"prisoners of their own minds"

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”

“The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address, 1933

Elegant Common Sense

"Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense."

~ Josh Billings

"I'm for the whole bird"

George Curry:

If Rick Warren and his critics met away from the glare of the media, I suspect that they, too, would find they share many beliefs in common, despite their differences.

In an interview with ABC News, Warren said, "I'm a pastor, not a politician. People say, 'Rick, are you right-wing or left-wing?' I say, 'I'm for the whole bird.' "

Beyond the Spin: Obama is right on Warren
People need to throw out litmus tests. Associating only with those who agree with you deprives you of an opportunity for growth.
By George Curry
Posted on Thu, Dec. 25, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer
/opinion/36720549.html

You are absolutely unique

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

~ Margaret Mead

Myth: Family Gatherings are Torture

Debunking 5 Holiday Myths
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/spirit/emotionalhealth/
slideshow1_ss_omag_200511_hol
(underlining added)

MYTH 1: FAMILY GATHERINGS ARE TORTURE.
Home for the holidays. The very image can cause us to develop excruciating holiday back spasms, sometimes as early as September—because the cliché of familial holiday bliss has an evil twin: that of the dysfunctional family at its worst. For the legion of CDFs (Children of Dysfunctional Families), don't assume that you can't enjoy family gatherings. With the right mental set, you can have a good, relaxing time at whatever festivities you attend, no matter how wacko your kinfolk may be.

The single best way to cope with familial turmoil is to give up the hope that your relatives will suddenly become cornucopias of emotional health. Instead of yearning for a perfect family, listen to teacher Byron Katie, author of the book I Need Your Love—Is That True? "If I had a prayer," she writes, "it would be this: 'God spare me from the desire for love, approval, and appreciation. Amen.'" This sounds harsh if you've never experienced freedom from these desires, which comes when you accept yourself.

Try one of Katie's exercises: Imagine drinking a cup of tea with a family member, without attempting in any way to get love, approval, or appreciation. You'll suddenly feel safer, more resilient, more at peace. Paradoxically, you get this blessed feeling by not grasping for it. Make Katie's exercise a reality by considering your family holiday a BYOLAA event—bring your own love, approval, and appreciation. The philosopher Lao-tzu said that when you do this, "you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother."

It's far easier to let go of judgment or competitiveness and reach this contented place when you aren't intent on forcing people to be what they're not. And you invite inner peace when you stop trying to force yourself either to change your relatives or to think of them as sane. By acknowledging your own infinite value, you'll see more value in others—just as they are. You may even stumble across a surprising holiday gift: the understanding that truly "going home" happens within you, the moment you give yourself the unconditional acceptance you thought you needed from your kin.

— Martha Beck

Voices from God

In George Bernard Shaw’s play "St. Joan," Joan hears voices from God. The Dauphin is annoyed.
"Oh, your voices, your voices," he says, "Why don't your voices come to me? I am the king not you."
"They do come," Joan replies, "but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it, but if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."

"Like having your dog die every day"

"There's a feeling in your stomach when you're laying off people that have worked for you for 30 years," said [Bruce] Weed, during a two-hour interview earlier this week that brought the 51-year-old Washington Crossing resident to tears. "It's awful."

Said Scott Weed, another of the owners: "It's like having your dog die every day."

"Bucks car dealer closes in on painful choice"
(article about Weed Chevrolet's financial problems)
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia Inquirer, philly.com
Posted on Wed, Dec. 10, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20081210_Agonies_trickle_down.html

Jesus, please help

When Satan is knocking at your door, simply say, "Jesus, could You please get that for me?"

~ author unknown

I might be wrong ...

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."

~ Bertrand Russell

You will not be alone

Krishnamurti was once asked what was the most appropriate way to say goodbye to a man who was about to die. He answered: "Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone."

~ Krishnamurti, a spiritual leader in India who died in 1986

God and Crap

"Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap."

~ Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

God’s Covenant with David

2 Samuel 7:1-22 NRSV

1 Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent."

3 Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you."

4 But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: 5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?"

8 Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. 15 But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever. 17 In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.

18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and said, "Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? 19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD; you have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord GOD! 20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD! 21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it. 22 Therefore you are great, O LORD God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

Thank You

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

~ Meister Eckhart

We're in the same boat now

"We may have come over on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

~ Vernon Jordon

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Thankfulness

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a good example of thankfulness allowing us to become better nor bitter. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor imprisoned by the Nazi’s during World War II and eventually executed for refusing to be quiet about what was happening in Germany. He had every reason to be bitter about what life had handed him.

Yet an English officer who was imprisoned with Bonhoeffer and survived had this to say,”Bonhoefer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive... He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near...”

The day before Bonhoeffer was executed, he conducted a service of worship and was just ending his prayers when the guards came for him. Bonhoeffer’s last reported words to his congregation were “This is the end; but for me it is the beginning of life.”

Bonhoeffer knew what today’s Psalmist proclaims “ The LORD of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”

~ author unknown

The Second Coming - Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~ William Butler Yeats

"Listen to the Wind"

"What should I do, a long time from now, when that day comes?" he asked.
Haji Ali looked up toward the summit of Korphe K2, weighing his words. "Listen to the wind," he said.

~ Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea, p. 260

Amazon.com:
"Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace, and co-author of New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea which was Time Magazine Asia Book of the Year. Mortenson has established over 61 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 25,000 children. He survived an eightday armed kidnapping, escaped a firefight with feuding Afghan warlords, has overcome two fatwehs, endured CIA investigations, and also received hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans for helping Muslim children with education. While not overseas half the year, Mortenson lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and two children."

Sun-Tzu quotes

All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.
Sun-Tzu

Appraise war in terms of the fundamental factors. The first of these factors is moral influence.
Sun-Tzu

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions.
Sun-Tzu

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Sun-tzu, (attributed)

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Emptiness and Fullness

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Planning a Siege

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

Keep your enemies closer

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

~ Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)