Thursday ~ December 3, 2020

 No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, Walk!

Friedrich Nietzche, 1844 - 1900

Sunday ~ November 29, 2020

 In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it's the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.

Jodi Picoult, b. 1966

Thursday ~ November 12, 2020

Sunday ~ November 15, 2020

 All architects of fate, working in these walls of time; some with massive deeds and great, some with ornaments of rhyme. For the structure that we raise time is with materials filled; our today's and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build. Build today, then, strong and sure, with a firm and ample base; and ascending and secure shall tomorrow find its place.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

Tuesday ~ November 3, 2020

 Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society, the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

(John Rawls, 1921 - 2002)

Friday ~ October 30, 2020

 Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at the table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or the animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

(Walt Whitman, 1818 - 1892)

Friday ~ October 23, 2020

 It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely. or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

Monday ~ October 19, 2020

 Sweet are the uses of adversity

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Tuesday ~ October 13, 2020

 No one will bring back the year; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king's command or a people's favor. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile, death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.

Seneca, 4 BCE - 65 CE

Thursday ~ October 8, 2020

 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

Wednesday ~ October 7, 2020

Generosity with strings is not generosity; it's a deal. 

Marya Mannes, 1904 - 1990

Sunday ~ May 31, 2020

Joy, in Nature's wide dominion,
Mightest cause of all is found;
And 'tis joy that moves the pinion,
When the wheel of time goes round.

Friedrich Schiller, 1759 - 1805

Friday ~ May 29, 2020

When I care to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision - then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

(Audre Lorde, 1934 - 1992)

Wednesday ~ May 27, 2020

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth, be ready for the unexpected; change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.

(Heraclitus of Ephesus, 535 - 475)

What is Modular-Finance...????

First, It's important to understand what it is NOT.

"There isn't a single story, The way we understand economics and economies is by learning from lots of different sources and thinking about them in lots of different ways." ~ John Kay, Economics in the Real World

Friday ~ May 22, 2020

Soulis something creative, something active. Soul is honesty. I sing to people about what matters. 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, 102 - 2018)

Wednesday ~ May 20, 2020

Joy and woe are woven fine, clothing for the soul divine;
under every grief and pine runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so: we were made for joy and woe;
and when this we rightly know, safely through the world we go.

(William Blake, 1757 - 1827)

What is Modular-Finance...

At two meetings at the White House sponsored by the Obama Administration's department of labor, seventy-five people from a variety of organizations and movements gathered to discuss whether or not there needed to be one brand that identifies the emerging new story of business.

While such a brand may someday surface, for our purposes we want to focus on the underlying ideas and principles that are inspiring all this activity.

  That is the purpose of Modular-Finance™

Whatever brand ultimately becomes the rallying cry of this conceptual revolution, it will have to be based on a sense of purpose and ethics that is central to the new narrative as profit is to the old one.

Modern vs Modular

It will have to address how companies can simultaneously create value for all of their key stakeholders. The brand will have to take sustainability and the physical limits of business very seriously. It will have to account for the fact that all businesses are embedded in societal institutions and processes. It will have to recognize that people are complex (vs Rational Expectations) and that they can and do collaborate with others to create value.(Vs Selfish). And it will have to integrate these ideas into a coherent framework.

Getting them to work together - The Balance or the Blend if you will - is what we call - Modular-Finance™

The Five Key Ideas can be found on the right:

Making The Right Moves and intelligent decisions on Both Sides of The Street Requires Domain Knowledge..

VS. Advice that is incidental to Their Business/ Product
A Sales Advisor is Trained with Product Knowledge Knowledge... Features / Benefits

OK if that's all you need ... Then you need 40 Advisors...One for each product...

We don't specialize in products... We provide a service...



Do I make a ROTH Conversion?

Do I do This

Monday ~ May 18,2020

No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear;
but, grateful, take the good I find, the best of now and here...
And so the shadows fall apart, and so the west winds play;
and all the windows of my heart I open to the day.

(John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807 - 1892)

Sunday ~ May 17, 2020

Let me tell you why I come to church. I come to church - and would whether I was a preacher or not - because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. I am afraid of becoming selfish and indulgent, and my church - my church of the free spirit - brings me back to what I want to be. I could easily despair; doubt and dismay could overwhelm me. My church renews my courage and my hope. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened - sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe to others. I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do. I am brought toward my best, in every way toward my best.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Saturday ~ MAY 16, 2016

It is not suffering that is precious, but the concentric pearlescence with which we contain it. The raw grit of anguish will never be in short supply. There is enough of it in the happiest life to serve these instructive purposes and there always will be. We are more sympathetic to Holocaust survivors than to malcontent children of privilege, but we all have our darkness, and the trick is making something exalted of it.

(Andrew Solomon, b. 1963)

Thursday ~ May 14, 2020

...Have compassion for me.
Look how men and women live, always precariously
balanced between good and bad fortune.
If you are out of trouble, watch for danger.
And when you live well, then think the hardest.
About life, lest ruin take you unawares.

(Sophocles, 496 - 406 BCE)

Sunday ~ May 10, 2020

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have o rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds...
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn't know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look into their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understand loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember id that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

(Julia Kasdorf, b. 1962)

Saturday ~ May 9, 2020

A commercial society urges its citizens to be responsible for things, but not for people. It is the unquestioned assumption of a mercantile culture that things need and deserve attention, but that people can take care of themselves.

(Margaret Halsey, 1910 - 1997)

Friday ~ May 8, 2020

Perhaps that is what love is - the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.

(Phyllis Rose, b. 1942)

Thursday ~ May 7, 2020

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in action and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

(Lao-Tzu, c. 6th century BCE)

Wednesday May 6, 2020

Hold on to what is good,
Even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
Even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
Even if it's a long way from here,
Hold on to your life,
Even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
Even if someday I'll be gone away from you.

(Pueblo Prayer)

Tuesday ~ May 5, 2020

Arm yourself for action with these two thoughts: First, do only what your sovereign and lawgiving reason tells you is for the good of others; and second, do not hesitate to change course if someone is able to show you where you are mistaken or point out the better way. But be persuaded only by arguments based on justice and the common good, never by what appeals to your taste for pleasure or popularity.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Thursday ~ April 30, 2020

Once again I return to happiness,
which means something, somewhere is in bloom
and the notion, however ridiculous,
is born again: love will not go on without me.
See how a thing like weather changes
everything? The warm earth spins a little at a time
so I won't lose my footing, and the April wind
pushes me toward collecting what it is I came for:
the belief that even in the beautiful places,
I am exceptionally possible.

(Christopher Goodrich, b. late 20th c.)

Tuesday ~ April 28, 2020

We're not lovers because of the love we make,
but the love we have.
We are not friends because of the laughs we spend,
but the tears we save.
I don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share,
but the words we never have to speak.
I will never miss you because of what we do,
but what we are together.

(Nikki Giovanni, b, 1943)

Sunday ~ April 26, 2020

All That is Glorious Around us
is, not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled overlooks
towering clouds, but doing errands on a day of driving rain,
staying dry inside the silver skin of the car, 160,000 miles, still running fine...

Thursday ~ April 23, 2020

My efforts now turn from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever I can find it.
Stripped of causes and plans and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything I could ask for is right right here -
in flawed abundance.
We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life of compassion...
There is nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Accepting this, we can do everything and go anywhere.

(Mark Nepo, b. 1951)

Monday ~ April 20, 2020

Relax

Bad things are going to happen...

There's a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.

When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine

and climbs halfway down. Bit there's also a tiger below.

And two mice - one white, one black - scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine.

At this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.

She looks up, down, at the mice.

Then she eats the strawberry.

So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse in your throat.

Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat,

slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip. You'll be lonely.

Oh, taste how sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth.

(Ellen Bass, b. 1947)

Sunday ~ April 19, 2020

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

(Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)

Saturday ~ April 18, 2020

Because the year is new and the great change already underway,
we concede a thousandfold and feel, harder than the land itself,
a complicity for everything we did not see or comprehend: cynicism borne of raw despair,
long-cultivated hatreds, the promise of leaders traveling like cool silence through the dark.
My life is here, in this small room, and like you
I am waiting to know - but there is no time to wait for what has happened.
What does the future ask of me?
those who won't have enough to eat by evening,
those whose disease will now take hold -
and the decades that carry past me once I've died,
generations of children, the suffering that is never solved,
the heat over the earth, its marshes,
its crowded towers, its unbreathable night air.
I would open my hand from the wrist,
step outside, not lose nerve.
Here is the day, still to be lived.
We do not fully know what we do.

(Joanna Klink, b. 1969)

Friday ~ April, 17, 2020

Remember the sky you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn:
that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. you are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. he is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animals life -
all have their tribe, their families, their histories, too.
Talk to them, listen to them.
They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. remember her voice.
She knows the origin of the universe
remember you are all people
and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe
and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this,
remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

(Joy Harjo, b. 1951)

Wednesday ~ April, 15,2020

May the tide that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss the wind then turn from it
certain that it will love you back
may you open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

(Lucille Clifton, 1936 - 2010)

Tuesday ~ April 14, 2020

Everyone should be born into this world happy and loving everything.
But in truth, it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clambering toward it.
Hallelujah, anyway I'm not where I started!
And have you too been trudging like that,
sometimes almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?

(Mary Oliver, 1935 - 2019)

Monday ~ April 13, 2020

I know there is something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce
built brick by brick the glittering edifices
They would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign.
the figure-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital. filial, national,
love with casts a widening pool of light,
live with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing+ can be made, any sentence begun.
on the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.

(Elizabeth Alexander, b. 1962)

Saturday ~ April 11, 2020

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious

(Lisel Mueller, 1924 - 2020)

Friday ~ April 10, 2020

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 circumstance 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)

Thursday ~ April 9, 2020

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

(May Sarton, 1912 - 1995)

Wednesday ~ April 8, 2020

What happens is that we realize that we are but a speck of dust, a plaything of events outside our reach. Nevertheless, we may at the same time discover that we have a certain liberty, as long as we live. There is within each of us a modulation, an inner exaltation, which lifts us above dependence upon the gifts of events for our joy. Hence, our dependence upon events is not absolute: it is qualified by our spiritual freedom. Therefore, when we speak of resignation it is not sadness to which we refer, but the triumph of our will-to-live over whatever happens to us. And to become ourselves, to be spiritually alive, we must have passed beyond this point of resignation.

(Albert Schweitzer, 1875 - 1965)

Tuesday ~ April 7, 2020

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

(Naomi Shihab Nye, b. 1952)

Monday ~ April 6, 2020

You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

(Adam Zagajewski, b. 1945)

Sunday ~ April 5, 2020

Ritual is the act of sanctifying action - even ordinary actions - so that it has meaning: I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.

(Christina Baldwin, b. 1946)

Saturday ~ April 4, 2020

Even in the darkest of times, we have the right to expect some illumination... Such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over he time-span that was given them on earth.

(Hannah Arendt, 1906 - 1975)

Friday ~ April 3, 2020

In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another; my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.

(Barbara Kingsolver, b. 1955)

Tuesday ~ April 2, 2020

So far as I can see, all the great leaders - and the great exemplars of religion - possessed... faith in life's essence, in its hidden meaning, in its moral claim, and in the rightness of its inner spiritual guidance. And by this, the great ones lived their lives. So must we. There are no problems greater than our power to solve them. There are no burdens greater than our strength. We shape - by every moment of our lives - the great decisions. then let us venture still! - with reason as a lamp to guide us - but lighted with the light of faith.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Wednesday ~ April 1, 2020

Is there an angel in the house?
If there is, come to me...
And if you are too tired,
or otherwise occupied,
and if it isn't too tacky a request,
please rock me.
I am bruised.
If you will hold me until morning,
I promise I will rise and light the fire
and break the bread and put back on my shoulder
my corner of the world.
But for now, I could use the shelter of a wing.
Excuse me,
excuse me, is there an angel in the house?

(Pat Schneider, b. 1934)

Tuesday ~ March 31, 2020

The hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way to life lies here:
Come, pluck up, heart, let's neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.

(John Bunyan, 1628 - 1688)

Monday ~ March 30, 2020

I think it is important to try to see the present calamity human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Hunan culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself... We are mistaken when we compare war with 'normal life.' Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil... turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies.

(C.S. Lewis, 1898 - 1963)

Sunday ~ March 29, 2020

How to be perfect:
Get some sleep.
Eat an orange every morning.
Be friendly. It will help make you happy.
Hope for everything. Expect nothing.
Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.
After dinner, wash the dishes.
Calm down.
Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go to another one.
If you feel tired, rest.
Be good.
Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.
Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.
Drink plenty of water. When asked want you would like to drink, say, "Water, please."
Take out the trash.
Live life.

(Ron Padgett, b. 1942)

Saturday ~ March 28, 2020

There is no need to be afraid of death. It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. Every individual human being born on this earth has the capacity to become a unique and special person unlike any who has ever existed before or will ever exist again... When you live as if you'll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do. You live your life in preparation for tomorrow or in remembrance of yesterday, and meanwhile, each day is lost. In contrast, when you fully understand that each day you awaken could be the last you have, you take the time that day to grow, to become more of who you really are, to reach out to other human beings.

(Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1926 - 2004)

Friday ~ March 27, 2020

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

(Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014)

Thursday ~ March 26, 2020

I seek the courage to live - this day. How I slip into the mood that is desultory, that quietly informs my mind that tomorrow I can begin the new way, tomorrow I can make a fresh turning in my road. Courage to strike out on the path I have never trod before, courage to make new friends, courage to yield myself to the full power of the dream, courage to yield my life with the abiding enthusiasm to the Spirit of God and the wide reaches of creative undertakings among the children of humanity - this I seek today.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Wednesday ~ March 25, 2020

For a little attention, complain a little. For a lot of attention, stop complaining.

(Sarah Manguso, b. 1974)

Tuesday ~ March 24,2020

Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is, in essence, the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way, each individual life may be fulfilled.

(Paula Gunn Allen, 1939 - 2008)

Monday ~ March 23, 2020

I had learnt to seek intensity rather than happiness, not joys and prosperity but more of life, a concentrated sense of life, a strengthened feeling of existence, fullness, and concentration of pulse, energy, growth, flowering, beyond the image of happiness or unhappiness.

( Nina Berberova, 1901 - 1993 )

Sunday ~ March 22, 2020

Taking stock of what I have and what I haven't,
What do I find?
The things I got will keep me satisfied
Checking up on what I have and what I haven't,
What do I find?
A healthy balance on the credit side...
Got no mansion, Got no yacht,
Still I'm happy with what I got.
I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
Sunshine gives me a lovely day.
Moonlight gives me the Milky Way.
Got no checkbooks, got no banks,
Still I'd like to express my thanks.
I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
And with the sun in the morning'
And the moon in the evening,
I'm all right.

(Irving Berlin, 1888 - 1989)

Saturday ~ March 21, 2020

My illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if anyone but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.

(Mary Antin, 1881 - 1949)

Friday ~ March 20, 2020

It is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive, if you can, all through this day - today - of your life. What's to be done? What's to be done? Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your children and your spouse. Think about the work of your hands... Live in the needs of the day.


(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Thursday ~ March 19, 2020

I drove down the Freeway
And turned off at an exit
And went along the highway
Till it came to a side road
Drove up the side road
Till it turned into a dirt road
Full of bumps, and stopped.
Walked up the trail
But the trail got rough
And it faded away--
Out in the open,
Everywhere to go.


(Gary Snyder, b. 1930)

Wednesday ~ March 18, 2020

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived 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 sweet.

(Annie Dillard, b. 1945)

Tuesday ~ March 17, 2020

The tendency to fix responsibility is inescapable. If responsibility for ills can be pinned down, then the possibility of attacking and uprooting them is very real. This possibility is in the profound confidence that a structure of moral integrity undergirds all of life; that such a structure is basic in the totality of all experience. Things do not happen, merely; they are part of some kind of rationale. If this can be tracked down and understood, then the living experience, however terrible, makes sense. Even though one is never able to accomplish this tracking down, one cannot destroy the confidence that the logic of all ills is knowable.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Monday ~ March 16, 2020

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness - either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoonfed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

(Agatha Christie, 1891 - 1976)

Sunday ~ March 15, 2020

How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world!

(Anne Frank, 1929 - 1945)

Saturday ~ March 14, 2020

Pandemic

What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath - the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world different than it is.
ing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives are in one another's hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

(Lynn Ungar, composed on 3/11/20)

Friday ~ March 13, 2020

Grace is the ability to redefine the boundaries of possibility.

(Manning Marable, 1950 - 2011)

Thursday ~ March 12, 2020

I think one should forgive and remember... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon whet you remember and know you've forgiven is an achievement.

(Faith Baldwin, 1893 - 1978)

Wednesday ~ March 11, 2020

Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

(Seneca, 4 BCE - 65 CE)

Tuesday ~ March 10, 2020

To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit. There is no way to elude apathy, or escape discontent; none other to guard the temper from that itself, which ultimately ends in quarreling with all humankind.

(Fanny Burney, 1752 - 1840)

Monday ~ March 9, 2020

Failure is good preparation for success, which comes as a pleasant surprise, but success is poor preparation for failure.

(Sarah Manguso,b. 1974)

Sunday ~ March 8, 2020

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old... Out of each old self that dies some precious essence is preserved for the new self that is born; and within the child-self that is part of us all, there is perhaps nothing more precious than the fathomless capacity to trust.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Saturday ~ March 7, 2020

To live is to suffer; To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

(Roberta Flack, b. 1937)

Friday ~ March 6, 2020

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(Wendell Berry, b. 1934)

Thursday ~ March 5, 2020

Talent is like electricity... Electricity makes no judgment. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it, Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent.

(Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014)

Wednesday ~ March 4, 2020

Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small. No one can ever prevent me from saying and doing what is in complete conformity with the whole of which I am so small yet integral a part.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Tuesday ~ March 3, 2020

Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet.

(Sarah Louise Delany, 1889 - 1999)

Monday - March 2, 2020

Somehow in thanksgiving I see clearly, if but for a fleeting moment, that much, much has come my way as a normal part of my dependency, without my being aware of it... perhaps, it is always true that the test of my thanksgiving is the humility which it inspires. Self-examination, thanksgiving, humility: let us experience them in our quiet time in the presence of God.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Sunday ~ March 1, 2020

What is this life if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet how they can dance,
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this is, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(William Henry Davies, 1871 - 1940)

Saturday ~ February 29, 2020

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

(Theodore Parker, 1810 - 1860)

Friday ~ February 28, 2020

When you take a step forward you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward this tramping is on a much bigger scale and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.

(Indira Gandhi, 1917 - 1984)

Thursday, February 27, 2020

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do not know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

(Mary Oliver, 1935 - 2019)

Wednesday ~ February 26, 2020

People too have gravity -
of manner, of morals, and of body.
It is good to have gravity but not too much of it:
like a bag of cement, you might not be able to move around or make ethical distinctions.
But with too little of it you are flighty, your feet hardly touch the ground.
Though cement and flightiness have their charms,
 it's better to find your center of gravity and have it be the place you radiate from.

(Ron Padgett, b. 1942)

Tuesday ~ February 25, 2020

Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
The gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

(Tao te Ching, 6th century BCE)

Monday ~ February 24, 2020

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life i=s a complex matter.

Walt Disney

Monday ~ February 24, 2020

The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn't that they'll remember; it's that you'll remember.

(Sarah Manguso, 1974)

Sunday ~ February 23, 2020

I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

(Pat Schneider, b. 1934)

Saturday ~ February 22, 2020

When your spirits need a lift, think of the virtues and talents of those around you - one's energy+, another's modesty, the generosity of a third, something else in a fourth. Nothing is so inspiring or uplifting as the sight of these splendid qualities in our friends. Keep them always in mind.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Friday ~ February 21, 2020

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

(Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892 - 1971)

Thursday ~ February 20, 2020 / 02/20/2020

The taste of food is not the result of my own effort. How wonderful is the miracle of taste! There is a mysterious interaction between the tongue, my nervous system and the quality of the food itself. How this developed, I do not know; what the secret is, always escapes me. The taste of food floats the whole eating experience and gives to it a dimension of delight that joys the mind and gives to the whole being a sense of gentleness and benevolence. How can I say "Thank You" to God for food? By making the eating of food a blessed sacrament. By a self-conscious recognition of the source. Bt sharing my food with the hungry. By knowing that my food is a gift of which I am merely the trustee.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.

(Martha Washington, 1732 - 1802)

Tuesday ~ February 18, 2020

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,  nor do the children of men and women as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

(Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968)

Monday ~ February 17, 2020

When you get in a tight place and everything goes against you til it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the time and the place the tide will turn.

(Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811 - 1896)

Sunday ~ February 16,2020

For the truth is that in the end loyalty is never an attachment to something external so much as it is an allegiance to something inside yourself. That which commands you outwardly has first possessed you inwardly. That is why a bad human being is never a reliable patriot, nor a good human being a bad citizen. There is no surer test than this: Your loyalty will always be what you secretly love and serve.

 ( A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Saturday ~ February 15, 2020

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

(Annie Dillard, b. 1945)

Friday ~ February 14, 2020

The thing is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it, and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it...
Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again.

(Ellen Bass, b. 1947)

Thursday ~ February 13, 2020

Hatred is a passion requiring one hundred times the energy of love. Keep it for a cause, not an individual. Keep it for intolerance, injustice, stupidity. For hatred is the strength of the sensitive. Its power and its greatness depend on the selflessness of its use.

(Olive Moore, 1916 - 1970)

Wednesday ~ February 12, 2020

Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind always grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and they bring things and people to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undisclosed.

(Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)

Tuesday ~ February 11, 2020

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)

Monday ~ February 10, 2020

New Yorkers will excuse me for missing my barred owls, fuffed grouse, and snowshoe rabbits, my grosbeaks and deer. I love what you love too. In the city and in the country there is a simple, underlying basis ti life which we forget almost daily: that life is good. We forget because losing it or wife, children, health, friends is so awfully painful, and because life is hard, but we know from our own experience as well as our expectations that it can and ought to be good, and is even meant to be good.

(Edward Hoagland, b. 1932)

Sunday ~ February 9, 2020

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

(Dorothy Day, 1897 - 1980)

Saturday ~ February 8,2020

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 dreary.
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)

Friday ~ February 7, 2020

The world either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950)

Thursday ~ February 6, 2020

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

(Abigail Adams, 1744 - 1818)

Wednesday ~ February 5, 2020

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)

Tuesday ~ February 4, 2020

In America, I saw the freest and most enlightened people placed in the happiest 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; the 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.

(lexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)

Monday ~ February 3, 2020

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

(Edith Wharton, 1862 - 1937)

Sunday ~ February 2, 2020 ... 02/02/2020

If space and time, as sages say,
  Are things which cannot be,
The fly that lives a single day
  Has lived as long as we.
But let us live while yet we may,
  While love and life are free,
For time is time, and runs away,
  Through sages disagree.


(T.S. Eliot, 1888 - 1965)

Saturday ~ February 1, 2020

The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using others as your control group, all of your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.

(Sarah Manguso, b. 1974)

Friday ~ January 31, 2020

It is not the critics who count, nor the people who point out how the strong have stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strive valiantly... who know great enthusiasm and great devotion, and spend themselves in worthy cause; who, at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

(Theodore Roosevelt, 1858 - 1919)

Thursday ~ January 30, 2020

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)

Wednesday ~ January 29,2020

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 the 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 progress,

(Kay Ryan, b. 1945)

Tuesday ~ January 28,2020

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 the right.
Each child that's passed over in the night
restores just one-half bullet's worth of trust.

(Nicholas Gordon, b. 1940)

Monday ~ January 27,2020

We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom.

Sunday ~ January 26, 2020

Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.

(Barbara Tuchman, 1912-1989)

Saturday ~ January 25,2020

When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

(Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923)

Friday ~ January 24, 2020

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they be a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again; you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882)

Thursday 23, 2020

This crowd on Earth they soon forget
The heroes of the past.
They cheer like mad until you fail
and that's how long you last.
But God He never does forget
and in His hall of Fame
By just believing in His Son
Inscribed you'll find your name.

Thursday ~ January 23,2020

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(Wendell Berry, b. 1934)

Wednesday ~ January 22, 2020

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the skies.
All is well, safely rest.
God is nigh.
Fades the light; And afar
Goeth day, and the stars
Shineth bright.
Fare thee well; day has gone.
Night is on.
Thanks and praise, For our days,
"Neath the sun, Neath the stars,
'Neath the sky,
As we go, this we know,
God is nigh.

("Taps," arranged in 1862 by Daniel Butterfield)

Tuesday ~ January 21, 2020

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.

(Helen Keller, 1880-1960)

Monday ~ January 20, 2020

"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

 (Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968)

Sunday ~ January 19, 2020

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

(Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971)

Saturday ~ January 18, 2020

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth can find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring comes after winter.

(Rachel Carson, 1907 - 1964)

Friday ~ January 17, 2020

It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible... By rights, New York should have destroyed itself long ago, from panic or fire or rioting or failure of some vital supply line in its circulatory system or from some deep labyrinthine short circuit. Long ago the city should have experienced an insoluble traffic snarl at some impossible bottleneck. It should have been touched in the head by the August heat and gone off its rocker... There is not enough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little. But the city makes up for its hazards and deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin: the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled.

(E.B. White. 1899-1985)

Thursday ~ January 16, 2020

There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

(Matthew Arnold, 1882 - 1888)

Wednesday ~ January 15, 2020

The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism... History is a struggle in dead earnest between justice and injustice, looking towards the ultimate victory in the promise and fulfillment of grace. Anyone who does not enter into that struggle with the affirmation of love and beauty misses the mark and thwarts creation as well as self-creation.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Tuesday ~ January 14, 2020

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, It was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going directly the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

(Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870)

Monday ~ January 13, 2010

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep.
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
 A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882)

Sunday ~ January 12, 2020

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions: desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

(Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662)

Saturday ~ January 11, 2020

A ritual takes what happened a long time ago and drags it into the present so you can experience it here and now. Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.

(Tony Campolo, b. 1936)

Friday ~ January 10, 2010

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and tempory and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves... This is the lesson written into the stones of the desert and the ice fields of the poles. So grandly is it written there that we may come away from such places not crushed but inspired by what lies beyond us, privileged to be subject to such majestic necessities. The sense of awe may even shade into a desire to worship.

(Alain de Botton, b. 1969)

Wednesday ~ January 8, 2020

Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy.

(Aristotle, 384 - 322 BCE)

Tuesday ~ January 7, 2020

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

(Helen Keller, 1880 - 1960)