. Instead she must assault the knot or alp or everest with something sharp and take upon herself the moral warp of sudden progress.


(Kay Ryan, 1945 -  )

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Tuesday ~ March 12, 2019

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and drear.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882)

Monday, March 11, 2019

Monday ~ March 11, 2019

Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the power that rules it (to which your part owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Sunday ~ March 10, 2019

Back down these stairs to the same scene, to the moon, the stars, the night wind. Hours pass
and only the harp off in the distance and the wind moving through it. And soon the sun's gray disk,
darkened by clouds, sailing above. And beyond, as always, the sea of endless transparence, of utmost calm, a place of constant beginning that has within it what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has nor risen in the human heart. To that place, to the keeper of that place, I commit myself.

(Mark Strand, 1934 - 2014)

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Saturday ~ March 9, 2019

There is no mystery greater than our own mystery. We are, to ourselves, unknown. And yet we do know. The thought we cannot quite think is nevertheless somehow a thought, and it lives in us without our being able to think it. We are a mystery, but we are a living mystery. The most alive thing about us is what we are when thought breaks off and our mind can go no further - for that is where our yearning begins, our inconsolable yearning, and the loneliness that begets compassion, the forlornness that prepares the heart for love.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Friday, March 8, 2019

Friday ~ March 8, 2019

Peace is not the product of despair.
An army's most invincible least used.
Strength engenders weakness when abused,
Serving best by merely being there.
One conquers in the end by being just,
Vanquishing the conscience with right.
Each child that's passed over in the right
restores just one-half bullet's worth of trust.

(Nicholas Gordon, 1940 -  )

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Thursday~ March 07,2019

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

(Cynthia Heimel, 1947 - 2018)

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Wednesday ~ March 6, 2019

Build your life one action at a time, and be happy if each act you perform contributes to a fulfilling and complete life. No one can prevent you from doing this.
"But what if some outside circumstances stands in my way?"
Not even that can stop you from acting justly, wisely, and reasonably.
"But it may block me from doing something I want to do."
Yes, but welcoming the obstacle and by calmly adapting your action to it, you will be able to do something else in harmony with your goals and with the sort of life you are seeking to build.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Tuesday ~ March 5, 2019

You and I and the most distant star and the dragonfly's wing and the rustle of leaves as they fall - these all have one thing in common, which is that they all are, we are all are, part of Being. What is Being? Think of this World. Think of the great globe itself, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous places, the solemn temples, and all the people of this world. Then take it all away, take the world itself away and us away and so that not a rack is left behind. Think of the universe itself. Then take away all the planets and the stars, take away every form of matter and energy, take away space itself and take away time. What is left? Non-Being. So Being is what we have instead of this. Your Being and mine, the Being of our world.


(Frederick Buechner, 1926 -  )

Monday, March 4, 2019

Monday ~ March 4, 2019

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened people placed in the happiest of circumstances that the world affords. Yet it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. In the United States, people build houses in which to spend their old age, and they sell them before the roof is on; they plant gardens and sublet them just as the trees are coming into bearing; they bring fields into tillage and leave others to gather the crops; they embrace a profession and give it up; they settle in a place, which they soon afterwards leave to carry their changeable longings elsewhere.... They who have set their hearts exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare are always in a hurry, for they have but a limited time at their disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.

(Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Sunday ~ March 3, 2019

It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.

(Madeleine L'Engle, 1918 - 2007)

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Saturday ~ March 2, 2019

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can.
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.

(John Wesley, 1703 - 1791)

Friday, March 1, 2019

Friday ~ March 1, 2019

I don't have to tell you, one never snaps one's fingers on the beat. It's considered aggressive. Don't push it, just let it fall. And if you would like to be respectably hip, then at the same time tilt the left earlobe. Establish a state of nonchalance. And if you would like to be respectably cool, then tilt the left earlobe on the beat and snap the finger on the after beat. And then, you really don't care.

(Duke Ellington, 1899 - 1974)

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Thursday ~ February 28, 2019

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth, we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death, we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: They frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.

(John O'Donoghue, 1956 - 2008)

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Wednesday ~ February 27, 2019

The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole of creation with the same patience, affection, and amusement one first practiced, in between the pouts and tantrums, with parents, siblings, spouse, and children.

(Nancy Mairs, 1943 - 2016)

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Tuesday ~ February 26, 2019

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, and evenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

(Amais Nin, 1903 - 1977)

Monday, February 25, 2019

Monday ~ February 25, 2019

When religion tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, on the face of it the command is good, but when we come to look into it we are struck with a shocking sense of irony. Because our trouble is that we do love our neighbors as ourselves - we love them in just about the same way. For all to often, we do not love ourselves, we hate ourselves. We hate, that is, our real selves... We hate our inferiorities, our instabilities, our cowardice; and we hate the fact that we are not as talented, not as beautiful, not as graceful, not as gifted as other people. We hate ourselves for not being more than we are and we transfer this hatred to the world about us... We form a fantasy, a pleasing fantasy, of what we are really like, of what we could do if only we had the chance that other people have. We tell ourselves that these other people represent an injustice done to ourselves. And we become conspirators against them. That is where the trouble begins.

( A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Sunday ~ February 24, 2019

If you're trying to transform the brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

(Adrienne Rich, 1929 - 2012)

Saturday, February 23, 2019

Saturday ~ February 23, 2019

I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
It extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me
There is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me
even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me

(W.S. Merwin, b. 1927)

Friday, February 22, 2019

Friday ~ February 22, 2019

There is only one history of any importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in, and the history of what you came to believe in.

(Kay Boyle, 1903 - 1992)

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Thursday ~ February 21, 2019

If you had to bet everything, you have in whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why? When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in 25 words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you the happiest to remember? Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it? To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Wednesday February 20, 2019

A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.

(Lisa Kirk, 1925 - 1990)

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Tuesday ~ February 19, 2019

A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably also a protection for a hidden idolatry of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny. It is not the faith of the free. The faith of free persons must tangibly make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Monday, February 18, 2019

Monday ~ February 18, 2019

Knowledge abounds on every hand by which my steps may be guided. Facts, facts, facts... They are everywhere about me. I know with my mind the meaning of many choices that I make. Besides, there are many sources upon which I may draw for information that will be the raw material of my decisions. But facts are not the heart of my need. I need wisdom. The quality that will make clear to me the significance, the relatedness of things that are part of my daily experience - this I lack again and again. I need wisdom to cast a slow and steady radiance over my landscape in order that things, choices, deeds may be seen in their true light - the light of the eternal and the timeless.

(Howard Thurman,  1899 - 1981)

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Sunday ~ February 17, 2019

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

(Diane Ackerman, b. 1948)

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Saturday ~ February 16, 2019

We ask ourselves why terrible obstacles should be placed in our path. We cannot but wonder at times why we cannot have smooth sailing instead of being compelled always to fight against adverse winds and rough seas. No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, and ambition inspired, and success achieved.

(Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968)

Friday, February 15, 2019

Friday ~ February 15, 2019

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink and be restored, and go [her] way.
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank cold water in a glass,
Drank transparent health to keep me sane,
 After the bitter mood had gone again.

(May Sarton, 1912 - 1995)

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Thursday ~ February 14, 2019

Here is a mystery. If sweeping through the door of my heart there moves continually a genuine love for you, it bypasses all your hate and all your indifference and gets through to you at your center. You are powerless to do anything about it. You may keep alive in devious ways the fires of your bitter heart, but they cannot get through to me. Underneath the surface of all the tension, something else is at work. It is utterly impossible for you to keep another from loving you.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Wednesday ~ February 13, 2019

I walked a mile with pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow
and ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me!

(Robert Browning Hamilton, 1812 - 1889)

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Tuesday ~ February 12, 2019

The first tenet of the free person's faith is that our ultimate dependence for being and freedom is upon a creative power and upon processes not of our own making. Our ultimate faith is not in ourselves.

Monday, February 11, 2019

Work Principle of The Day... 5.1B

Remember that everyone has opinions and they are Often Bad.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

Thursday ~ January 31, 2019

I was taught that we're given a mind and a heart, and when we start to use the mind too much we get out of balance. Anytime I put prayer aside and try to do paperwork or politics too much, I get myself in trouble.

(Tom Goldtooth, b. 1953)


Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Common Meditation ~ Wednesday ~ January 30, 2019

Life is full of lies that you don't know you crossed until you're on the other side. And once you're there, you need to discover who you're going to be. I think both of us made a great start at putting our past behind us, and we're figuring out who we are right now. All that's left is deciding what we want for our future.

(Holly Jacobs, b. 1963)

Wednesday ~ Principle of the Day

test - Dalio's Principles

Monday, January 7, 2019

Dalio's Principles - Organization

Make clear that the organization's structure and rules are designed to ensure that its checks-and-balances system functions well.

Followers

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