Prayers, Love and Hope

"A friend is one who strengthens you with prayers,
blesses you with love
and encourages you with hope."

~ Chris
http://www.friendship.com.au/quotes/quobib.html

Friendship

I asked Mom today what was the most important thing. She said "Friendship.". Her supreme compliment is "You are a good friend."
I bought her roses and she asked me to give one to Peggy, who was pleased. Mom showed more pleasure in giving that one rose to Peggy than in receiving a dozen roses herself.

~ Truthful Grace

"Endless television would drive me insane"

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Winfrey-Network-Sneak-Preview

Oprah: "Television doesn't make me feel good. There's nothing about it that makes me feel good. I literally do not have it on at any time in my personal space, be it in the office, be it in my makeup room. If I walk in and it's on, I will say, 'Turn it off,' unless it's something I need to know or need to hear. I just won't have it. I will not allow the mindless chattering of Halloween candy. I just won't allow it."

"If you wanted to drive me insane, that's what you would do. You would put me in a room where the television was never turned off."

"Please be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room."

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Winfrey-Network-Sneak-Preview

Oprah: "I think everything has an energetic field. There's a beautiful thing Jill Bolte Taylor wrote about in her book My Stroke of Insight. After she had the stroke and was in the hospital, she could sense energy. She could sense, when a nurse came into the room, whether the nurse was thinking about getting off early; she could sense from the way she opened the shades or didn't, or if she mindlessly put her food down on the tray. She could just sense energy. So she had a sign created that basically said "Please be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room."

Which I now have outside my makeup door. "Please be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room."

Worry

“No one ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a person can bear. Never load yourselves so.
If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: It is your own doing, not God's. God begs you to leave the future where it belongs, and pay attention to the present.”

~ George MacDonald

Such as we are, such are the times

"Hard times, troubled times;
these are what people are saying.
But let our lives be good
and the times will be good.
We make our times;
such as we are, such are the times."

~ St. Augustine

approving in principle only

"When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."

~ Otto von Bismarck

The Queen's Apology

quote:
The Queen offered Ireland the nearest the royal family has ever come to an apology for Britain's actions in the tortured relations between the two countries, in a speech at a state banquet Dublin.

She told guests from the northern and southern Irish communities:

"It is a sad and regrettable reality that through history our islands have experienced more than their fair share of heartache, turbulence and loss ... with the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we wish had been done differently, or not at all."

...
She said: "To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy."

But she spoke also of increasingly strong bonds and values:

"The lessons of the peace process are clear: whatever life throws at us, our individual responsibilities will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load ... The ties of family, friends and affection are our most precious resource ... the lifeblood of partnership across these islands, a golden thread runs through all our joint successes so far and all we will go on to achieve."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/18/
queen-ireland-apology-britains-actions

very stifling

While talking about his new film Tree of Life at the Cannes Film Festival, Pitt told Extra

"I got brought up being told things were God's way, and when things didn't work out it was called God's plan, "I've got my issues with it. Don't get me started. I found it very stifling."

~ Brad Pitt

http://www.cinemablend.com/celebrity/
Brad-Pitt-Found-Religion-Stifling-Child-32098.html

Victor Hugo Quotes

Victor Hugo Quotes

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

"Be like the bird who,
pausing in her flight awhile
on boughs too slight,
feels them give way beneath her,
and yet sings,
knowing she hath wings."

"Adversity makes men,
and prosperity makes monsters."

"One believes others will do what he will do to himself."

"Intelligence is the wife,
imagination is the mistress,
memory is the servant."

~ Victor Hugo

Biography
Author Profession: Author
Nationality: French
Born: February 26, 1802
Died: May 22, 1885

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/victorhugo152557.html#ixzz1MYWc0cQB

the Bible's whole body of revealed truth and wisdom

Good Question: Text Criticism and Inerrancy
"How can I reconcile my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture with comments in Bible translations that state that a particular verse is not 'in better manuscripts'?"

J.I. Packer | posted 10/07/2002 12:00AM

So how does all this bear on the Christian's very proper faith in biblical inerrancy—that is, the total truth and trustworthiness of the true text and all it teaches?
Holy Scripture is, according to the view of Jesus and his apostles, God preaching, instructing, showing, and telling us things, and testifying to himself through the human witness of prophets, poets, theological narrators of history, and philosophical observers of life.
The Bible's inerrancy is not the inerrancy of any one published text or version, nor of anyone's interpretation, nor of any scribal slips or pious inauthentic additions acquired during transmission.
Rather, scriptural inerrancy relates to the human writer's expressed meaning in each book, and to the Bible's whole body of revealed truth and wisdom. Belief in inerrancy involves an advance commitment to receive as from God all that the Bible, interpreting itself to us through the Holy Spirit in a natural and coherent way, teaches. Thus it shapes our uderstanding of biblical authority.
So inerrantists should welcome the work of textual scholars, who are forever trying to eliminate the inauthentic and give us exactly what the biblical writers wrote, neither more nor less. The way into God's mind is through his penmen's minds, precisely as expressed, under his guidance, in their own words as they wrote them.
Text criticism serves inerrancy; they are friends. Inerrancy treasures the meaning of each writer's words, while text criticism checks that we have each writer's words pure and intact. Both these wisdoms are needed if we are to benefit fully from the written Word of God.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/october7/31.102.htm

you have not understood

For much of Christian history, the view of the inspiration and authority of the Bible outlined above held firm, and it was almost unheard of for Christians to criticize and reject the content of Scripture as erroneous.
The position of the greatest of the Western church fathers, Augustine of Hippo, is instructive here. In his "Reply to Faustus the Manichaean" (XI.5), St. Augustine wrote:

"If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood."

"A Layman's Historical Guide to the Inerrancy Debate"
Article by William B. Evans February 2010
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/a-laymans-historical-
guide-to-the-inerrancy-debate.php

vague and undefined terms

Wittgenstein has rightly been credited with the statement

"there are no genuine disputes, only vague and undefined terms."

In the absence of love, we begin slowly but surely to fall apart

“In the absence of love, we begin slowly but surely to fall apart."

~ Marianne Williamson

to make manifest the glory of God that is within us

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

~ Marianne Williamson

When do you get to that point of enough is enough?

Quote from The Mexican (2001 film)
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0236493/quotes

Samantha: I have to ask you a question. It's a good one so think about it. If two people love each other, but they just can't seem to get it together, when do you get to that point of enough is enough?
Jerry: Never.

What we know and do not know

From a Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002:

Now what is the message there? The message is that there are known "knowns." There are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.
So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.
And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.

~ Donald Rumsfeld
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld

The truth of war is not always easy to hear

“The truth of war is not always easy to hear,” she told members of Congress, “but it is always more heroic than the hype.”

~ Jessica Lynch, the private in the wrecked Humvee in Iraq, rescued from a hospital in 2003

Sentence first - verdict afterwards

“This is the justice of the Red Queen: sentence first, trial later.”

~ Geoffrey Robertson, a prominent human rights lawyer in Britain

from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Chapter 12

'It's a pun!' the King added in an offended tone, and everybody laughed, 'Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.'
'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'
'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.
'I won't!' said Alice.
'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

http://www.online-literature.com/carroll/alice/12/

She knows how to be loved

Kate Middleton knows how to be loved.

~ Truthful Grace