Toula seeks to avoid a family argument with her aunt Voula:
Toula: "Can we please not discuss it?"
Voula: "No. That's not what we do.
We yell and scream.
We find a solution together
using threats and guilt."
from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"
Director: Nia Vardalos
Writer: Nia Vardalos
Stars: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Louis Mandylor
Release Date: 2023-09-08
“Your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Today is My Birthday, Lord
Of all the gifts I've
received
I hold the gift of Your
Love
closest to my heart.
Of all the friends I've
known,
I cherish above all Your
Friendship.
There have been difficult
days on this journey called Life,
even sorrow,
but You have been there
for me.
There has been joy and
laughter
and I've seen Your presence there.
You breathed life into my
soul
and You chose me to live!
I hope You are pleased
with me.
I ask that You forgive me
when I fail You.
Today is my birthday,
Lord,
and I offer this day to You.
I ask only that You walk
with me.
Lead me home, O Lord,
where we will celebrate
this journey
of friendship and love
in the everlasting life
prepared by You.
Thank You for this birthday, Lord!
~ Author Unknown
Taylor Swift, "Mastermind"
"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail/
Strategy sets the scene for the tale"
from her latest album, "Midnights"
"God gave me a plan."
~ Phyllis Duncan, Schwenkfelder Mission Church, 9/25/2022
Marriage
"There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
Let the wife make the husband glad to come home,
and let him make her sorry to see him leave."
~ Martin Luther
Albert Einstein quote about "a holy curiosity"
Curiosity
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
~ Albert Einstein
https://www.azquotes.com/author/4399-Albert_Einstein/tag/curiosity
Winston S. Churchill said the following famous quip about democracy (House of Commons, 11 November 1947)—but he was quoting an unknown predecessor (note bold face below). Credit Churchill as publicist for an unsourced aphorism.
From Churchill by Himself, 574:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/12/08/democracy-worst/
"Slips are totally normal.
When you have a slip, it’s just that. A slip. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you a failure.
The most important thing is that you don’t let that slip become a slide."
~ Jennette McCurdy
In 1986, Fred Rogers wrote this in a syndicated newspaper column:
I was spared from any great disasters when I was little, but there was plenty of news of them in newspapers and on the radio,
and there were graphic images of them in newsreels.
For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live.
But I felt secure with my parents, and they let me know that we were safely together whenever I showed concern about accounts of alarming events in the world.
There was something else my mother did that I've always remembered:
"Always look for the helpers," she'd tell me.
"There's always someone who is trying to help."
I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses,
police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends
who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/look-for-the-helpers/
"The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us
is that we are
to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward;
to give when we want to take;
to love when we are inclined to hate;
to include when are tempted to exclude."
~ Jon Meacham
“Take care of your body.
It’s the only place you have to live in.”
~ Jim Rohn
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
~ Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy
"Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him."
~ Indian philosopher Bara Dada, quoted in the mid-1920s
Did Gandhi Say This About Christians?
"I like your Christ, but not your Christianity."
Harvard University newspaper The Harvard Crimson, 1927, uses the quote confusingly, as though it might be a paraphrase from a Swarthmore College philosophy professor named J.H. Holmes:
"I like your Christ, but not your Christianity." In these words of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. J.H. Holmes summed up the Indian leader's view of Christianity in a recent interview with a CRIMSON reporter. Dr. Holmes, professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College and a member of the Society of Friends, has just completed a tour around the world, during which he spent some time in India. He had several opportunities of conversing with Gandhi. He was present at the meeting of the All-Indian Congress and had the honor of being the only westerner ever allowed to speak from their platform.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-gandhi-say-this-about-christians/
"Do what you love, and put your whole heart into it, and then just have fun."
~ Tim Cook, Apple CEO
Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, 2019, p. 213.
quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
My thoughts are not all bad: many are good and kind and true. But like a bag of flour infested by maggots, no part of me is pure. This dawned on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he was lying on rotting straw in a Soviet gulag:
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either--but right through every human heart.”3
This realization leaves us with another problem: all our relationships hinge, to some extent, on hiding.
3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, trans. Harry Willetts, vol. 3 (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 615.
On Reading St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life:
One phrase from it really stuck with me. He wrote, “Say frequently in the midst of your contradictions, ‘This is the path to heaven.'”
https://aleteia.org/2023/01/23/st-francis-de-sales-6-words-to-hold-onto-when-life-is-really-hard/amp/
quote from Elie Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
