Never go out to meet trouble

"Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you."

~ Calvin Coolidge

Love One Another

"Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives."

~ Henri Nouwen

"I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

~ Dorothy Day

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

~ Jesus Christ
John 13:34-35

Everything You Need to Know About Money

from Everything You Need to Know About Money
Scott Adams, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement

"If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio."

from MoneyWhys - Investment Guidance from Vanguard: Fall 2006
"However, Adams said he no longer follows his rule to invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund. Today he invests primarily in municipal bonds, which are tax-exempt, and owns land in California."

The Holiday Homeless Family

Monday, Dec. 11, 2006

"The city of Boston sparked controversy when it renamed the spruce tree in Boston Common a holiday tree instead of a Christmas tree. The city's nativity scene will now be [called] the Holiday Homeless Family."

— Tina Fey
from "Weekend Update"
http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1568678,00.html

Death or Redemption

Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006

"It's faith-based killing that teaches God wants people dead if they don't see Christ as you do. Jesus would turn the other cheek."

~ Rev. Tim Simpson
head of Christian Alliance for Progress, on the violent computer game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, in which players kill non-Christians
http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1569830,00.html

Hope for the Oppressed

"We believe God came among the oppressed to bring hope."

~ Dearthrice DeWitt, pastor of First Congregational Church in Poughkeepsie
Let's live story of Christmas
Saturday, December 23, 2006
http://timesunion.com

Rise Up, O Flame

C. Praetorius, c.1600
From G.G.A. London, The Kent County Songbook
(8-Part Round)

Rise up, O Flame by thy light glowing.
Show to us beauty, vision and joy.

Thinking

We don't even bother to think until we are challenged by a problem.

~ John Dewey, philosopher

No Man is an Island

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

"...No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away to the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...."

John Dunne, Meditation 17

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

Meditation XVII

from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.

Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another's dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof
/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html

Kindness

Kindness in words creates confidence,
kindness in thinking creates profoundness,
kindness in feeling creates love.

~ Lao-Tsu

Compassion

Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.

~ Perna Chodron

Kindness

Quotes: Kindness

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

~ The Dalai Lama

Kindness and Honesty

Kindness and honesty can only be expected from the strong.

~ Unknown

Honor Your Father and Mother

"How far does honoring one's father and mother extend? Even were they to take his purse of golden coins and throw it in his presence into the sea, he should not embarrass, pain them or become angry, but accept the Torah's decree in silence."

Yoreh De'ah 241:6
The [standard code of Jewish law from the 16th century] Shulhan Arukh

Having Opinions is an Art

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.

~ Charles McCabe

Destroyed from within

Opening quote:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
~ historian Will Durant, writing about the Romans

Review:
"By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that 'Apocalypto' is a visionary work with its own wild integrity."

Gibson's Bizarre 'Apocalypto,' Tale of the Primitive Maya, Is Violent but Stunning Fable
By Joe Morgenstern
The Wall Street Journal Online

You are not your wounds

You are not your wounds.

~ Jane Eyre
A & E Literary Classics movie Jane Eyre

Center of the Universe

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.

~ Bernard Bailey

The Future

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

~ Peter Drucker

The Price One Pays

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

~ James Baldwin