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