Three Irrational Beliefs

Leadership Journal

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2011/summer/irrationalbeliefs.html

Three Irrational Beliefs ...  that I constantly have to fight

David Slagle

September 26, 2011

...

Albert Ellis (1913-2007) was a psychologist, a devout atheist, and until late in life, openly hostile toward all things religious. His views on human sexuality were antithetical to the teachings of Scripture. For those reasons (and because he's dead) he would not be on the short list of speakers at most pastors retreats, but he does offer some wisdom and sanity for weary Christian leaders.

Ellis is most widely known for his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, so named because it is directed at irrationality. Ellis theorized that much of our inner turmoil is caused by our tendency to embrace irrational beliefs, which leads to stress, low self-worth, frustration, conflict, anger, avoidance, procrastination, diminished productivity, and difficulty in relating to others.

He identified three irrational core beliefs that cause the most trouble:

#1: "I absolutely MUST, at all times, perform outstandingly well and win the approval of significant others. If I fail in these important—and sacred—respects, that is awful and I am a bad, incompetent, unworthy person, who will probably always fail and deserves to suffer."

#2: "Other people with whom I relate absolutely MUST, under practically all conditions, treat me nicely, considerately, and fairly. Otherwise, it is terrible and they are rotten, bad, unworthy people who will always treat me badly and should be severely punished for acting so abominably to me."

#3: "The conditions under which I live absolutely MUST, at practically all times, be favorable, safe, hassle-free, and quickly and easily enjoyable. If they are not, it's awful and horrible and I can't ever enjoy myself at all. My life is hardly worth living."

…

David Slagle is pastor of Veritas Church in Decatur, Georgia.

 

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.

Fear of the Cross

"You can't be afraid to do something just because there is a cross involved."

~ Truthful Grace

Make a new ending

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning,
but anyone can start today and make a new ending."
~ Maria Robinson

Existence without God

If it were somehow possible that God could be removed from the universe and I were left alone in it, I don't think my cells would be able to function.  All the energy in my body comes from God.  I would be like a cell phone with a dead battery.

~ Truthful Grace

a true theology of tragedy

Image, Issue 61
imagejournal.org/page/journal/editorial-statements/the-tragic-sense-of-life

Gregory Wolfe

The Tragic Sense of Life

quote:

"The notion that Christianity is somehow alien to tragedy—that it is simply and straightforwardly “comic” because the resurrection makes for a happy ending—could not be more radically wrong. In his essay “Tragedy and Christian Faith,” Hans Urs von Balthasar singles out three essential elements of tragedy: that the good things of the world cannot sustain themselves and are lost; that this places us in a position of contradiction or alienation; and that this condition is bound up with an “opaque guilt,” in which individual moral responsibility cannot account for all suffering, leaving us subject to a mysterious “inherited curse.”

According to von Balthasar, Christ does not banish tragedy but carries it into the heart of God. Christ “fulfills the contradiction of existence...not by dissolving the contradiction but by bearing that affirmation of the human condition as it is through still deeper darknesses in finem, ‘to the end,’ as love....”

To go to the end means...not only entering total defeat, the total bankruptcy of all earthly power and every project of salvation, but to go to the end of the night of sin, in that descent into hell where the one who dies and the one who is dead come into an atemporal state of being lost, in which no more hope of an end is possible, nor even the possibility of looking back to a beginning. And this as the conclusion of a tragedy of earthly life that itself already stood under the law of contradiction: since God’s omnipotence wished and was able to make itself known ontologically in the Incarnation as powerlessness and unutterable limitation....

This may sound grandly theological, but I would argue that it has the most concrete and far-reaching consequences for the way we experience the world. If faith is to remain true to experience and not become a sentimentalized blindness, it must be permeated by the tragic sense of life. Unless we can believe that God has willingly submitted himself to the harsh necessities of the created order, then we will be helpless when those necessities lay us low. We can only lean in to these forces, and know that such a posture is not passivity but action of the profoundest sort. Passion is not passive.

My tutor was right to challenge my reading of King Lear, but is it possible to embrace the fullness of this tragedy and yet see in its darkness an echo of the divine self-emptying? I think so.

For von Balthasar the resurrection is not “in any way a fifth act with a happy ending” but a mysterious affirmation of a love that can bear tragedy to the end. That is why, in the forty days that followed it, Christ was not magically made whole but bore the marks of his passion, and would not rest until we placed our hands—and our hearts—inside them."

 

as accessed 10/26/13

Catholic without the revelation-but we need to experience grief, and we ought to grieve

Movie Review of The Counselor

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/october-web-only/counselor.html

Alissa Wilkinson, Christianity Today's chief film critic

"It's vanity, in McCarthy's view, to think that we've got a new breed of evil today. It's the same old evil, only now it has bigger guns. And it still strikes at random. This is what The Counselor is about.

The story in a McCarthy tale is secondary to what the story is driving at, which is always the same two points. One, the world is older than it ever has been, and might be ending at any time; two, in the meantime, it's often a very bad place to live, full of random, senseless evil. There is no victory in a Cormac McCarthy novel. The best anyone can hope for is to survive the apocalypse, or hope his son will survive. McCarthy is not a religious man in the traditional sense of the word, but he was raised Catholic, and religion crops up in this film frequently as a topic of discussion. (I've read his worldview described as "Catholic without the revelation.")" ...

"But that hint of hope [in McCarthy's screenplay] is nowhere to be found in the film, nor a number of the original monologues, apparently removed to get the story to track better with viewers.
It's a shame, because there is still something very important at the heart of this film, and at the heart of all of McCarthy's work. This world is broken, broken beyond repair. Christians believe that after history's tragedies end, hope will be fulfilled—but our too-common mistake is to skip over the tragedy as fast as possible in our eagerness to get to the "redemption" part. (Gregory Wolfe writes of this beautifully in his Image editorial "The Tragic Sense of Life.") Anyone who has experienced genuine, senseless tragedy is familiar with the glib statements people make to smooth things over and keep on living.

But we need to experience grief, and we ought to grieve. We should to look around and spend time with the brokenness, feeling the difficulty of human embodiedness, allowing the sadness to take its time with us. This is not how things ought to be. Even Jesus wept, moments before raising Lazarus from the dead.

McCarthy's world holds little hope for redemption at all, but what he gets exactly right is that our existence seems senselessly tragic, and we're right to chafe. Near the film's end, we watch the Counselor gradually realize the full extent of the loss that evil is inflicting on him, and for a moment, we believe it's because of his wrongdoing. Certainly, the penalty outweighs the crime—the brutality is not excusable—but he still did a bad thing. He deserves to pay.

But then The Counselor becomes a McCarthy story, not a simple morality tale: he walks out into the street and right into the middle of a vigil that a number of the city's weeping residents are holding in memory of their own lost loved ones. He wanders through their midst with a look of wonder. It's Ellis's point in No Country: Whatcha got ain't nothin new. The Counselor is paying for his sins, but plenty of people lose their loved ones brutally without having engaged in illegal drug trafficking. Correlation does not imply causation. Evil is in us, but also bigger than us.

So that is why we need Cormac McCarthy alongside Victor Hugo and Shakespeare and Dickens: he reminds us (with a particularly American sensibility) that this world is broken and tragic and not fair, and that pushing past that fact too fast is an error we can't afford to make, for the good of our souls. Even if you believe in a final restoration, you need to feel why it's necessary.

Blessed, after all, are those who mourn." ...

"The film is rated R for "graphic violence, some grisly images, strong sexual content and language," which should surprise exactly nobody—but it's rough, even for McCarthy, and it would be difficult to recommend that most people see the movie."

as accessed 10/26/13

"This tension [between Christ and the church] takes us out of ourselves continuously."

quotes from Pope Francis:

“The Society of Jesus is an institution in tension,” the pope replied, “always fundamentally in tension. A Jesuit is a person who is not centered in himself. The Society itself also looks to a center outside itself; its center is Christ and his church. So if the Society centers itself in Christ and the church, it has two fundamental points of reference for its balance and for being able to live on the margins, on the frontier. If it looks too much in upon itself, it puts itself at the center as a very solid, very well ‘armed’ structure, but then it runs the risk of feeling safe and self-sufficient.

The Society must always have before itself the Deus semper maior, the always-greater God, and the pursuit of the ever greater glory of God, the church as true bride of Christ our Lord, Christ the king who conquers us and to whom we offer our whole person and all our hard work, even if we are clay pots, inadequate.

This tension takes us out of ourselves continuously. The tool that makes the Society of Jesus not centered in itself, really strong, is, then, the account of conscience, which is at the same time paternal and fraternal, because it helps the Society to fulfill its mission better.”

 

The pope is referring to the requirement in the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus that the Jesuit must “manifest his conscience,” that is, his inner spiritual situation, so that the superior can be more conscious and knowledgeable about sending a person on mission.

 

~ Pope Francis, Sept. 2013
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

Discernment - "I am always wary of ... the first thing that comes to my mind"

quotes from Pope Francis:

“Discernment is one of the things that worked inside St. Ignatius. For him it is an instrument of struggle in order to know the Lord and follow him more closely. I was always struck by a saying that describes the vision of Ignatius: non coerceri a maximo, sed contineri a minimo divinum est (“not to be limited by the greatest and yet to be contained in the tiniest—this is the divine”).
...
Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

“This motto,” the pope continues, “offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’

...

Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor. My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

 

But I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. The wisdom of discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what looks great and strong.”

~ Pope Francis, Sept. 2013
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

to venture into the darkness without losing the way

quote from Pope Francis:

"The church must warm the hearts of men and women. ...
"Thorough and adequate formation" is key, he said, because religious and lay Catholic communicators need to be able to venture into the darkness of indifference without losing their way; "to listen to (people's) dreams without being seduced; to share their disappointments without becoming despondent; to sympathize with those whose lives are falling apart without losing our own strength and identity," he said.

God is in every person’s life

"I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life.
You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow.
You have to trust God."
~ Pope Francis, Sept. 2013
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

See everything; turn a blind eye to much; correct a little

“See everything; turn a blind eye to much; correct a little.”
~ Pope Francis, Sept. 2013

The audacity to question God: An interview with Greg Boyd

The audacity to question God: An interview with Greg Boyd
Jonathan Merritt, Sept 19, 2013
http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/09/19/audacity-question-god-interview-greg-boyd/

quoted excerpt:

Bestselling author Greg Boyd rejects the idea that faith is rooted in certainty and is the opposite of doubt.
Pastor Gregory Boyd (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) made a name for himself years ago when he penned the best-selling Gold Medallion Award-winner Letters from a Skeptic, a collection of letters with his agnostic father that address tough questions non-Christians people have about the faith. But Boyd quickly became a lightning rod of controversy when he became a proponent of “open theism”, a view claiming that the future is not pre-determined and therefore God knows the future as possibilities and not fact (for more, see his book God of the Possible).

In his newest book, Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty, Boyd has returned to his roots in a way by urging people to wrestle with the big questions of faith. He claims that modern Christians have come to accept a false belief that faith is rooted in certainty. He says that faith is instead being willing to commit to living a certain way despite not being certain. Here, we discuss the benefit of embracing doubt and why he believes we need even to question God.
quoted excerpt:

JM: Can you share a little bit of the story you share in Benefit of the Doubt that taught you the importance of being honest with God?

GB: I became a Christian at the age of 17 in a strict holiness Pentecostal Church. I was able to quit taking drugs and a host of other sinful behaviors, except for one – a f pornography addiction that I’d developed over the four years leading up to my conversion. Since this church taught that a person lost their salvation with every sin, I found I was getting “saved” and “unsaved” several times a week–if not each day–for the first two years of my Christian walk.
One night, I walked out of this holiness church in despair, believing I was never going to be able to kick my pornography habit. Believing at this point that I was destined to hell, I became “uncorked” in the church parking lot while sharing my despair with a friend. Like a volcano erupting, I unleashed anger and frustration toward God not just over my two years of unsuccessful struggling with porn, but going all the way back to abuse I had suffered for years as a child at the hands of an unloving, psychologically tormented, step-mother.
After I had spewed out my seething rage, I flopped my Bible on the hood of my friend’s truck and began reading it sarcastically. It “happened” to flop open to Romans 8:1, which read, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” This opened the door for me to begin to realize, for the first time in my life, that God loved me for free, despite my sin. It ultimately resulted in me finding a motivation of love I had never known before, and it was this motivation that eventually broke the stronghold of pornography in my life and completely revolutionized my life as a disciple.
One of the main lessons I glean from this night is that it is only when we are completely honest with God that we are able to receive a true revelation of what God is really like. Only when we are uncompromisingly “real” before God can we allow God to be uncompromisingly “real” with us.

quoted excerpt:
JM: In Benefit of the Doubt, you advise people to believe in the Bible because they believe in Jesus, not the other way around. What do you mean by this, and why do you feel it is important?

GB: The number one reason young people today are abandoning the Christian faith and why other people can’t take the Christian faith seriously has to do with problems they have with the Bible. For example, as most freshmen taking a course in “The Bible as Literature” at a secular college learn, the historical accuracy of some biblical stories are questioned by many scholars, and it’s hard to deny that the Bible contains some apparent contradictions and some material that seems to fly in the face of modern science. In Benefit of the Doubt, I argue that if we structured our faith the way the earliest Christians did, these problems with the Bible would pose no threat to our confidence in Jesus being Lord and even to our confidence that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.
The earliest disciples didn’t believe in Jesus because their scripture (Old Testament) proved to them that he was the Son of God. They were rather convinced by Jesus’ claims, his unique life of love, his distinctive authority, his unprecedented miracles, his self-sacrificial death, and especially his resurrection. Once they believed in Jesus, they looked for him and found him in their scripture. But they never would have been convinced that Jesus was Lord had they started with scripture alone.
Unfortunately, most evangelicals today are taught to do the opposite. They base their faith in Jesus’ Lordship (as well as everything else) on their belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. This is “unfortunate” because this way of structuring our faith leverages everything on the perfection of this book, forcing the Bible to carry more weight than it was ever meant to carry. Every single problem people find with scripture now threatens to undermine their faith.
As I flesh out in my book, I eventually came to the conclusion that the things about Jesus that convinced the earliest disciples that he was Lord continue to be compelling enough to convince open-minded people today that Jesus is Lord, and they do not presuppose the view that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Once I was persuaded on the basis of historical, philosophical and personal arguments that Jesus was Lord, I was motivated to also embrace the Bible as God’s Word, for (among other things) this was clearly Jesus’ own view and it’s very hard to confess Jesus to be one’s Lord while correcting his theology, especially on such a fundamental matter. But notice, my reasons for believing in Scripture are now based entirely on my faith in Jesus, which is why my faith need not be threatened any longer by any historical inaccuracies or contradictions or scientific inaccuracies I may find in it.
I’m convinced that if young people today would structure their faith this way, we’d see far fewer loosing their faith.

etc.

With my mother's death all settled happiness . . . disappeared from my life.

Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis

Perhaps the most significant event of his early life was the death of his mother when he was age nine. Lewis says in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, "With my mother's death all settled happiness . . . disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis."
 

Possibilities Unlimited

author unknown:
Two salespeople were sent to a faraway, primitive culture to sell shoes.
The first emailed back home, "Situation hopeless. No one here wears shoes."
The second emailed to the home office, "Possibilities unlimited. No one here wears shoes."

We must believe in free will. We have no choice.

"We must believe in free will. We have no choice."
~ Isaac Singer

Diana Nyad, age 64, first to finish 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage

"FIND A WAY"

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-diana-nyad-cuba-florida-remarks-20130902,0,1729111.story

In the end, emerging from the great big ocean wearing a blue swimming cap and goggles -- and having swum roughly 110 miles in 52 hours and 54 minutes -- Diana Nyad still had enough strength to walk ashore Monday.

Failing four times over the years, on her fifth and final attempt this weekend, the 64-year-old Nyad officially became the first swimmer to go the distance from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
Upon reaching shore at Smathers Beach in Key West, Fla., Nyad had three things to tell the mob of onlookers who had watched her achieve a lifelong dream.
“One is, we should never ever give up,” said a slightly dazed Nyad, whose slurred remarks were received with a roar by the crowd.
“Two is, you’re never too old to chase your dreams."
“Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team," Nyad concluded.

Two miles from the end of the swim Monday morning, Nyad stopped to address her [35-member] support crew.
"This is a lifelong dream of mine and I'm very very glad to be with you," she told her team, according to an update on her website. "Some on the team are the most intimate friends of my life and some of you I've just met. But I'll tell you something, you're a special group. You pulled through; you are pros and have a great heart. So let's get going so we can have a whopping party."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57601044/diana-nyad-on-epic-swim-my-mantra-was-find-a-way/

Nyad said of her swim, "I'm so satisfied that we stuck with it. You can dream, you can be vital and you can be in your prime even. I may not look it right now but you catch me on a good day, I'm in my prime."

My mantra was "find a way."

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=9633304&categoryid=2378529
ESPN Sport Science: Nyad's Amazing Feat

Diana's swim was approximately:
53 hours
30,000 calories
153,000 strokes
equivalent of 10 marathons or swimming the English Channel 5 times

tempo è denaro

tempo è denaro - time is money

to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function

In The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Words of Wisdom: 8 Famous Quotes to Help You Embrace Fear and Achieve Success

Anthony Scaramucci

Managing Partner at SkyBridge Capital

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130827143745-10667678-words-of-wisdom-8-famous-quotes-to-help-you-embrace-fear-and-achieve-success?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

quote:

When offering career advice to young professionals and entrepreneurs, the two things that always top my list are to find a mentor and to read voraciously. Throughout the course of my life, I have been blessed with multiple mentors -- mostly teachers, professors, bosses or colleagues. In addition, I have gathered useful advice from reading, and observing the actions of individuals who I identify as some of the world’s best leaders, both past and present. The following are 8 notable quotes from these “leaders” that have inspired me and helped to shape my principles as a business owner.

• “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie
• "There are only two ways to live life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." – Albert Einstein
• "Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best." – Andrew Carnegie
• "The true measure of a person is how they treat someone who can do him absolutely no good." – Samuel Johnson
• "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there." – Yogi Berra
• “Expect more than others think possible.” – Howard Schultz
• "If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough." – Richard Branson
• “Never, never, never give up.” – Winston Churchill

simply remember that they love the (bleep) out of you

USA Today quote:
Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY 5:05 p.m. EDT August 24, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/08/23/alec-baldwin-wife-hilaria-hospital-welcome-baby/2693559/

Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, welcomed a new daughter Friday....  [Aug. 23, 2013]
"We are overjoyed to announce the birth of our daughter Carmen Gabriela. She is absolutely perfect," Hilaria tweeted just before 5 p.m. on Friday.
...
Baldwin also has a 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, from his marriage to actress Kim Basinger. Big sister Ireland posted a very long, and very sweet, Tumblr message full of advice for little Carmen.

"Remember that your parents will always love you," it says. "As a kid, you forget that sometimes. When they are screaming about this and bickering about that. It hurts. Grown ups yell. I don't know why, but they do. No matter what your mom or Dad says or does, simply remember that they love the (bleep) out of you. NEVER forget it."

it's all over much too soon

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon."
~ Woody Allen

no difference in matters of religion?

“To hold…that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads…to the rejection of all religion. ...
And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name.”
~ Pope Leo XIII, 1885

When people heal, they get well

"When people heal, they get well."
~ hospice patient

God always heals us

When I was the chaplain for an in-patient hospice unit, I had an interesting conversation with a visitor from a patient's church.  She said "God always answers prayers for healing.  Sometimes God takes our disease away from us, and sometimes God takes us away from our disease.  Either way, God always heals us."

This life is not the end of the story

quote from Rick Warren who is struggling with the recent death of his son:

“Not everything in this life has a happy ending. But this life is not the end of the story.”

Likeability and Capability, Respect and Support

://www.people.com/people/mobile/article/0,,20710201,00.html

The Voice Crowns Danielle Bradbery as Winner11:30PM EDT

 

The season also stood out for the camaraderie between the judges and the contestants, who showed respect and support for one another throughout the competition – despite the friendly bickering between Shelton and fellow coach Adam Levine.

For winner Bradbery, the Texas high schooler told PEOPLE Monday night she's thinking about the next step in her burgeoning career. "I feel like I could start off making a single. I could start off really small, but then eventually get bigger."

Regarding, Chamuel, coach Usher has made it clear he wants to stay in touch with the increasingly popular rocker, who wowed audiences with her fierce performances and humble, sweet demeanor.

"Every artist would hope to possess these two things: likeability and capability," Usher told her Monday after she performed a heartfelt version of "Why" by Annie Lennox. "To me, that represents a successful artist, and that is what you possess."

As for the The Swon Brothers, Zach told PEOPLE that Shelton's wife, Miranda Lambert, gave them a piece of advice that set their minds at ease, no matter the outcome. "She said she came in third on Nashville Star and look where she ended up. She's like 'Don't worry about winning. We are going to do great.' "

 

• With reporting by JESSICA HERNDON

 

too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart

Quotes from an address by Nelson Mandela to the Irish Dáil Éireann* in July 1990, just months after his release from prison in South Africa, thanking them for their support:
(bold added by blogger)

"The outstanding Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, has written that too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. He spoke thus because he could feel within himself the pain of the suffering that Irish men and women of conscience had had to endure in centuries of struggle against an unrelenting tyranny.
"But then he also spoke of love, of the love of those whose warm hearts the oppressors sought to turn to stone, the love of their country and people, and, in the end the love of humanity itself.

"For three quarters of a century, under the leadership of the ANC, our own people have themselves confronted a racist tyranny which grew more stubborn with each passing day. It had to be our lot that even as we refused to take up arms to save lives, we still had to bury many martyrs who were shot down or tortured to death simply because they dared to cry freedom.

"The apartheid system has killed countless numbers, not only in our country but throughout Southern Africa. It has condemned to the gallows some of the best sons of our people. It has imprisoned some and driven others into exile. Even those whose only desire was to live, have had their lives cut short because apartheid means the systematic and conscious deprivation and impoverishment of the black millions.

"It could have been that our own hearts turned to stone. It could have been that we inscribed vengeance on our banners of battle and resolved to meet brutality with brutality. But we understood that oppression dehumanises the oppressor as it hurts the oppressed. We understood that to emulate the barbarity of the tyrant would also transform us into savages. We knew that we would sully and degrade our cause if we allowed that it should, at any stage, borrow anything from the practices of the oppressor. We had to refuse that our long sacrifice should make a stone of our hearts.

"We are in struggle because we value life and love all humanity. The liberated South Africa we envision is one in which all our people, both black and white, will be one to the other, brother and sister. We see being born a united South African nation of equal compatriots, enriched by the diversity of the colour and culture of the citizens who make up the whole."

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/address-by-nelson-mandela-to-d%C3%A1il-%C3%A9ireann-1.1422034?page=2

*Note: Dáil Éireann is the lower house, but principal chamber, of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament).

God's grace is based upon what helps

"God wants all his children to enjoy the complete fullness of eternal life.
God's grace is not based upon what is fair, but rather what helps."
~ Author Unknown

Reese Witherspoon's Apology

Witherspoon apologized shortly after news of the arrests broke Sunday:

“I clearly had one drink too many and I am deeply embarrassed about the things I said,” she said in a statement.

“It was definitely a scary situation and I was frightened for my husband, but that is no excuse.

I was disrespectful to the officer who was just doing his job. The words I used that night definitely do not reflect who I am.

I have nothing but respect for the police and I’m very sorry for my behavior.”

 

http://www.accesshollywood.com/will-reese-witherspoons-ultra-clean-image-make-a-full-recovery-after-arrest_article_78422

Nihilism: profound alienation, grievance, sense of anger, desire for revenge, feelings of humiliation...

The New Zealand Herald
Unlikely religion motive behind attacks

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10878802
5:30 AM Sunday Apr 21, 2013
quotes:

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, appear to fit the biographical pattern of those involved in domestic terror plots, according to research by terrorism expert Brian Jenkins of Rand Corp - young, male, disaffected consumers of radical internet propaganda.

"These are individuals who were disenfranchised with their station in life and they decided to take action," said Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, former US counterterrorism official and a senior affiliate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

"The motivation for these two would have been very different from the people on 9/11," said Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor who recently published a book about tribal Islam. "It's not an act for a political point. It is an act of nihilism, and the frame is not Islam."
...
Their median age is 27. They have come from a cross-section of ethnic backgrounds. They typically show signs of profound alienation.

"Religious belief does not appear to be the key personal factor," Jenkins said. Participants have been motivated by "grievance, sense of anger, desire for revenge, feelings of humiliation, desire to demonstrate manhood, participation in an epic struggle, thirst for glory."

Your beliefs become your thoughts ...

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

People will never forget how you made them feel

"I've learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

~ Maya Angelou

Footprints on our Hearts

"Some people come into our lives and quietly go.
Others stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same."

Otto's

Down But Not Out

Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest NBA player of all time, credits his attitude about failure as a critical driver behind his enormous success:
“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

Make 'em laugh or they'll kill you

If you want to tell people the truth, make 'em laugh.
Otherwise, they'll kill you.

~ Oscar Wilde