I coulda been a contender

Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront":
"I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am...."

Table Grace

Blessings on the blossoms,
Blessing on the fruits,
Blessings on the leaves and stems,
Blessings on the roots,
Loving hands together as we say,
Blessings on our meal,
and our time together,
and we're grateful for our family.

~ Katia Hetter's blog
(blessing from her daughter's pre-school)
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/12/
my-faith-how-saying-a-blessing-changed-my-secular-family-meals/
?hpt=hp_bn8

In the beginning God created - Gen. 1:1

JPS Genesis 1:1
IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

TNK Genesis 1:1
When God began to create heaven and earth --

God (Elohim): noun common masculine plural absolute
created: verb qal perfect 3rd person masculine singular homonym 1

Who will go for us? Isaiah 6:8

JPS Isaiah 6:8
And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said: 'Here am I; send me.'

TNK Isaiah 6:8
Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me."

Lord: noun common masculine plural construct suffix 1st person common singular
for us: particle preposition suffix 1st person common plural

Anxiety passes when we break out of ruts

"Life keeps presenting us with a choice between anxiety and depression. Choose anxiety; it passes. Depression hangs on.
"The anxiety is apprehension over breaking with routine ways of behaving and relating. When we break out of ruts, that anxiety passes. When we give in to routine out of fear, we feel helpless and that leads to feeling depressed."

~ Dr. Michael D'Antonio
a Senior Staff Therapist in Council For Relationship's Paoli, PA office

A Test of Obedience and Loyalty

"Charismatic leaders can gain control of people’s minds in sects and pretty much create their own rules," Grumett said. Whatever food edicts a sect founder invents are likely a test of obedience and loyalty to him."

~ David Grumett, author of "Theology on the Menu"
http://blog.nj.com/njv_kathleen_obrien/2011/06/religious_fasting_and_child_ab.html

He Pushed Them and They Flew

Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them and they flew.

~ Christopher Logue

"recks not his own rede"

from the Free Dictionary definition of Advice:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/advice

reck one’s own rede

To follow one’s own advice; to “practice what you preach.” Reck ‘heed, regard’ appears only in negative constructions. Rede ‘advice, counsel’ is now archaic and limited to poetical or dialectal use. This expression is found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede. (I,iii)

Today reck one’s own rede is met only in literary contexts.

the tune the old cow died of

Advice instead of aid, words in lieu of alms.
This expression alludes to the following old ballad:

There was an old man, and he had an old cow,
But he had no fodder to give her,
So he took up his fiddle and played her the tune;
“Consider, good cow, consider,
This isn’t the time for the grass to grow,
Consider, good cow, consider.”

Needless to say, the old cow died of hunger.

"Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

quote from a Timothy Keller sermon:

In the last book of The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee wakes up, thinking everything is lost and discovering instead that all his friends were around him, he cries out: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

The answer is YES. And the answer of the Bible is YES. If the resurrection is true, then the answer is yes. Everything sad is going TO COME UNTRUE.

http://davidkpark.wordpress.com/2006/09/26/
timothy-keller-transcript-the-problem-of-suffering/

no worse struggle than the one that is never fought

from a New York Times story on the competition between Mexican central bank governor, Agustín Carstens and French finance minister, Christine Lagarde to become the new director of the I.M.F.:

For Mr. Carstens, long-shot chances are no reason to forgo seeking the position. “It’s essential to take the risk,” he said. He cited a Mexican expression, “There is no worse struggle than the one that is never fought.”

Emerging Nations Warm to Lagarde to Lead I.M.F.
By LIZ ALDERMAN and KEITH BRADSHER
Published: June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/
business/global/08fund.html

Bidden or not bidden God is present

"Bidden or not bidden God is present."

~ Carl Jung
(written on his door and on his tombstone)

Lobsters

As lobsters grow, their hard shells become too small. in order to continue to grow, they split their shells and crawl out, naked and vulnerable. During the time it takes for their new shell to harden, they face danger without the protection of their shell.
When the new shell hardens it is too big, so it doesn't fit quite right. Eventually the lobster grows into her new shell and feels more comfortable, until she grows more and the cycle starts all over again! During its first year, a lobster molts fourteen to seventeen times, but when it grows older it molts not more than once a year.

get married, get a degree, hold on to a job

The Bloody Crossroads
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
Published September 7, 2009
http://www.foramericankids.org/documents/9-909.RESPONSE.pdf

Can the state do anything to effectively promote virtuous behavior? Because when you get into the core problems, whether in Washington, California or on Wall Street, you keep seeing the same moral deficiencies: self-indulgence, irresponsibility and imprudence.

Two of my favorite essays in the first issue go right at this problem. Ron Haskins delivers a careful reading of the data on inequality and social mobility and cuts through a lot of the sloppy reporting on this issue. He points out that the surest way to achieve mobility is still the same: get married, get a degree, hold on to a job. Poverty in America is a function of culture and behavior at least as much as of entrenched injustice, he writes.

A good parent self-limits

"A good parent self-limits with his children to help them grow."

~ Rev. Dr. Paul MacMurray, 5/29/11

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

Never miss a good chance to shut up

• Never miss a good chance to shut up.


• Always drink upstream from the herd.


• If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.


• There are three kinds of men:


• The ones that learns by reading.


• The few who learn by observation.


• The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.


• Letting the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back.

~ Will Rogers

surprise them with restraint and generosity

What Nelson Mandela’s character said about South African whites in the movie “Invictus”:
“We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity.”

It Was Perfect

“A man who was completely innocent,
offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others,
including his enemies,
and became the ransom of the world.
It was a perfect act.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi
(Indian Philosopher, internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest influenced by Jesus Christ, 1869-1948)

"We want revenge, and we want blood."

"We want revenge, and we want blood."

ABU MOHAMED, a protester in Azra, Syria, a southern town that witnessed the highest death toll Friday.
New York Times, 4/23/11
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/middleeast/
23syria.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha3

the truth of the thing signified is surely present there

The Lord's Supper
John Calvin "can be regarded as occupying a position roughly midway between" (McGrath) the doctrines developed by Martin Luther on the one hand and Huldrych Zwingli, on the other:
"Believers ought always to live by this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be convinced that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For why should the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, unless it was to assure you that you really participate in it? And if it is true that a visible sign is given to us to seal the gift of an invisible thing, when we have received the symbol of the body, let us rest assured that the body itself is also given to us." (Calvin); that is, "the thing that is signified is effected by its sign" (McGrath).[65]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

65.^ McGrath, A. 1998. Historical Theology, An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford, p.199.

Love Rules Without Rules

Love Rules Without Rules

~ Italian proverb

Relax!

quotes from Martha Beck:
March 2008 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Life-Coach-Martha-Becks-5-New-Best-Pieces-of-Advice/

One day—a day that has lingered in my memory despite countless attempts to repress it—I went skiing with a group of expert athletes in blizzard conditions. My friends wanted to ski runs with names like Panic Attack and Months in Traction, while I preferred Pokey Li'l Pony and Easy Does It. At first, my friends ribbed me good-naturedly. Then they realized I was serious, and became silently ashamed for me. Of course, I tensed up. After my third face-plant, the best skier in the group told me gently, "Martha, every scary obstacle is just an invitation to relax."

One of my favorite fictional characters is a parrot from Tom Robbins's Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. The parrot speaks words only once in a great while, and he says just one thing: "People of the world: Relax!"

"You could hit a hole in one and still lose a golf tournament, and you could win without ever hitting a hole in one. A great golfer is someone who usually gets the ball somewhat closer to the hole than most other people. Almost everything in life functions this way. No break is big enough to end all your problems, but consistently getting reasonably close to your objective, task after task, will put you far ahead of most other people. So dream of the hole in one, but know you can be a champion just by getting it on the green."

~ Martha Beck

Resentment

A poison one swallows with the expectation the other person will die,
welling up from lack of forgiveness.

Religious Conviction and Evil

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Pascal

Will God get what he wants?

from a review of Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, HarperOne, 2011

He points out the many New Testament passages that point in this direction, like "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Cor. 5:19), and Jesus' statement, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). He adds to that verses about God's omnipotence and God's desire that all should be saved.
And then he asks the arresting question, "Will God get what he wants?"

Jesus: "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28, ESV)

John Wayne as a protective paternal figure

From: Emanuel Levy, John Wayne: Prophet of the American Way of Life, The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Metuchen, N.J. and London (1988), page 1:

John Wayne was born as Marion Michael Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, a small town in Iowa. His father, Clyde L. Morrison, was a druggist of Scottish descent, and his mother, Mary Margaret Brown, of pure Irish stock... When he was six, the family moved to Lancaster in Southern California, where his father settled on a ranch...

Levy, page 161:

Wayne's sexuality [in his movie roles] is also monogamous; he neither betrays his screen wives nor flirts with married women. But his domesticity tends to be more familial than marital, family and children are at the center of his pictures. "The longer Wayne kept his promise, kept providing, stayed true, kept being there despite cancer and illnesses and age itself," Michael Malone observed, "the more valued the strength of his fidelity and the integrity of his identity came to be." Women's attraction to the values he stood for was so strong that in the 1970s even the feminists came to admire him as a protective paternal figure.

three stringent rules for living

From: George Carpozi Jr., The John Wayne Story, Arlington House: New Rochelle, NY (1972), page 17:

Clyde Morrison [John Wayne's father] was of Scottish descent... [John] Wayne describes his father as the "kindest, most patient man [he] ever met," saying that the elder Morrison never had an unkind thought in his mind and rarely spoke harshly to his son or anyone else. Nor did he ever lecture young Marion [John Wayne]. But he did teach him three stringent rules for living which have the ring of orders tumbling from the lips of Davy Crockett in the nineteenth century:
1. Always keep your word.
2. A gentleman never insults anybody intentionally.
3. Don't go around looking for trouble. But if you ever get in a fight, make sure you win it.

Our limitation is God's opportunity

quotes from same kind of different as me: a modern-day slave, and international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together, by Ron Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2006.

There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over.
I remember one time I was hunkered down in the hobo jungle with some folks. We was talkin 'bout life, and this fella was talkin, said, "People think they're in control, but they ain't. The truth is, that which must befall thee must befall thee. And that which must pass thee by must past thee by."
You'd be surprised what you can learn talkin to homeless people. I learned to accept life for what it is. ...
Sometimes to touch us, God touches someone that's close to us. This is what opens our eyes to the fact there is a higher power than ourselves, whether we call it God or not. ...
And I can tell you something else--I don't care what no doctors say, Miss Debbie ain't goin nowhere till she finished the work here on earth that God gave her to do.
Denver Moore, p. 169-170

When we let Miss Debbie down into the ground, I knowed it wadn't nothin but her earthly body. But I still felt my heart sinkin right down into that hole. ...
And I told Him I didn't like it. That's the good think 'bout God. Since He can see right through your heart anyway, you can go on and tell Him what you really think. ...
I cried and cried out loud and told Miss Debbie that was the most important thing she taught me: "ever man should have the courage to stand up and face the enemy," I said, "cause ever person that looks like a enemy on the outside ain't necessarily one on the inside. We all has more in common that we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."
Denver Moore, p. 192-193

Why Avoiding Rejection Is a Major Mistake

"At 40 I now believe rejection is God's way of kicking you to higher ground."

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The Promises of God Are True

Tom Long, a former preaching professor at Princeton, says that while he was at Princeton, he went to a nearby Presbyterian church that prides itself on being an academic, intellectual church. Early on, he said, he went to a family night supper and sat down next to a man, introduced himself, told him he was new, and said, “Have you been here long?”

“Oh yes,” the man said. “In fact I was here before this became such a scholarly church. Why I’m probably the only non-intellectual left. I haven’t understood a sermon in over 25 years.”

“Then why do you keep coming,” Tom asked?

“Because every Monday night a group of us get in the church van and drive over to the youth correctional center. Sometimes we play basketball, or play games. Usually we share a Bible story. But mostly we just get to know these kids and listen to them.

“I started going because Christians are supposed to do those kind of things. But now I could never stop. Sharing the love of God at that youth center has changed my life.”

And then he said this profound statement. “You cannot prove the promises of God in advance, but if you live them, they’re true, every one.”

intense anger over injured dignity

The Wall Street Journal
THE SATURDAY ESSAY
MARCH 12, 2011
Is China Next?
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Will the protests that have swept the Middle East inspire a similar movement in China, or is that country's middle class more interested in the material than the political?

quote:
"Over the course of three short months, popular uprisings have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, sparked a civil war in Libya and created unrest in other parts of the Middle East. They also have raised a question in many people's minds: Are all authoritarian regimes now threatened by this new democratic wave? In particular, is China, a rising superpower, vulnerable to these forces?"
...
"Perhaps the most relevant thinker for understanding the Middle East today and China tomorrow is the late Samuel Huntington—not the Huntington of "The Clash of Civilizations," who argued that there were fundamental incompatibilities between Islam and democracy, but the Huntington whose classic book "Political Order in Changing Societies," first published in 1968, laid out his theory of the development "gap."
Observing the high levels of political instability plaguing countries in the developing world during the 1950s and '60s, Mr. Huntington noted that increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers. This could be explained, he argued, by a gap between the newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people and their existing political system—that is, between their hopes for political participation and institutions that gave them little or no voice. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor in such a society; they tend to be led, instead, by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity."
...
"It is certainly true that the dry tinder of social discontent is just as present in China as in the Middle East. The incident that triggered the Tunisian uprising was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, who had his vegetable cart repeatedly confiscated by the authorities and who was slapped and insulted by the police when he went to complain. This issue dogs all regimes that have neither the rule of law nor public accountability: The authorities routinely fail to respect the dignity of ordinary citizens and run roughshod over their rights. There is no culture in which this sort of behavior is not strongly resented."
...
"All social revolutions are driven by intense anger over injured dignity, an anger that is sometimes crystallized by a single incident or image that mobilizes previously disorganized individuals and binds them into a community."

—Mr. Fukuyama is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His new book, "The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution," will be published next month.

http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052748703560404576188981829658442
.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Don't be so humble

"Don't be so humble;
you're not that great."

~ Golda Meir

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

SOS - Stuck on Stupid

~ Iyanla Vanzant

Handling a Temper Tantrum

Michael Potegal, Ph.D., a pediatric neuropsychologist at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis:
"When you comfort a child in the middle of a tantrum, you reinforce the behavior. Instead, say 'I'm sorry you're upset. When you calm down, I'll give you a hug and we can talk about what happened.'"
This way, you offer support and sympathy while still showing your tot how to regulate his emotions.
"Since that meltdown, I've learned to say 'I'm not talking to you while you're behaving like this,'" [My friend Mana Heydarpour of New York City] says.

"Why toddlers throw temper tantrums"
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/21/
toddlers.temper.tantrums.parenting/
index.html?hpt=Sbin

a great deal of religion and no love

"Too many people have a great deal of religion and no love."

~ Billy Sunday

those parts of the Bible I do understand

Mark Twain once said this about the Bible:
"I have no problem with those parts of the Bible I don't understand. It's those parts of the Bible I do understand that gives me fits."

I Walked a Mile with Pleasure

I Walked a Mile with Pleasure

I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me!

~ Robert Browning Hamilton

we go from church to tell

"The Gospel is not something we come to church to hear; it is something we go from church to tell."

~ Vance Havner

I am to be concerned

"As a Christian I am to be concerned for the best person, the worst person, the first person, the last person, the least person and the lost person on earth that they might be saved."

~ Robert Aubuchon

God Wants Us To Be H. U. M. B. L. E. !

God Wants Us To Be H. U. M. B. L. E. !

"H" is for the HUMILITY to acknowledge we are sinners in need of a Savior. Jesus Christ is his name!

"U" is for UNITY. He wants us to be united as brothers and sisters in love. He wants us to "bear with one another lovingly" (Eph 4:1). We must "bear with one another" because we are sinners with the strengths and weaknesses that come with being human.

"M" is for MISSION. We must understand His mission for us as a Church community and as individuals in the Body of Christ. We must continuously seek God's will in our lives and then DO IT! ("When all is said and done, more is said than done!")

"B" is for BOLDNESS. We must be bold in sharing God's love with others. We must be willing to take the risk of being rejected. Rejection will happen to us just as it happened to Jesus. We never know how the Holy Spirit may be using us to plant seeds in another person's life even though we may initially experience rejection. Be BOLD for Jesus!

"L" is for LOVE. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. P.S. - Don't forget to love yourself. God made you in his image.

"E" is for EVANGELIZE! It is the mission of the Church and everyone in it. Tell the world and those around you that God loves them, that Jesus loves them so much that he died on the cross for them and that he sent the Holy Spirit to purify us, to make us holy and to empower us to carry out his mission for us with charisma!

Remember, God wants us to be H. U. M. B. L. E.
Humility, Unity, Mission, Boldness, Love, Evangelize

~ Joe Boroden

Don't say it

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."

~ Sam Levenson

Those who matter don't mind

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

~ Dr. Seuss

You must begin with God

"The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born BY his purpose and FOR his purpose."

~ Rick Warren from "The Purpose Driven Life"

Anger is one letter short of danger!

"Anger is one letter short of danger!"

~ Denis Waitley

God will intervene on our behalf

"How do you react when you're snubbed or mistreated? It's best not to lash out but instead leave the matter in God's hands. Someone once wrote: 'When you are quick to fight your own battles, Jesus steps aside and gives you the job.' But if we refuse to retaliate, God will intervene on our behalf."

~ Author Unknown

Godlike Justice & Compassion

"We evaluate others with a godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a godlike compassion."

~ Sydney J. Harris

Gender Gap: College women more emotionally stressed

New York Times
January 26, 2011
Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
By TAMAR LEWIN

quote:
"Linda Sax, a professor of education at U.C.L.A. and former director of the freshman study who uses the data in research about college gender gaps, said the gap between men and women on emotional well-being was one of the largest in the survey.
“One aspect of it is how women and men spent their leisure time,” she said. “Men tend to find more time for leisure and activities that relieve stress, like exercise and sports, while women tend to take on more responsibilities, like volunteer work and helping out with their family, that don’t relieve stress.”

In addition, Professor Sax has explored the role of the faculty in college students’ emotional health, and found that interactions with faculty members were particularly salient for women. Negative interactions had a greater impact on their mental health.
“Women’s sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men.”
She added: “And while men who challenged their professor’s ideas in class had a decline in stress, for women it was associated with a decline in well-being.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Grace always trumps Karma

"Grace always trumps Karma."
"Take baby steps toward the better not the worse."

~ Rev. Dr. Paul MacMurray, 1/30/11

Let me be in your healing presence

Sometimes I lie awake with negative, fearful thoughts churning me down into a whirlpool of hopelessness. The prayer that God gave me for these times is "Let me be in your healing presence." This is the simplest basic need I have, deeper than words. I need God to hold me on his lap, with his arms around me, and to let me be in his healing presence.
I pray for you that you will be in God's healing presence.

to stand by one’s child and watch his back

Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai wrote in her book “Seeing Off” that the role of a parent is merely to stand by one’s child and watch his back as he gradually ventures afar.

http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/
helen-he-dont-demonize-chinese-mothers-545975

don't know why you needed to insult me

Bryant says, "I reply all the time by saying, 'Thank you for writing, I appreciate your opinion though I don't know why you needed to insult me.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/21/
pearlman.online.civility/index.html?hpt=C2

a good heart shines bright and keeps his course truly

William Shakespeare
Henry V
Act 5, Scene 2, Page 6
King Henry V:
"A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow, but a good heart ... shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me."

The Imagination

"True change takes place in the imagination."

~ Thomas Moore

Making Life Choices

1. Is this task absolutely necessary to keep my life afloat?

2. Does this task buoy me up emotionally?

~ Martha Beck

Forgiveness

following quotes on forgiveness are from Rev. Ed Bacon:

In studying the great spiritual teachers over the years, it has been clear to me that forgiveness is essential to a healthy life. Jesus harps on forgiveness repeatedly. The great psychotherapist Dr. Carl Simonton claimed that the first characteristic in people who are especially vulnerable to disease is a strong tendency to hold resentment and marked inability to forgive.

"It is time now for you to be an agent of the power of forgiveness."
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

Last year, I interviewed author Connie Domino about her book The Law of Forgiveness on Oprah's Soul Series radio show. ... After reading and following the advice of The Law of Forgiveness, a friend said he made a list of those who had offended him over the years and then forgave them. He wrote me, "I woke up the next morning feeling 100 pounds lighter!"
...
Connie Domino's central argument is that you do not have to meet with the person you are forgiving. You don't have to begin to like them. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to forget what they did to you. You don't even have to let down your boundaries protecting yourself from being hurt again by that person.
But something very deep within you changes. You will feel a removal of impediments that the state of unforgiveness builds up within you— "boulders" as it were within your personal flow of energy. Unforgiveness blocks your attempts to achieve your goals and dreams. However, once you forgive those who have hurt you in the past, you are freer to attain your life's goals and dreams.

One of the most dramatic examples in history is the role that forgiveness played in the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. President Mandela truly believes forgiveness is one of the most powerful instruments in the world. Immediately after winning the election in South Africa, he invited his former wardens from Robben Island where he was imprisoned for almost 28 years to be his honored guests at his inauguration. He believes that his forgiveness of his enemies helped his nation begin to recover from the bleak days of Apartheid.

Mandela appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Archbishop Tutu wrote a groundbreaking book about his philosophy of forgiveness in which he argued that for everyone there is no future without forgiveness.

The Rev. Ed Bacon is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California.
Oprah.com on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 ©
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-to-Forgive-Rev-Ed-Bacon/

"Prisoners of Hope"

quotes on hope from Rev. Ed Bacon:

"The world of tomorrow belongs to those who give it the greatest hope."
~ Teilhard de Chardin

"It is not the way we deal with our human situation that is the basis for hope...hope is the basis for how we deal with our human situation."
~ Arden K. Barden

In his last Christmas Eve sermon, Martin Luther King Jr. preached about his dream having been turned into a nightmare in the church bombing in Birmingham, the increase in poverty during his lifetime and the war in Vietnam, which was then escalating.
Then he said: "Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close tonight by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you cannot give up on life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," The Trumpet of Conscience, p.76

"There are no hopeless situations. There are only people who think hopelessly."
~ Windred Newman

"Everything that is done in this world is done by hope."
~ Martin Luther

Cornel West in his wonderful book on the moral obligations of living in a democratic society, wrote: "To be part of the democratic tradition is to be a prisoner of hope. And you cannot be a prisoner of hope without engaging in a form of struggle in the present moment that keeps the best of the past alive. [Whether that struggle is a personal struggle with yourself, an interpersonal struggle with your friends, colleagues, or family members, or a struggle at the office, or a struggle on the political level.] To engage in that struggle means that one is always willing to acknowledge that there is no triumph just around the corner, but that you persist because you believe it is right and just and moral to persist. As T.S. Eliot said, 'Ours is in the trying. The rest is not our business.'"
~ Cornel West, "The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society," The Good Citizen, p. 12

In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela wrote: "I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur. ...I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there was mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Human goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."
~ Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 615

The second thing I have learned about people who give others hope is this: there is this sense in them that "the good" will prevail in time, no matter what. Desmond Tutu calls it his belief that the universe is moral; he reminds us of all the bloody tyrants whose regimes inevitably bit the dust. Dr. King spoke about the arc of the universe bending toward justice. The good will always win in time.
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

Rebecca Solnit says that hope is not "like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. ... Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope shoves you out the door. ... Action is impossible without hope."
~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

What is the hope for which God created you to bring to your world, to your family, to your business, to your friendships? Is it to teach a child in the hospital his or her nouns and adverbs, or is it to do your part to bring global peace? Whatever it is, be a bringer of hope. You will thereby be your true self—-the person God made you to be.
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

The Rev. Ed Bacon is a guest host for the Oprah's Soul Series radio show. He is also the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California.
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Power-of-Hope-Saves-Lives-Rev-Ed-Bacon/

Teacher in the Burn Unit

When I think of hope, I think of this story about a retired schoolteacher who volunteered to visit and teach young children at a large hospital.

One day, the phone rang and she received her first assignment as a new volunteer. On the other end of the line was the classroom teacher of a young boy who had been hospitalized and needed tutoring during his stay in the hospital. The volunteer teacher took down the name of the boy and his hospital room number and was told by his classroom teacher that this boy had been studying nouns and adverbs in his class before he was hospitalized.

It was not until the visiting teacher got just outside the boy's hospital room that she realized he was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. She was prepared to teach English grammar, but she was not prepared to witness the horrible look and smell of badly burned human flesh. She was not prepared to see a young boy in great pain either. Everything around her made her want to hold her nose, to turn around and to leave faster than she came.

But something inside her kept her from walking away, so she clumsily stammered over to his bedside and said simply: "I'm the hospital teacher. Your schoolteacher asked me to help you with your nouns and adverbs," and she began to teach.

The next morning when she came to work with the boy, a nurse from the burn unit rushed up to her and asked her, "What did you do to that boy?"

The teacher began to apologize profusely, but before she could finish, the nurse interrupted her. "You don't understand. We've been really worried about him and his condition has been deteriorating over the past few days, because he had completely given up hope. But ever since you were here with him yesterday, his whole attitude has changed and he's fighting back and responding to treatment. It's as though he decided to live! What did you do?"

When the nurse later questioned the little boy, he said, "I figured I was doomed—that I was gonna die—until I saw that teacher." And as a tear began to run down his little face, he finished: "But when I saw that teacher, I realized that they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy...would they?"

Do you hear the angels singing?

quote from www.saintjameswestminster.ca/sermons/070610.pdf

Diane Komp is a pediatric oncologist, that is, she treats children who have cancer. A highly trained physician, she used to be an agnostic. That was before Anna died.
Anna was a little girl who had leukemia, in the days when recovery was rare. As death came close, her parents, the hospital chaplain, and Dr. Komp gathered at her bedside.
“Before she died,” Dr. Komp writes, “Anna mustered the final energy to sit up in her hospital bed and say, ‘The angels, they’re so beautiful, Mommy; can you see them? Do you hear them singing? They’re so beautiful, Mommy.’ And then she lay back on her pillow and died.”
The chaplain, who was uncomfortable with all this, left quickly, leaving the agnostic Dr. Komp to help these grieving parents.
What she remembers is that Anna’s parents were deeply comforted by what had happened, “as if they had been given the most precious gift in the world”.
Together, she says, we contemplated a spiritual mystery that transcended our understanding and experience.”
Diane Komp was an agnostic no more.

a mourning hut at the outskirts

quote from www.stpetersrwc.org/sermons/Sermon_6_10_07.pdf

It was once a custom in Russian villages, at a time when many children did not survive infancy, to have a mourning hut at the outskirts of every town. All women who lost children were sent to live in that hut for a month of solitude and grief.

At the end of the month, the hut was set on fire. The woman inside had to decide whether to live or die. If she came out of the burning hut, she was prepared to live, and she then rebuilt the hut for the next mourner.

As harsh as the practice may sound to us, it provided a graphic picture of the necessity we confront to decide to move out of the despair we find ourselves in when we are dealing with grief. That’s what those who have gone on must want for us who are left behind. They must want us to pick up our lives and move on with the conviction that the God who loves us also loves them.

God is not the God of the dead, Jesus once noted, but of the living. That means that those we love are still living with God. If we believe that, we have no choice. We must move on toward God-filled living again.

“I ain’t never seen anything like that before"

You may know the story of a young minister who was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man who had died while traveling through the area. The service was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country. This man would be the first person laid to rest there.
As he was not familiar with the back woods area, the young minister soon became quite lost and finally arrived over an hour late. He saw the backhoe by the grave and noticed that the crew was eating lunch under a nearby tree, but the hearse was nowhere in sight.
He apologized to the workers for his tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave, where he saw the vault lid already in place. The young preacher assured the vault crew he would not hold them long, but this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around still eating their lunch. The young preacher poured out his heart and soul.
As he preached the workers began to say “Amen,” “Praise the Lord,” and “Glory Hallelujah.” The young preacher preached and preached like he’d never preached before, from Genesis all the way through Revelation.
He closed the lengthy service at last with a prayer and began to walk toward the car. He felt he had done his duty for the homeless man, and that the crew would leave with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication, in spite of his tardiness.
As he was opening the door and taking off his coat, the minister overheard one of the workers saying to another, “I ain’t never seen anything like that before . . . and I been putting in septic tanks for over twenty years.”

the future waiting to be born in you

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Only Jesus

quote from David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

An anonymous author made this striking comparison: "Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of Christ's 3-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men, who were among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity.

Jesus painted no pictures yet some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from him. Jesus wrote no poetry but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world's greatest poets were inspired by him. Jesus composed no music still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach, and Mendelssohn reached their highest perfection of melody in the hymns, symphonies, and oratorios they composed in his praise. Every sphere of human greatness has been enriched by this humble Carpenter of Nazareth.

His unique contribution to humanity is the salvation of the soul! Philosophy could not accomplish that. Nor art. Nor literature. Nor music. Only Jesus Christ can break the enslaving chains of sin. He alone can speak peace to the human heart, strengthen the weak, and give life to those who are spiritually dead."

Did Adam and Eve Have Children?

On one late night talk show, a panel of three university students were asked questions to test their intelligence. The questions ranged from naming famous politicians to pieces of art. Then the question was raised, "What were the names of Adam and Eve's children?" All of the students were silent. One girl finally responded, "Um, well, I didn't even know they had children."

~ Jennifer Scott, Carol Stream, Illinois

Prayer - like the anchor of a ship

Taizé - Dorotheus of Gaza (Sixth Century) Humility and Communion
quoted from http://www.taize.fr/en_article5234.html, underlining added

Barsanuphius: “Like the anchor of a ship, so will the prayer of those who are here with you be for you.”

The Letter from Calcutta quotes this text from Dorotheus of Gaza on page 4:

“Imagine that the world is a circle, that God is the center, and that the radii are the different ways human beings live. When those who wish to come closer to God walk towards the center of the circle, they come closer to one another at the same time as to God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come to one another. And the closer they come to one another, the closer they come to God.” (Instructions VI.)

Son of a wealthy family, very cultivated, so enamored of reading that he brought his library to the monastery, as a young man Dorotheus entered the community of Abba Serid near Gaza in Palestine. He became the spiritual son of Barsanuphius and John, two contemplatives known for the depth of their correspondence. These “great old men,” as they are called in the monastic tradition, moderated his absolute desire for contemplation and for this purpose suggested that he build a hospital for ill or elderly monks. The experience led him gradually to leave behind his properties, his books, his rich garments. He became the head nurse of the hospital built and paid for by his family.

His correspondence with Barsanuphius is famous for the “contract” which the two concluded: Barsanuphius would take Dorotheus’ sins upon himself (he suffered from an emotional life he had trouble controlling) on the condition that Dorotheus keep from pride, malicious gossip and needless words. In a moment of doubt, when he was thinking of leaving the monastery, he received these words of Barsanuphius which enlightened him: “Like the anchor of a ship, so will the prayer of those who are here with you be for you.” From these difficulties a strong attraction for the common life would be born, and the assurance that the prayer of others can support a vocation for one’s entire lifetime.

He would remember how sensitively these two “old men” accompanied him when, after their death, he founded his own community a few miles from his first monastery. For those who joined him there, he wrote down the “Instructions” that have come down to us. Characterized by a realistic outlook that does not ask for the impossible, he proposed a life made up of peaceful self-renunciation, with no excesses and resolutely communal.

For him, the community forms a true body where each member exercises a particular function. A monk’s solitude does not imply isolation. He wrote: “We should do what is said of Abba Anthony: he gathered and kept the good he saw in each of those he went to visit—from one, gentleness, from another, humility, from still another, the love of solitude. In this way he had all the qualities of each person in himself. That is what we should do, too, and visit one another for this purpose.” (Letter 1, 181.)

Dorotheus inserted into the wisdom of the desert a significant contribution of pagan wisdom. He insisted in particular on the role of personal conscience, a divine spark in every person, and defined virtue in the fashion of Aristotle as “the middle-ground between excess and lack”.

Dorotheus emphasized “keeping the commandments”, the only thing able to bring the grace received in baptism to the roots of evil in us, and on “openness of heart” to the man or woman who accompanies us. He especially condemned monastic pride, ascetical competition among monks, and placed humility at the summit of the spiritual life.

The advice he gave his monks to resist temptations without rigidity, but instead with calm and gentleness, still remains fully relevant today. At a time when many feel paralyzed by the fear of failure or doubt, these encouraging words of Dorotheus need to be heard again: “At the time of trial, remain patient, pray and do not try to conquer the thoughts that come from the tempter by human reasoning. Abba Peomen knew this, and stated that the advice ‘do not worry about tomorrow’ (Matthew 6:34) was meant for someone being tempted. Convinced that this is true, abandon your own thoughts, however good they may be, and keep a firm hope in God ‘who can do infinitely more than what we ask or think’ (Ephesians 3:20).” (Letter 8, 193.)

Last updated: 4 October 2007

Joy in Life

from The Bucket List movie:
Carter Chambers: [to Edward, of the two questions asked of the dead by the Egyptian gods at the entrance to heaven]:
"Have you found joy in your life?"
"Has your life brought joy to others?"

Proper apologies have three parts

from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Be willing to apologize. Proper apologies have three parts:

1 ) What I did was wrong.

2 ) I’m sorry that I hurt you.

3 ) How do I make it better?

It’s the third part that people tend to forget…. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

~ Randy Pausch ( 1960-2008 )

Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture - quotes

following is copied from http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lecture/

Quotable Quotes from Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Public Lecture for those who want a quick review of the lecture:

■ “Don’t Complain, Just Work Harder.”
■ “It is not about Achieving your Dreams but Living your Life. If you lead your Life the right way, the Karma will take care of itself, the Dreams will come to you. “
■ “Never underestimate the importance of having Fun. I’m dying and I’m having Fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day, because there’s no other way to play it.”
■ “We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
■ “Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.”
■ “No one is pure evil. Find the Best in everybody…. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their Good side. Just keep waiting.”
■ “Experience is what you get when you Didn’t get what you Wanted.”
■ “Never lose the child-like Wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what Drives us. Help others.”
■ “How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the Truth. Being earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person any day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.”
■ “Show gratitude. Gratitude is a simple and powerful thing.”
■ “Having Fun for me is like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don’t know how it is like not to have Fun… I will keep having Fun everyday I have left.”
■ “It is Important to have Specific Childhood Dreams.”
He wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the √World Book Encyclopedia; he wanted to be Captain Kirk from “Star Trek”; and he wanted to work for the √Disney Co. He also wanted to experience the √Weightlessness of Zero Gravity;
However, Randy, as a kid, knew that he did not have the necessary physical prerequisites to be an astronaut. So he focussed on the dream of being able to float in zero gravity. He got his wish when he and his students earned the privilege to use the KC-135 (also known as the “vomit comet”) – a modified Boeing 707 four-engine turbojet that NASA uses to simulate conditions of weightlessness.

■ “Be Good at Something; it makes you Valuable.”
■ “I’m sorry I won’t be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can’t change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people.”
Pausch recently took his 5-year-old son to Walt Disney World to swim with the dolphins. As his oldest child, the boy will be the only one who may have clear memories of his father.

■ “I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.”
■ “If someone rides on you for 2 hours, you know they care for you” (on his experiences in baseball training)
■ “To be cliché, death is a part of life and it’s going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch.”
■ If you want to achieve your dreams, you better learn to work and play well with others. Tell the Truth. That means you got to live with integrity.
■ A good apology has three parts:
1. “I’m sorry”;
2. “It was my fault” and
3. “How do I make it right”. The last part tells about your sincerity.
■ On Education: “Mark Twain says, “Don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.” I always tell my students that they should spend their time in whatever way helps them learn. I’m perfectly happy if they cut my class because they were doing something that was a better use of their time” – Time, 10 April 2008.

Dr Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction and Design at the Carnegie Melon University (CMU). He has done consulting work for Disney and Google, written over 70 books and is the creator of the Alice Interactive Computing Program – which allows students to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

Without justice, there can be no peace

“Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE
WORLD DAY OF PEACE
1 JANUARY 2002

NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE
NO JUSTICE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS

The World Day of Peace this year is being celebrated in the shadow of the dramatic events of 11 September last. On that day, a terrible crime was committed: in a few brief hours thousands of innocent people of many ethnic backgrounds were slaughtered. Since then, people throughout the world have felt a profound personal vulnerability and a new fear for the future. Addressing this state of mind, the Church testifies to her hope, based on the conviction that evil, the mysterium iniquitatis, does not have the final word in human affairs. The history of salvation, narrated in Sacred Scripture, sheds clear light on the entire history of the world and shows us that human events are always accompanied by the merciful Providence of God, who knows how to touch even the most hardened of hearts and bring good fruits even from what seems utterly barren soil.
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The enormous suffering of peoples and individuals, even among my own friends and acquaintances, caused by Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, has never been far from my thoughts and prayers. I have often paused to reflect on the persistent question: how do we restore the moral and social order subjected to such horrific violence? My reasoned conviction, confirmed in turn by biblical revelation, is that the shattered order cannot be fully restored except by a response that combines justice with forgiveness. The pillars of true peace are justice and that form of love which is forgiveness.
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But in the present circumstances, how can we speak of justice and forgiveness as the source and condition of peace? We can and we must, no matter how difficult this may be; a difficulty which often comes from thinking that justice and forgiveness are irreconcilable. But forgiveness is the opposite of resentment and revenge, not of justice. In fact, true peace is “the work of justice” (Is 32:17).
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For more than fifteen hundred years, the Catholic Church has repeated the teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo on this point. He reminds us that the peace which can and must be built in this world is the peace of right order—tranquillitas ordinis, the tranquillity of order (cf. De Civitate Dei, 19,13).

True peace therefore is the fruit of justice, that moral virtue and legal guarantee which ensures full respect for rights and responsibilities, and the just distribution of benefits and burdens. But because human justice is always fragile and imperfect, subject as it is to the limitations and egoism of individuals and groups, it must include and, as it were, be completed by the forgiveness which heals and rebuilds troubled human relations from their foundations. This is true in circumstances great and small, at the personal level or on a wider, even international scale. Forgiveness is in no way opposed to justice, as if to forgive meant to overlook the need to right the wrong done. It is rather the fullness of justice, leading to that tranquillity of order which is much more than a fragile and temporary cessation of hostilities, involving as it does the deepest healing of the wounds which fester in human hearts. Justice and forgiveness are both essential to such healing.
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Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. The measure of such a decision is the love of God who draws us to himself in spite of our sin. It has its perfect exemplar in the forgiveness of Christ, who on the Cross prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).
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No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: this is what in this Message I wish to say to believers and non-believers alike, to all men and women of good will who are concerned for the good of the human family and for its future.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: this is what I wish to say to those responsible for the future of the human community, entreating them to be guided in their weighty and difficult decisions by the light of man's true good, always with a view to the common good.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: I shall not tire of repeating this warning to those who, for one reason or another, nourish feelings of hatred, a desire for revenge or the will to destroy.

On this World Day of Peace, may a more intense prayer rise from the hearts of all believers for the victims of terrorism, for their families so tragically stricken, for all the peoples who continue to be hurt and convulsed by terrorism and war. May the light of our prayer extend even to those who gravely offend God and man by these pitiless acts, that they may look into their hearts, see the evil of what they do, abandon all violent intentions, and seek forgiveness. In these troubled times, may the whole human family find true and lasting peace, born of the marriage of justice and mercy!

From the Vatican, 8 December 2001
JOHN

Time

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. And once you've lost it, you can never get it back."

~ author unknown

It only works if you are moving

From the book Impermanence – Embracing Change
by David Hodge and Hi-Jin Hodge
(Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY 2008)

“Almost everything in life is a little bit like skiing. It doesn’t really work if you are standing still. It only works if you are moving. One of the things about moving and skiing is that you are never really in control. I’m never in control. You have to be okay with being a little bit out of control and find a balance that you can keep up as long as you can and still be out of control enough so you keep going down the hill. Being aware that change is going to happen whether I like it or not, I can choose to go with it or I can try to not go with it, but it’s going to take me anyway.”

Questions

"There are some questions that can't be answered by Google."

~ church sign

Non-violence attracts violence

Non-violence attracts violence.
Suffering violence erodes the attacker's moral authority.
Unearned suffering is redemptive.

~ author unknown

Our Choices

"It is not our abilities that show us who we are. It is our choices."
Dumbledore, to Harry Potter

Thine enemies will give feigned obedience to Thee

Psalm 66 ^NASB
1 Shout joyfully to God, all the earth;
² Sing the glory of His name; Make His praise glorious.
³ Say to God, "How awesome are Thy works! Because of the greatness of Thy power Thine enemies will give feigned obedience to Thee.
⁴ "All the earth will worship Thee, And will sing praises to Thee; They will sing praises to Thy name."
⁵ Come and see the works of God, Who is awesome in His deeds toward the sons of men.

Embodying Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is not so much a word spoken, an action performed, or a feeling felt as it is an embodied way of life in an ever-deepening friendship with the triune God and with others. As such, a Christian account of forgiveness ought not to simply or even primarily be focused on an absolution of guilt; rather, it ought to be focused on the reconciliation of brokenness, the restoration of communion—with God, with one another, and with the whole Creation. Indeed, because of the pervasiveness of sin and evil, Christian forgiveness must be at once an expression of commitment to a way of life, the cruciform life of holiness in which we seek to "unlearn" sin and learn the ways of God, and a means of seeking reconciliation in the midst of particular sins, specific instances of brokenness."

~ Gregory Jones, former dean of Duke Divinity School, Embodying Forgiveness

Listening

"The first service one owes to others in community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them …. Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either; they will always be talking even in the presence of God. The death of the spiritual life starts here, and in the end there is nothing left but empty spiritual chatter and clerical condescension which chokes on pious words."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Forgiving Love

"Forgiving love is a possibility only for those who know that they are not good, who feel themselves in need of divine mercy, who live in a dimension deeper and higher than that of moral idealism, feel themselves as well as their fellow men convicted of sin by a holy God and know that the differences between the good man and the bad man are insignificant in his sight."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics

Peace

"Peace is both the absence of war and the creation of positive social conditions which minimize destructive conflicts and promote human well-being."

~ author unknown

Dostoyevsky Quotes

Dostoyevsky Quotes:

“Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth”

“If God does not exist, then everything is permitted”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love”

“The soul is healed by being with children”