Hold onto each other

"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."

~ Audrey Hepburn

Love recognizes no barriers

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope."

~ Maya Angelou

Only love can drive out hate

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness."

quotes from Google on love and forgiveness:

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
~ Peter Ustinov, English actor, 1921-2004

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me."
~ Beyoncé

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. Forgiveness is the Final Act of Love."
~ Beyoncé, 2014

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness."
~ Jan Karon

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness."
~ Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, 2015

(may be in chronological order)

In Tragedy, Robert Kennedy Quoted Aeschylus

https://bigthink.com/Think-See-Feel/in-tragedy-kennedy-quoted-aeschylus
In Tragedy, Kennedy Quoted Aeschylus
Lea Carpenter
11 January, 2011
On the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy had to give a speech. In a world before blogs, Kennedy was in the awkward, yet history-making position of having to break news to his audience; this was the first the Indiana crowd had heard of King’s death. The speech is exceptional, even when considered within the canon of Kennedy’s often classic, and often literary, brilliance.
What was extraordinary was how frankly, and calmly, Kennedy addressed the anger and hate that underlies irrational acts. He told what had happened, and he went right into calm. He was not angry, or even emotional. The audience followed this lead.
RFK was in a position to empathize. In one of the most memorable moments in the speech, he connects to his audience by reminding them that his brother was also killed—“by a white man.” Implicit in this is another irrationality—the irrationality of generalizations, whether about race, or religion, or any other pat demographic stat. He urged understanding.
And then he referenced something—some words—that had helped him.
Kennedy said:
"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote,
'And even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.'

What we need in the United States is not division. what we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice to those who still suffer in our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

We are not hearing a lot about Aeschylus today. Aeschylus knew tragedy. “Wisdom through the awful grace of God” is an amazing line, one that not only subverts an idea, but also an emotion.

Kennedy only spoke briefly, but by the end of his talk the crowd was cheering. Also famously, Indianapolis was peaceful that night, while all around the country there were fires in the streets.

Kennedy pointed out that moments like these are times for us to look inward and ask “what kind of nation we are.” This is one of those moments. We will watch how many in positions of power and visibility adopt a position of peace.

Lea Carpenter was a Founding Editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope. She graduated from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. Her Harvard University Commencement Address, “Auden and The Little Things,” was about the need for poetry in our lives. She lives in New York with her husband and son where she produces programming for the New York Public Library. She formerly wrote the Think, See, Feel blog for BigThink.
© Copyright 2007-2019 BigThink.com

accept it and realize it and deal with it

'From worst to first': These states have tamed coronavirus, even after reopening. Here's how they're doing it, and why they can't let up
By Holly Yan, CNN
Wed July 15, 2020
quote:
On March 20, as Covid-19 was spiraling out of control in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced all employees of nonessential businesses must stay home. It was one of the earliest shutdown mandates in the country.
"If someone is unhappy, if somebody wants to blame someone, or complain about someone, blame me. There is no one else who is responsible for this decision," Cuomo said that day. "This is not life as usual. And accept it and realize it and deal with it."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/health/coronavirus-under-control-states/index.html  (emphasis mine)

Arguing

"Never argue with an idiot.
He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience."

~ Mark Twain

Bob Dylan's view of Gospel music

quoted from:
Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind
In a rare interview, the Nobel Prize winner discusses mortality, drawing inspiration from the past, and his new album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”
By Douglas Brinkley  June 12, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/arts/music/bob-dylan-rough-and-rowdy-ways.html

Why didn’t more people pay attention to Little Richard’s gospel music?
Probably because gospel music is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news. And we have to thank the media industry for that. It stirs people up. Gossip and dirty laundry. Dark news that depresses and horrifies you.
On the other hand, gospel news is exemplary. It can give you courage. You can pace your life accordingly, or try to, anyway. And you can do it with honor and principles. There are theories of truth in gospel but to most people it’s unimportant. Their lives are lived out too fast. Too many bad influences. Sex and politics and murder is the way to go if you want to get people’s attention. It excites us, that’s our problem.
Little Richard was a great gospel singer. But I think he was looked at as an outsider or an interloper in the gospel world. They didn’t accept him there. And of course the rock ’n’ roll world wanted to keep him singing “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” So his gospel music wasn’t accepted in either world. I think the same thing happened to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I can’t imagine either of them being bothered too much about it. Both are what we used to call people of high character. Genuine, plenty talented and who knew themselves, weren’t swayed by anything from the outside. Little Richard, I know was like that.

Tiger's Work Ethic

"People don't understand that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never the biggest. I was never the fastest. I certainly was never the strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that's been what has gotten me this far."

~ Tiger Woods

Weeping creates a river . . .

"Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the little boat carrying your soul-life. Tears can lift that little boat off rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better."

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992, 374.

Churchill quote

Winston Churchill reportedly said: "If you are not a liberal when you are young, you don't have a heart; and if you are not conservative when you are old, you don't have a brain."

judged "by the content of their character" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

mutual justice, mutual love, mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual peace, and mutual prosperity

May God's grace and truth help bring
mutual justice,
mutual love,
mutual respect,
mutual trust,
mutual peace, and
mutual prosperity
to all people.

~ Truthful Grace

lift others on the warm currents of upward spirals of good

“Find an 'extra' person to be kind towards today. It only takes a few words.”

"When you choose to accentuate the positive, it lifts others on the warm currents of the upward spirals of good that you create."

~ Leslie Robison, Mastery Coaching & Consulting

"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, American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist

Pope Francis statements on the environment

Here are seven of the pope’s strongest statements on the environment:

“God always forgives, we men forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives. If you give her a slap, she will give you one. I believe that we have exploited nature too much.”
—Press conference, flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, January 15, 2015

“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family. When we destroy our forests, ravage our soil and pollute our seas, we betray that noble calling.”
—Speech, Manila, Philippines, January 18, 2015

“A Christian who doesn’t safeguard creation, who doesn’t make it flourish, is a Christian who isn’t concerned with God’s work, that work born of God’s love for us.”
—Meditation, Vatican City, February 9, 2015

“May the relationship between man and nature not be driven by greed, to manipulate and exploit, but may the divine harmony between beings and creation be conserved in the logic of respect and care.”
—General audience, Vatican City, April 22, 2015

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.”
—Papal encyclical, Vatican City, May 24, 2015

"We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it!”
—Remarks, meeting with political, business and community leaders, Quito, Ecuador, July 7, 2015

“Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin.”
—Speech, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, July 9, 2015

from: Nature Never Forgives: 7 of Pope Francis's Greenest Quotes
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/09/120150920-pope-francis-environment-climate-quotes.html   Published 9/20/2015,  Accessed 5/5/2020

Strife is better than loneliness.

Strife is better than loneliness.
~ Irish Proverb

three things we absolutely need to know

There are only three things we absolutely need to know: what to believe, how to live, and what to pray for. 
The Apostles Creed answers the first question,
the Ten Commandments the second, and
the Lord’s Prayer answers the third. 
(attributed to Thomas Aquinas)

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/pkreeft_ptofitall_nov04.asp
The Living Christ Is the Point of It All
Peter Kreeft
The point of Christianity cannot be contained in words because the point of Christianity is the living Christ. He is not an ancient ideal but a real person here and now, ready to barge in and transform our lives. Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs. It is more like being well-possessed than well-dressed. It is like being haunted by the Holy Spirit. We are haunted temples.
The love of God is the answer not only to (1) the quest for the supreme value–the summurn bonum–and to (2) the quest for the supreme reality-the fundamental principle of the cosmos-but it is also (3) the answer to a third quest, the quest for life's deepest meaning and purpose.
Kant said there were ultimately only three important questions:
(1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What may I hope?
What I can know is truth, truth about being. Since the ultimate nature of being is love–either in God or in some creature that reflects God–God's love is the answer to Kant's first question.
Love is also the fundamental value. It is the answer to Kant's second question, "What should I do?" On the two commandments to love God and neighbor "depend all the law and the prophets" (Mt 22:40).
Finally, love also gives my life meaning and purpose. It gives me a goal or a hope to shoot for. Hopelessness means purposelessness. Since the ultimate purpose of my life is to learn to love, love is also my hope.
What to Believe, How to Live, and What to Pray For
Thomas Aquinas said that there are only three things we absolutely need to know, and they correspond nicely with Kant's three questions:
what to believe, how to live, and what to pray for.
Aquinas then says that the Creed answers the first question, the Commandments answer the second, and the Lord's Prayer answers the third. Therefore if we fully understand just these three things, the Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, we will know everything needful. What do these three things have to do with love?
On close inspection, each article of the Creed, each of the Commandments, and each petition of the Lord's Prayer is a form of love. They can be rightly understood only relative to that center.
. . .

the happy and unhappy

Writing in a letter to his brother in 1940, Lewis said:
“I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don’t."

http://www.cslewis.org/resources/studyguides/Study%20Guide%20-%20The%20Great%20Divorce.pdf

Mother Teresa's Tips to Help You Become More Humble

"It’s the understanding that everything comes from God and that God is everything."

Mother Teresa called humility the mother of all virtues.  She said: “If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”

"Do not protect yourself behind your own dignity."

The world does not value or understand the power of humility but we do, because it was what Jesus used to save us.  “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)

National Catholic Register BLOGS |  SEP. 5, 2019
Mother Teresa's 15 Tips to Help You Become More Humble
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/armstrong/mother-teresas-15-tips-to-help-you-become-more-humble

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”

“No fim, tudo dá certo. Se não deu, ainda não chegou ao fim.”
The translation follows:
“In the end, everything will be ok. If it’s not ok, it’s not yet the end.”
~ Fernando Sabino, Brazilian writer writing in Portuguese
No fim dá certo (Portuguese) Paperback – 1 Jan 1998
by Fernando Tavares Sabino (Author)
https://jeremiahstanghini.com/2013/01/23/in-the-end-everything-will-be-ok-if-its-not-ok-its-not-yet-the-end/

---------------------

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”

Michael Calder, just a Scotsman who thinks and reads a lot.
Answered Nov 20, 2015
Although made popular by John Lennon, and believed to have descended from an old Indian proverb, its first contemporary use was by Fernando Sabino, a Portuguese author.

J.M. Schomburg, Bringing it as close as possible to reality.
Answered Oct 19, 2015
It's attributed everywhere to John Lennon, but it may be from an old Indian proverb. Lennon was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Yahoo Answers
https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-original-source-of-the-quote-Everything-will-be-okay-in-the-end-If-its-not-okay-its-not-the-end

what makes you come alive

"Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
~ Howard Thurman, 1899-1981

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Thurman
American Baptist preacher and theologian, the first African American dean of chapel at a traditionally white American university, and a founder of the first interracial interfaith congregation in the United States.
Thurman was the grandson of former slaves who stressed education as a means of overcoming racial discrimination. He graduated as valedictorian from Morehouse College, a predominantly black school, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1923 and from Rochester Theological Seminary (now Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School) with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1926. He subsequently served as pastor of a Baptist church in Oberlin, Ohio, and pursued graduate course work in theology at Oberlin College.
In January 1929 Thurman resigned his pastorate in order to pursue a semester of directed graduate study at Haverford College. Studying with the Quaker theologian Rufus M. Jones, Thurman absorbed a deep sense of the need to cultivate one’s interior life—i.e., one’s personal relationship with God. That fall Thurman returned to Morehouse as a professor. In 1932 he became dean of Rankin Chapel at the prestigious and primarily black Howard University.
A meeting in 1934 with Mohandas K. Gandhi instilled within Thurman an appreciation for the value of nonviolent resistance in combating racial inequality. He subsequently wed nonviolence and the appreciation he had gained from Jones for the inward personal relationship with God with a deeply religious sense of protest against institutionalized race-based segregation.
In 1944 he left Howard to help found the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (also known as Fellowship Church) in San Francisco, the first congregation in the United States that encouraged participation in its spiritual life regardless of religious or ethnic background. Thurman stayed there until 1953, when he assumed the deanship of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. In his sermons and in his classes, he inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., and other students committed to social justice who would participate in the civil rights movement. He gained a broader following as a prolific author and the host of a popular Sunday morning television show.
Thurman retired from the university in 1965. He founded and directed the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, which provided funding for college students in need, and remained a prolific writer and a popular speaker until his death. Among his many books are Deep River (1945), Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), Meditations of the Heart (1953), The Creative Encounter (1954), The Inward Journey (1961), Disciplines of the Spirit (1963), and With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (1979).

Matt Stefon, "Howard Thurman", Encyclopaedia Britannica, Published 11-14-2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Thurman, Accessed 3-27-2020.

a perspective check from Anne Frank

from Facebook:
Kimberly Graham,  3/23/2020

Perspective Check...
Anne Frank and fam were in hiding for 761 days...no netflix, no internet, connection to the outside world, and she had to be QUIET for that long or she would have DIED...
She had to WAIT for food, entertainment and other provisions at the mercy of another person and couldn't order in to eat her favorite foods...
And we want to talk about how awful isolation and social distancing is for us?....
Guys...just hunker down. We have it SO good. Call a friend, take an online class, watch a show, write a book! There's no overall threat to our safety..we simply need to stay.home. so we don't spread a germ.
We can handle this... #stayathome

Julian of Norwich - the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover

I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.
Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be?
And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it.
And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God.
In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover,—I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my God and me.
~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text 5

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

He showed me a little thing the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my understanding it was as round as a ball. I looked at it and thought, ‘what may this be?’ and I was answered generally thus, ‘it is all that is made’.
I marvelled at how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly fall into nothing for its littleness and I was answered in my understanding ‘it lasts and ever shall, for God loves it’.
~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Traditional Prayer for the Answering of Prayer

Almighty God,
you have promised to hear the petitions of those who ask in your Son’s Name:
We beseech you mercifully to incline your ear to us who have now made our prayers and supplications to you;
and grant that those things which we have faithfully asked according to your will,
may effectually be obtained,
to the relief of our necessity, and to the setting forth of your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

the joy and terror of being a parent

"Being a parent is the greatest combination of joy and terror one can experience."
~ David Letterman
10-17-2013 show, YouTube

Be in charge of how and when you heal

"We could spend our whole lives waiting for someone to apologize or take responsibility for how they hurt us before we decide to let go.
But the problem with that scenario is, we've made someone else in charge of how and when we heal.
If we truly want to break a cycle and heal, we have to forget about what the other person is or isn't doing, and focus entirely on our own process."
~ Rising Woman, Mindful Christianity

Samuel Rutherford Quotes

Samuel Rutherford Quotes
Scottish Theologian, 1600-1661
https://www.azquotes.com/author/12820-Samuel_Rutherford

Humility is a strange flower; it grows best in winter weather, and under storms of affliction.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1885). “Quaint Sermons of Samuel Rutherford: Hitherto Unpublished”

Believe God's love and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your rock is Christ, and it is not the rock that ebbs and flows but the sea.
~ Samuel Rutherford

They lose nothing who gain Christ.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1765). “Joshua redivivus, or Mr Rutherford's letters”, p.321

I urge you a nearer communion with Christ, and a growing communion. There are curtains to be opened in Christ that we have never seen before... Therefore dig deep, and sweat, and labor. Take pains for Him, and set aside as much time as you can in each day for Him.
~ Samuel Rutherford

In our fluctuations of feelings, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.
~ Samuel Rutherford

I find it most true that the greatest temptation outside of hell is to live without temptations; if water stands, it rots; faith is the better for the sharp winter storm in its face and grace withers without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer to teach us to handle our weapons.
~ Samuel Rutherford

I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1863). “Letters of Samuel Rutherford: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.174

O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want.
~ Samuel Rutherford

The secret formula of the saints:
When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.
~ Samuel Rutherford

The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here, where by his grace, in this part of his vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1867). “Letters of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford”, p.487

I have been benefited by praying for others; for by making an errand to God for them I have gotten something for myself.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1818). “Joshua redivivus, or, three hundred and fifty-two religious letters: to which is added a testimony to the convenanted work of Reformation between 1638 and 1649”, p.148

Praise God for the hammer, the file, and the furnace. The hammer molds us, the file sharpens us, and the fire tempers us.
~ Samuel Rutherford

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1845). “Religious Letters”, p.80

You will not get to steal quietly into heaven, into Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses to be Christ's carved work that he marks out for us and that with crosses he portraits us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut - Lord carve - Lord wound - Lord do anything that may perfect thy Father's image in us and make us ready for glory.
~ Samuel Rutherford

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1863). “Letters of Samuel Rutherford: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.92

No pen, no words, no image can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1867). “Letters of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford”, p.344

Show yourself a Christian by suffering without murmuring. In patience possess your soul - they lose nothing who gain Christ.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1867). “Letters of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford”, p.360

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. ... “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,” ergo, shipwreck, losses, &c., work together for the good of them that love God: hence I infer, that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses, or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you.
~ Samuel Rutherford
"Letters of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford".

Since He looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath runaway to heaven with it.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford, Hamilton Smith (2008). “Extracts from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford”, p.83, Scripture Truth

Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to Heaven.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1818). “Joshua redivivus, or, three hundred and fifty-two religious letters: to which is added a testimony to the convenanted work of Reformation between 1638 and 1649”, p.124

My Lord Jesus has fully recompensed my sadness with his joys, my losses with his own presence. I find it a sweet and rich thing to exchange my sorrows with Christ's joys, my afflictions with that sweet peace I have with himself.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1824). “Joshua redivivus: or, three hundred and fifty two religious letters ... To which is added, the Author's testimony to the covenanted work of reformation, between 1638 and 1649 ... As also, a large preface and postscript ... by the Rev. Mr. McWard. The tenth edition”, p.40

After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn. And after every storm, there comes clear, open skies.
~ Samuel Rutherford

Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1848). “Letters of ... Samuel Rutherford, whith biogr. notices of his correspondents, by J. Anderson, and a sketch of his life, &c., by A.A. Bonar”, p.543

My faith has no bed to sleep upon but omnipotence.
~ Samuel Rutherford

There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Samuel Rutherford (1863). “Letters of Samuel Rutherford: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.259

the cellar of affliction

"When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines."

~ Samuel Rutherford,
Scottish Theologian, 1600-1661

telling the truth is a revolutionary act

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

~ Author unknown
(quote has been mistakenly attributed to George Orwell's novel 1984)

God Uses Everything

"When I understand that everything happening to me
is to make me more Christlike,
it resolves a great deal of anxiety."
~ A.W. Tozer

Matthew 5:3–4, Message paraphrase:
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.
With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.
Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”
~ Eugene Peterson

“When we lose what is most dear to us on earth,
we value our heavenly Father’s embrace even more.”
~ Vaneetha Rendall Risner

from:
December 7, 2019
God Uses Everything
Why Our Suffering Is Never Wasted
by Vaneetha Rendall Risner
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-uses-everything

a document containing enough dynamite . . .

“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ . . .

When the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Gandhi he asked him,
“Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?”
Gandhi replied, “Oh, I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.”
“If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today,” he added.

from http://in.christiantoday.com/articledir/print.htm?id=2837

Vocation — Frederick Buechner

Vocation — Frederick Buechner

www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2018/12/12/vocation

VOCATION COMES FROM the Latin vocare, "to call," and means the work a person is called to by God.
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Unconditional love?

"Let me be clear, my love is unconditional,
but your presence in my life is not."
"I'll have no problem unconditionally loving the memory of you."
~ Mars

The Christmas 5-Gift Rule

With the 5-gift rule, each person gets just five gifts for Christmas:
Something you want,
Something you need,
Something to wear,
Something to read, and
Something to make.

~ from Facebook

quotes from Jan Karon - Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good: The New Mitford Novel

quotes from Jan Karon - Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good: The New Mitford Novel
Kindle edition, as of 11/25/2019

It’s what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. Oscar Wilde

Bonhoeffer said: “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. JL Borges

Charles Dickens said, It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens the temper—so cry away.

Victor Hugo. ‘“Sleep in peace, God is awake.”’

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened [Ernest Hemingway]

what Julian of Norwich said as she suffered a devastating illness of her own: “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

‘“All that I have seen,” Mr. Emerson said and I say with him, “teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen.”’

‘Deep in their roots,’ Roethke had said, ‘all flowers keep the light.’

‘Mazel tov!’ Abe would say. ‘May you live to finance the education of your grandchildren!’

"Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world" Mother Teresa

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
~ Mother Teresa, A Simple Path: Mother Teresa  (1995)

Mother Teresa saw loneliness as leprosy of the West
News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), The Rev. Kendall Palladino Published 1:00 am EDT, Saturday, April 17, 2004
quote:
Ever since I first heard about Mother Teresa, I admired her. For this reason, I decided to join a team working with her in Calcutta in 1994. I will never forget her words to me because they changed the course of my life and helped me understand some of the needs in our country.
After a day working together, Mother Teresa spoke with our team. I told Mother Teresa that I planned to enter medical school after seminary to work with people with leprosy overseas.
Mother Teresa surprised me when she said, "Why do you want to do that?"
She continued, "There is a poverty in your country that is just as severe as our poorest of the poor."
I wondered what she could mean by that, since I had seen poverty that would make even our poorest in the United States look wealthy.
Mother Teresa went on to say, "In the West there is a loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways, it is worse than our poor in Calcutta."
The implication of her statement was that I should look first for the difference that I could make right around me. She said that we make a difference one person at a time. . . .
https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Mother-Teresa-saw-loneliness-as-leprosy-of-the-250607.php

"It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start."
~ Mother Teresa

"When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved.
Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by.
Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger."
~Mother Teresa
Teresa (Mother), Roger (frère) (1986). “Meditations on the Way of the Cross”, Burns & Oates

"Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world."
~ Mother Teresa

Shared Mottos

Shared Mottos
https://www.masteryconsulting.net/post/join-our-motto-share

“Treat others as you want to be treated.”
Several people responded that the eternally simple and effective Golden Rule will always be their primary motto.

“It’s all about perspective.”
We come to our opinions through our current perspective, and if our perspective shifts, our ideas and actions may shift too. Understanding another’s perspective helps me understand their actions. D.S.

“It’s not what happens to us; it’s who we are within what happens to us.”
Nobody is spared a share of ugliness, fear, and despair in their lives, but what defines those dark times is who we choose to be in those times. This is the part that defines us and is lasting. D.S.

“This is where we are, not who we are.”
from singer-songwriter Billy Bragg

“Measure from the bottom up, not the top-down.”
This motto reminds me to give myself credit for what I’ve done, not what I didn’t do. S.B.

“Leave the place better than you found it.”
I use it when camping but also for people too. This means fixing typos, sharing resources, spreading the wealth when I pass along stuff that someone gave me that others might use), smiling at strangers on my walk to work, saying ‘good morning’ to co-workers when I come into work, holding a door for others, and picking up trash. K.W.

Resolutely, Ridiculously, Radically, Remarkably, Resilient.
This has been my motto for the past four years and was well earned. Karin Rex (Geeky Girl)

Beauty, Order, Simplicity, Grace.
These values help me to set priorities and make choices. B. G.

"The inevitable corollary to self-righteousness is contempt for other people."

"The inevitable corollary to self-righteousness is contempt for other people."
~ author unknown, can't find source again

Self-righteousness (also called sanctimoniousness, sententiousness, and holier-than-thou attitudes) is a feeling or display of (usually smug) moral superiority derived from a sense that one's beliefs, actions, or affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person. Self-righteous individuals are often intolerant of the opinions and behaviors of others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-righteousness

quotes on how to stay married for a long time

quotes on how to stay married for a long time:

In her book "Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give," the writer Ada Calhoun recounts asking her mom, in a fit of frustration with her husband, how she had stayed married.
Her mother's response: "Don't get divorced."

The actor Jamie Lee Curtis expressed a similar sentiment when asked about her longtime marriage to actor-director Christopher Guest.
"It's a fascinating thing," Curtis told Today in 2015. "I could write a book on marriage called 'Don't Leave.'"
She later elaborated in an interview with Good Housekeeping. "There's a recovery phrase that says, 'Stay on the bus...the scenery will change,'" she said. "I think it can apply to almost anything where you feel unhappy in that moment. I'm not a wild romantic. I'm a realist. I respect him. And I just don't leave."

Gwyneth Paltrow shared something her late father had said of his and her mother's long union:
"How did you and Mom stay married for 33 years?" she asked him.
" 'Well,' he said, 'we never wanted to get divorced at the same time.' "

quotes from CNN "This may be the secret to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's amazingly long marriage" by Peggy Drexler, October 19, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/opinions/jimmy-carter-rosalynn-carter-long-marriage-drexler/index.html  as of 10/20/2019

other quotes:

"The best way to get most husbands to do something is
to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it."
~ Shirley MacLaine

"Always look out for Number One
and be careful not to step in Number Two."
~ Rodney Dangerfield

"Do it once.  Do it right.  And never do it again."
~ Unknown

"The secret to a happy marriage is the same as the secret for alligator wrestling.
You must never let go."

"If dependence upon God is the objective, weakness is an advantage."

"If dependence upon God is the objective, weakness is an advantage."
~ Rev. Alistair Begg, Truth for Life

Christians celebrating Halloween

Hillsong pastor Nathan Finochio addressing criticism that Christians who celebrate Halloween are participating in a pagan practice and glorifying the devil:
A follower asked Finochio “Halloween yes or no?” and he replied with a very detailed response.
“Pagan Feast of Winter Solstice? Oh that’s now JESUS BIRTHDAY.
Pagan Feast of Spring Planting? Oh that’s now EASTER WEEKEND.
Pagan Celtic Festival involving dressing up and warding off evil spirits? Oh now it’s ALL SAINTS DAY and we celebrate the VICTORIOUS CHURCH THAT HAS BEEN OVERCOME BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB!!! CANDY PLEASE!!!” he wrote.
The pastor added, “I’m not afraid of any devil or demon or incantation. They are terrified of me. Halloween is now MY HOLIDAY and I am claiming all candy for the glory of God and the celebration of the Saints.
What now? I’ll dress up however I like! My favorite characters, pop culture stuff, whatever. It’s my party and you’re invited. I’m alive today and a Saint tomorrow. Give me candy.”

www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrity/hailey-baldwin-claps-back-at-fake-christian-halloween-comments/ar-AAJ2h0q

Native American Seven Generations Teaching

Indigenous Practices and Seven Generations Teaching

Seven Generations Teaching: What we do today impacts the next seven generations to come. Conversely, what happened in the past seven generations impacts us today.

The Seven Generations Teaching is a concept that is part of many North American Indigenous cultures, specifically the Anishnaabe. Many understand this teaching as what you do today affects the next seven generations. We can have a positive impact on the next seven generations or a negative impact depending upon our choices as individuals and as a collective. This teaching also reflects upon knowing your ancestors, the past seven generations. If you do not know where you have come from you will not know where you are going.

quoted from:
Western University
Scholarship@Western
Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)
8-18-2009
Beyond Recovery: Colonization, Health and Healing for Indigenous People in Canada
Lynn F. Lavallee
Jennifer M. Poole

Citation of this paper: Lavallee, Lynn F. and Poole, Jennifer M., "Beyond Recovery: Colonization, Health and Healing for Indigenous People in Canada" (2009).Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi). 254. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/aprci/254

https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1190&context=aprci


"Rich people plan for four generations.
Poor people plan for Saturday Night."
~ Gloria Steinem

Responding to Unjust Accusations

“Tammie Jo, you will never be held responsible for what they say to you. You will be held accountable for every word you say to others. Let God take care of them.”

~ Jerolene Bonnell, the mother of Captain Tammie Jo Bonnell Shults, Navy lieutenant commander pilot, Southwest Airlines pilot, Captain of Southwest Flight 1380, author of Nerves of Steel

We are called to live by faith — not fairness.
~ Habbakuk 2:4

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.
~ Psalm 35:1

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.
~ Exodus 14:14

Do not be afraid of them; the Lord your God himself will fight for you.
~ Deuteronomy 3:22

Time Will Tell

"You will never be alone my love,
my heart is your home.
Hand in hand,
today, tomorrow and forever."

These were the words chosen by Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in his Instagram post, announcing his engagement to Princess Beatrice on Thursday, September 26, 2019.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49843830

What we speak . . .

“What we speak becomes the house we live in.”
~ Hafiz

For a New Beginning - John O'Donohue

For a New Beginning
John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.


John O'Donohue was an Irish poet, author, priest, and
philosopher.

Trust

Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved: A Novel, Simon & Schuster, 2019, Kindle pages 207-8

quote:
They went to service at her church, and James was spellbound by her father’s presence. He was not only in the pulpit but was, somehow, also of it—an alloy of man and minister, fearsome and approachable, exacting but kind. James felt the tension of the current, upheaving times in the church, but also the long rudder Nan’s father had put in the water, his strong hand on the wheel. He wondered how he would ever attain that wherewithal, that command.
When he asked Nan’s father about it later, in the same office in which they had sat once before, her father said, “In my opinion, the most important job a minister has is to become a man who can lead his congregation through difficult times.”

“This,” her father continued, “requires you to become someone they can trust.”
James flinched; it was a quick and sudden cut. He saw, instantly, that he was not that man for his congregation.
“Nan tells me you are the one causing trouble at your church.”
James nodded.
Nan’s father shook his head and sighed. “That’s one option—standing for what you want to stand for. If you stick with it, you’ll earn people’s respect. But if you want to earn people’s trust, you can’t chastise those who disagree with you. You have to include everyone—no matter how misguided they seem to you. You have to give them time to say their piece, look them in the eye, and give them credit for it.”
James said, “That is the very last thing I want to do.”
“Then you’re an activist, James, and you should quit the ministry.”
James flinched again. He had seen, in this trip, what Nan had lost in marrying him. In marrying her, he had lost the freedom of choosing any other profession. And he did not regret it. “That’s the other very last thing I want to do.”
“A divided congregation will always turn on itself, James, and then what use will they be to the outside world?”
It was exactly what Nan had been trying to tell him. As he watched her brush her hair before bed that night, leaning against the edge of the dresser, he said, “Your father is a wise man.”
Nan turned to him and smiled. “I know.”
“I haven’t been so wise.”

I’m So Excited for 40th Grade

New York Times - Op-Ed Headline
Sept. 7, 2019

I’m So Excited for 40th Grade
by Mary Laura Philpott
When we become adults, we lose the prompt to reboot our lives every fall. But we don’t have to.

10 Powerful Quotes That Will Inspire You To Take Action

10 Powerful Quotes That Will Inspire You To Take Action
Zdravko Cvijetic
Jun 27, 2016

1. “Every life form seems to strive to its maximum except human beings. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. Human beings, on the other hand, have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all or you can choose to be less. Why not stretch up to the full measure of the challenge and see what all you can do?”
- Jim Rohn

2. “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”
- Cecil Beaton

3. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
- Muhammed Ali

4. “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”
- Jordan Belfort

5. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”
- Eric Thomas

6. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
- Samuel Beckett

7. “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
- Steve Martin

8. “At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, no regrets.”
- Steve Maraboli

9. “Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”
- Anonymous

10. “Memento Mori (Remember That You Have To Die)”
- Latin Proverb

Leave your legacy.

(Blogger deleted Zdravko Cvijetic's other comments, for brevity)

https://medium.com/@zdravko/10-remarkable-quotes-that-will-inspire-you-to-take-action-7711003e527a

the story you keep telling yourself

 “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the [BS] story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”
~ Jordan Belfort

old proverb about the definition of hell

Old proverb about the definition of hell:
On your last day on earth, the person you became
meets the person you could’ve become
and realizes the things you could’ve done.

Put yourself behind my eyes . . .

“Study me as much as you like,
you will not know me,
for I differ in a hundred ways
from what you see me to be.

Put yourself behind my eyes
and see me as I see myself,
for I have chosen to dwell
in a place you cannot see.”

~ Rumi,
a 13th-century Persian poet, faqih, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic

Pet Peeves

"Don't pet the peeves."
~ Max Lucado

What a Wonderful World

What a Wonderful World
Joey Ramone, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald

I see trees of green
Red roses, too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, "what a wonderful world"

I see skies of blue
And clouds of white
The bright blessed day the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, "what a wonderful world"

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying, "how do you do"
They're really saying "I love you"

I hear babies cry
Watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, "what a wonderful world"
And I think to myself, "what a wonderful world"

Songwriter: DOUG DIPRETA

Spring

“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.”
~ Charles Dickens, writer

God is mystery

“To say that God is mystery is to say that you can never nail him down. Even on Christ the nails proved ineffective.”

~ Frederick Buechner

"increases in endocannabinoids only when they were coached"

New York Times email
Well
August 22, 2019
quote:
Many people can attest to the fact that exercise helps them feel emotionally balanced.
This week Gretchen Reynolds writes about new research exploring that connection. Researchers used blood samples from women with depression who rode exercise bikes, sometimes coached and sometimes at their own pace.
They found something surprising:
Both kinds of exercise made them feel a bit better, but their blood showed increases in endocannabinoids only when they were coached.

Seventy-year-old Bob Long: “Preparation trumps youth”

New York Times Evening Briefing email, August 21, 2019
quote:
Seventy-year-old Bob Long of Boise, Idaho, won the Mongol Derby, a grueling 1,000-kilometer competition across the steppes of Mongolia. Mr. Long rode about 100 hours in seven and a half days, on 28 different horses, by his tally.
The amateur rider began training in January with previous winners of the race, riding four or five horses a day as far as each could go, and learning how to change horses efficiently. The key to Mr. Long’s success? “Preparation trumps youth,” he said.

Who Jesus Is

Who Jesus Is
by Bear Grylls, from his new devotional, Soul Fuel

When I was growing up, Madonna once said, “Jesus Christ was like a movie star, my favorite idol of all.”(1)

Napoleon Bonaparte went further: “I know men, and I tell you Jesus Christ was not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity.”(2)

And then there was novelist H. G. Wells: “I am an historian, I am not a believer. But, this penniless preacher from Galilee is irresistibly the centre of history.”(3)

There has never been a human quite like Jesus. He towers above us all in goodness and courage, in impact and influence. The greatest artists, leaders, and thinkers, all put together, are dwarfed by Him.
Yet Jesus did not come to impress us. He said He had come to save us, in total humility, as God come down among us. If He is who He says He is, and the Gospel is real, then this is very good news. He simply wants us to learn to reach out and trust Him to help and calm us, to forgive and restore us. If we are to live fully and empowered, then this has to be the first step.
So wherever you are with God — whether you are searching, are wanting more, or have turned your back and are walking away — this verse is truth:
The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. — Luke 19:10

(1) Scott Cohen, “Madonna: The 1985 ‘Like a Virgin’ Cover Story,” Spin, May 1985.
(2) Clayton Kraby, “Napoleon Bonaparte’s View of Jesus,” Reasonable Theology, https://reasonabletheology.org/napoleon-bonapartes-view-of-jesus/.
(3) Thomas A. Harris, I’m OK—You’re OK (New York: Quill, 2004).

Thich Nhat Hanh quotes

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.
Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person.
But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.
Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience.
No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
Thich Nhat Hanh

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Bring Small Children to Church

To Those Who Bring Small Children to Church:
There you are at church. Your baby or toddler is restless. Perhaps even a little boisterous. You try to silence them, and nothing. You try to pacify them with food or toys, and nothing. Eventually, you resort to the last thing you wanted to do: you pick them up, and before a watching audience, you make the march out of the church. All the while you’re a little embarrassed, maybe a little frustrated too.
You might even think to yourself, “There’s no point in coming to church. I get nothing out of it because I have to constantly care for my kid.”
I want you - mothers and/or fathers - to know just how encouraging you are to so many.
The elderly woman who often feels alone beams with a smile at the sight of you wrestling with your little one. She’s been there before. She knows how hard it can be, but she smiles because to hear that brings back precious memories. Seeing young parents and their small children brighten her day; she may have just received bad news about her health but seeing the vitality of young ones removes - if but for a moment - her fears.
The older man who always seems to be grouchy notices you too. He’s always talking about how children in this day have no respect or sense of goodness. But he sees you - a young family - in church every week. Like clockwork, he can depend on the sight of you and your young family. You give him hope that maybe the Church isn’t doomed after all, because there are still young parents who love God enough to bring their restless children to church.
Bring your children to church! If we don’t hear crying, the church is dying. As hard as it might be for you as a parent who’s half-asleep, keep on doing what you’re doing. You are an encouragement, and you’re starting off your children’s lives as you should.
~ Author unknown

Weekly Housekeeping Schedule

"So how did the Karkuts manage to keep this house looking like new for 57 years? Industrious parents who were willing to put in the time and effort, Mills says."
quotes:
Mom had everything planned:
Monday she would do the laundry and the ironing.
Tuesday was for running errands.
Wednesday she would change the sheets and clean the bedrooms.
Thursday she would clean the kitchen and the common rooms.
Friday was the bathrooms.

daughter Christina Mills explaining her mother Ann's housekeeping skills
https://www.phillymag.com/property/2019/07/25/house-for-sale-abington-midcentury-split-level/
Mr. and Mrs. E. Walter Karkut (Ann)

The 4 way test from Rotary International

The 4 way test from Rotary International:

• Is it the truth?
• Is it fair to all concerned?
• Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

no mistakes, just happy little accidents

“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
~ Bob Ross, one of America’s most beloved artists, on his TV show, “The Joy of Painting”

“Lord, you are my life.”

Mark Galli quoting Pope Francis:

Pope Francis, in a recent homily, is not being antagonistic toward journalists (at least I hope not), just making this point:

We may be curious about Jesus, or interested in church matters or religious news. We may open computer sites and the papers, and talk about holy things. … Jesus does not care about polls or past history. He is not looking for religion editors, much less “front page” Christians. He is looking for witnesses who say to him each day: “Lord, you are my life.”

Mark Galli
Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today
​The Galli Report  (email)
Date: Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 10:08 AM 

man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Jesus claimed to fulfill His mission by dying for us

John Stott, one of the most influential Christians of our time, said Jesus claimed to fulfill His mission by dying for us:

"And the reason for this emphasis by the apostles is that they had seen it in the mind of Jesus himself.  It set him apart from the other religious leaders in history.  They died of natural causes in a good old age, having successfully completed their mission.  Muhammad was 62, Confucius 72, the Buddha 80 and Moses 120.  But Jesus died the horrible death of crucifixion in his early thirties, repudiated by his own people, apparently a complete failure, yet claiming to fulfill His mission by His death.  Indeed, during his last few days on earth, he was still looking forward to the accomplishment of his work.
"So the church has been right to choose the cross as its symbol for Christianity.  It could have chosen he crib in which the baby Jesus was laid, or the carpenter’s bench, or the boat from which he taught the people, or the towel with which he washed and wiped the disciple’s feet or the tomb from which he rose again, or the throne he occupies today, any one of these could have been an appropriate symbol of the Christian faith.  But the church passed them all by in favor of the cross, which stands for the necessity and centrality of his death." 
John Stott, Why I Am a Christian (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 50-51.

John Calvin's definition of faith

John Calvin gave this definition of faith:

“We must not think that Christian faith is a pure and simple knowledge of God, or an understanding of the Scripture, which flutters about in the brain without touching the heart.  That is the opinion we normally hold of things which are validated for us by some reason which sounds probable.
Christian faith is, rather, a sure and solid assurance of the heart, by which we cling securely to the mercy of God which is promised to us through the gospel.”

John Calvin, Truth for All Time: A Brief Outline of the Christian Faith, Stuart Olyott, trans. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 28.

Einstein's cluttered desk

One study by researchers at the University of Minnesota found a messy environment can make us more creative, whereas orderly surroundings make us more likely to confirm to traditional expectations.
As Albert Einstein – the owner of a notoriously messy desk – put it: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Can decluttering your house really make you happier?
By Sarah Griffiths
15 May 2019
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190515-can-decluttering-your-house-really-spark-joy  as of 5/16/2019

"Life is a process of accepting the messes and learning to clean them up."

Quote from email:
New York Times Thursday Evening Briefing
Date: Thu, May 9, 2019, 6:32 PM

"Life is a process of accepting the messes and learning to clean them up."
That's according to Kelley Schlise, a plumber's daughter who will attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall.
Hers is one of five college application essays about work, class and money selected by our money columnist Ron Leiber after his sixth annual callout to high school seniors.

the most valuable result of all education

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."
Thomas H. Huxley
English biologist (1825 - 1895)

Every time you make a choice . . .

"Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow- creatures, and with itself… Each of us at each moment is progressing to one state or the other."
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The reality is that you will grieve forever. . .

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.
You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.
You will be whole again but you will never be the same.
Nor should you be the same nor would you want to."

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler
www.whatsyourgrief.com

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
    to find the lost,
    to heal the broken,
    to feed the hungry,
    to release the prisoner,
    to rebuild the nations,
    to bring peace among the people,
    to make music in the heart.

By American poet Howard Thurman from his “The Work of Christmas”

"when you fear God you fear nothing else"

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.
“Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord”;…

from The Highest Good—The Pilgrim’s Song Book, 537 L

“Now it is today, and we can do so many stuff!”

“Now it is today, and we can do so many stuff!”
~ Daphne, upon awakening one morning
(Jenny's beloved six year-old granddaughter)

11 Inspirational Quotes from George H.W. Bush

11 Inspirational Quotes from George H.W. Bush
Life lessons from the former President of the United States.
By Lauren Hubbard
Dec 1, 2018
www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a20053077/best-george-hw-bush-quotes/  as of 12/7/2018

From his mild-mannered facade, few would have guessed that George H.W. Bush led such an eventful life: he served as a WWII combat pilot for the Navy, director of the CIA, and, of course, the 41st President of the United States, presiding over such momentous historical events as the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War. Alongside Barbara, his beloved wife of 73 years, Bush dispensed words of wisdom long beyond his tenure in public service, inspiring many with his faith and hope for a better tomorrow.

Here, a few of Bush's best-loved quotes.

ON PROBLEM SOLVING:
"No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit."

ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
"International exchanges are not a great tide to sweep away all differences, but they will slowly wear away at the obstacles to peace as surely as water wears away a hard stone."

ON TEAMWORK
"In crucial things, unity. In important things, diversity. In all things, generosity."

ON THE FUTURE
"I do not mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead. For our problems are large, but our heart is larger."

ON LIFE
"Be bold in your caring, be bold in your dreaming and above all else, always do your best."

ON COOPERATION
"Don't confuse being 'soft' with seeing the other guy's point of view."

ON FREEDOM
"Freedom and the power to choose should not be the privilege of wealth. They are the birthright of every American."

ON DOING WHAT'S RIGHT
"No generation can escape history."

ON EDUCATION
"Think about every problem, every challenge, we face. The solution to each starts with education."

ON HIS LEGACY
"History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right."

ON AMERICA
"America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world."

www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a20053077/best-george-hw-bush-quotes/  as of 12/7/2018

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” —Theodore Roosevelt.

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
—Theodore Roosevelt

"Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love. . ."

Musician Nick Cave has shared an emotional open letter about how he still feels the presence of his son, Arthur, who died in 2015 aged 15.
"If we love, we grieve. . . . Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves."
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-46084553

experiencing something new, in order to be able to choose something different

e-News, Sisters of St. Joseph, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
Edition No. 79 — October 15, 2018

20th Anniversary Gift of Hope Gala Honors Sister Rita Woehlcke SSJ
October 5, 2018
Sister Rita Woehlcke SSJ received the Humanitarian of the Year Award at the event.
The Center is nationally recognized for cutting edge practices in breaking the cycle of homelessness, substance abuse and poor ‘starts’ for children.
Rita began her relationship with the Center for Great Expectations in 1995 and was instrumental in creating the mission statement and designing a vision for comprehensive care. In each case, the model was based on experiencing something new, in order to be able to choose something different, and then having the internal and external resources and support to maintain that new life. She views her time at CGE as one the most significant in her ministerial life. . . .
Congratulations, Rita!

Temper, temper

"Temper, temper! Don't give it away. Nobody wants it."
~ David M's grandmother

Wealth Priorities

Save 10% of your income.
Invest 10% in other people, according to God's priorities.
Live on 80% of your income.
Be blessed!

B-WAFF - Beautiful, Wonderful, Amazing, Fabulous, Fantastic

Did You B-WAFF Today?
B-WAFF is an acronym created by Rhonda Bryne. It stands for Beautiful, Wonderful, Amazing, Fabulous, Fantastic. These are POWERFUL words that change how one feels, thinks, and behaves. In other words, B-WAFF are positive affirmations that only need to be SAID to cause one to be positive in her feelings, thoughts, and behavior.
Try it. Tell the very next person you see right now: “You are __________”(use one of the B-WAFF words). What was the person’s reaction? How did YOU feel?
As related to P.E.O., they can move a chapter from being ORDINARY to being EXTRAORDINARY.
How is this done? As our State President Ellen Endslow would say, “Easy peasy,”that is, just before you walk into your next chapter meeting, say to yourself, “My chapter is ___________ “(use one of the B-WAFF words). Note what happens!
Oh, by the way, you can also use these words when angry with someone. The next time that you are angry with someone, just say, “You’re just AMAZING!” (Bet you’ll smile!)
So, don’t forget to B-WAFF today!
Alicia King Redfern
PA State Vice President

Quoted from an African missionary's newsletter

Quoted from an African missionary's newsletter, discussing seminary education for pastors:
"The African culture does not believe that men should be involved in the care of young children or even in teaching them. I am trying to convince my class of men that teaching, especially children, should be at the heart of the church. I want to get them excited about teaching Sunday School and making it a fun and enjoyable experience where children can come to know about the love of God.
Most of them look at me with stony faces revealing their aversion to the job, preaching to adults is what they consider the most important part of being a pastor. I pray that these men can become loving and caring fathers as well as pastors who understand the need to reveal the love of God the Father through their example."

The gender imagery that God has given us - C.S. Lewis

https://www.marykassian.com/re-imagining-god-in-the-shack/
quote:
The gender imagery that God has given us is highly important. It reflects critical truths about the nature of the Trinity. Calling him “she” violates his character and important imagery about the nature of our relationship to him. As C.S. Lewis observes,

Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask “Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?”
But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument …  against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.
The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life… [But] one of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures… [God images himself as masculine because]…we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him.
…The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.
(Quotes from C.S. Lewis Essays Notes on the Way and That Hideous Strength.)

https://www.marykassian.com/re-imagining-god-in-the-shack/

Moments in Bonding - self-confident attaching

Moments in Bonding
“Bonding is a two-way street; parents and children interact.  Although we can, at present, describe only crudely the experience of bonding from the baby’s point of view, we can nevertheless see that the baby that self-confidently attaches itself to its mother is likely to behave in ways that arouse more affectionate and spontaneous maternal responses.  Conversely, a child who has suffered traumatic institutional separation from its mother will react with anger, anxious possessiveness, or self-protective detachment.  This obstructive behavior, in turn, produces negative responses from the mother that increase the child’s anger, possessive clinging, or guarded apathy.”

William F. May, "The Retarded," On Moral Medicine, 2nd ed.: #98: 738.

May’s footnote 8 for this paragraph:
8.  For further details, see John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol. I (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 340

Stuff you don't wanna forget

the following were copied from Desiree's Desired Creations, Desiree McCrorey
http://desiredcreations.com/misc_25Things.htm

25 things you should have learned by the time you have reached middle age

1. If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out.
2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat.
5. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No one has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. When baking, follow directions. When cooking, go by your own taste.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
25. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

A few more goodies...

1. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
2. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
3. Don't sweat the petty things. Don't pet the sweaty things.
4. After all this is over, all that will really have mattered is how we treated each other.
5. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else..
6. Don’t approve of political jokes; too many of them are already elected.
7. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
8. To avoid hating yourself in the morning--sleep 'till noon.

I don't know the origins of these, but whoever wrote them, thank you so very much! ;-)

Ozymandias

Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

written 1817

Redemption

"If you have been forgiven by God
then he gives you the power to forgive others."
~ youth pastor
I Can Only Imagine movie

I Can Only Imagine is a 2018 American Christian drama film directed by the Erwin Brothers and written by Alex Cramer, Jon Erwin, and Brent McCorkle, based on the story behind the MercyMe song of the same name, the best-selling Christian single of all time.
The film stars J. Michael Finley as Bart Millard, the lead singer who wrote the song about his relationship with his father (Dennis Quaid). Madeline Carroll, Priscilla Shirer, Cloris Leachman, and Trace Adkins also star.
I Can Only Imagine was released in the United States on March 16, 2018.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost . . .

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much

"Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
James 5:16 KJV

Your Bible and your newspaper

"Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible."
~ Karl Barth

Let's Keep Praying!

LET'S KEEP PRAYING!
Ephesians 6:18

Irina Ratushinskaya's childhood quest for God, even while she was hearing school lectures promoting atheism and mocking Christianity, led her to a deep and unflinching faith. Her poetry expressed that faith and brought inspiration and hope to believers all over Russia.
It also brought her to the attention of the KGB. At age 28, Irina was arrested and sentenced to 7 years hard labor in the Bareshevo labor camp. There she was subjected to relentless interrogations, chilling cold, starvation, hard labor, and months of solitary confinement.
Irina's faith did not break. During the lonely nights, huddled against the cold wall of her cell, she composed poetry in her head about God. When Irina was finally released, she credited the prayers of believers for sustaining her. In one of her poems, she wrote:

Believe me, it was often thus:
In solitary cells, on winter nights
A sudden sense of joy and warmth
And a resounding note of love.
And then, unsleeping, I would know
A-huddle by an icy wall:
Someone is thinking of me now,
Petitioning the Lord for me.

I wonder, have we been faithful in praying for people who are going through difficult situations? Our prayers can make a difference!
- David C. Egner

You can expect God to intervene if you're willing to intercede.

What’s Before Identity Politics - The Galli Report

The Galli Report
email, 8/17/2018
Mark Galli, Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today

What’s Before Identity Politics

This next piece gave me more empathy for people who are deeply invested in identity politics. I’ve noted many times how unhealthy I think this has become, but I hadn’t considered the root of the passion so many have to understand who they are and do so by fixating on their culture, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, or whatever. Nathanael Blake at Public Discourse argues that it goes back to Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God.

Without a transcendent worldview, all that remains is what we can see and touch—that’s the only reality left to find meaning in. But we also recognize how contingent and relative: “Consequently, tribal identity is no longer a secure psychological retreat into a stable source of meaning but a contested construct. Getting ‘woke’ and engaging in identity politics are attempts to find meaning in something that is an acknowledged social construct.”

This is behind the increasingly common claim that to challenge people’s sexual behavior or gender identity is to question, deny, or attack their humanity and even their existence. This seems insane to those who still reside in a Christian cosmos, for whom sexual desire or one’s feelings about gender are not at the core of one’s identity, and for whom criticizing sinful acts is a far cry from enacting a genocide of the sinful. But to those whose experiential sense of self is only that which they have created or adopted from their culture and their own desires, this makes sense. If self-creation is the fullest expression of our humanity, then critiquing someone’s self-constructed identity is to critique his humanity.

José Micard Teixeira – I NO LONGER

José Micard Teixeira – I NO LONGER

I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.
 I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature.
I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.
I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate.
I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise.
I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance.
I do not adjust either to popular gossiping.
I hate conflict and comparisons.
I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.
In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal.
I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement.
Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals.
And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.

~ José Micard Teixeira
Portuguese author

Brother Roger: Love your neighbor, whatever his or her religious or political outlook.

Brother Roger’s purpose in forming the ecumenical monastic community in Taizé, France was to provide safety and the love of God to those fleeing the hurts and conflicts of World War II. As he wrote in The Rule of Taizé,

Never stand still: advance with your brothers, race towards the goal in the steps of Christ. His path is a way of light – I am, but also, you are the light of the world” (John 8:12 and Matthew 5:14). In order for the light of Christ to permeate you, it is not enough to gaze on it as though you were purely spirit: you need to commit yourself resolutely, body and soul, to that path. Be a sign for others of brotherly love and of joy. . . .
Love the disadvantaged, all those who experience human injustice and are thirsting for justice. Jesus had a particular concern for them. . . .
Love your neighbor, whatever his or her religious or political outlook.

Brother Roger, The Rule of Taizé in French and English, Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2013, 9-13.

Fearing God

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.
"Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord"; . . .