Believe

Believe while others are doubting.
Plan while others are playing.
Study while others are sleeping.
Decide while others are delaying.
Prepare while others are daydreaming.
Begin while others are procrastinating.
Work while others are wishing.
Save while others are wasting.
Listen while others are talking.
Smile while others are frowning.
Commend while others are criticizing.
Persist while others are quitting.
–William Arthur Ward

For a reason, a season, or a lifetime….

PEOPLE COME INTO YOUR LIFE FOR A REASON

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person. When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real. But only for a season!

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

Thank you for being a part of my life, whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Inspiration

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life – it goes on.

~ Robert Frost

Tears

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling the secret of who you are, but more often than not of the mystery of where you have come from and are summoning you to where you should go next. Frederick Buechner

The Heart

The heart, like the grape, is prone to delivering its harvest in the same moment it appears to be crushed.

Roger Houseden

Words of Truth

• To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world.
• Going to church does not make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.
• Real friends are those who, when you feel you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.
• A coincidence is when God performs a miracle, and decides to remain anonymous.
• Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
• I don’t have to attend every argument I’m invited to.
• Lead your life so you won’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
• People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross.
• Life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of how you respond to it.
• Did it ever occur to you that nothing occurs to God?
• Life is like an onion, you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.
• Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
• There are two things I’ve learned: There is a God. And, I’m not Him.
• Following the path of least resistance is what makes rivers and men crooked.
• Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace and your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.
• When it comes time to die…make sure all you have to do is die.
• Don’t be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.

Real?

“You are as much a real person as you
are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the
interior is twice as important as the surface.
There are people who are all facade, like a house
left unfinished when the funds run out. They have
the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a
cottage.”

–Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Forgiveness

“Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.”

— William Arthur Ward

Unclenched Moments

Sabbaths 1999: II
I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
Wendell Berry

Guide me into an Unclenched Moment
Gentle me,
Holy one,
Into an unclenched moment,
A deep breath,
A letting go
Of heavy expectancies,
Of shriveling anxieties,
Of dead certainties,
That, softened by the silence,
Surrounded by the light,
And open to the mystery,
I may be found by wholeness,
Upheld by the unfathomable,
Entranced by the simple,
And filled with the joy that is you.
Amen.
Ted Loder (Guerrillas of Grace)

Be Still and Know….

We could all learn from the old guy sitting on his front porch in his rocking chair, rocking and smoking his pipe. A group of young people passes by. “Hey old man, what are you doing?” The man rocks and smokes for a minute and then says, “How soon do ya need to know?”

Terry Hershey 

Paradigm

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.

–Franklin Covey

Attraction

Click here to watch “The Attraction Movie”

Home

“Home”

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmmmmm

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Oh, I miss you, you know

And I’ve been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
“I’m fine baby, how are you?”
Well I would send them but I know that it’s just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that

Another aeroplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky I know
But I wanna go home
Mmmm, I’ve got to go home

Let me go home
I’m just too far from where you are
I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life
It’s like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not
Come along with me
‘Cause this was not your dream
But you always believed in me

Another winter day has come
And gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
Oh, let me go home
Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It will all be all right
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home

–Michael Buble

Who I am………..

“Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been”

I watched the proverbial sunrise
Coming up over the Pacific and
You might think I’m losing my mind,
But I will shy away from the specifics…

’cause I don’t want you to know where I am
’cause then you’ll see my heart
In the saddest state it’s ever been.

This is no place to try and live my life.

Stop right there. That’s exactly where I lost it.
See that line. Well I never should have crossed it.
Stop right there. Well I never should have said
That it’s the very moment that
I wish that I could take back.

I’m sorry for the person I became.
I’m sorry that it took so long for me to change.
I’m ready to be sure I never become that way again
’cause who I am hates who I’ve been.
Who I am hates who I’ve been.

I talk to absolutely no one.
Couldn’t keep to myself enough.
And the things bottled inside have finally begun
To create so much pressure that I’ll soon blow up.

I heard the reverberating footsteps
Synching up to the beating of my heart,
And I was positive that unless I got myself together,
I would watch me fall apart.

And I can’t let that happen again
’cause then you’ll see my heart
In the saddest state it’s ever been.

This is no place to try and live my life.

Who I am hates who I’ve been
And who I am will take the second chance you gave me.
Who I am hates who I’ve been
’cause who I’ve been only ever made me…

So sorry for the person I became.

–Relient K

Life

Life is short,
Break the rules,
Forgive quickly,
Kiss slowly,
Love truly,
Laugh uncontrollably,
And never regret anything that made you Smile.
Life may not be the party we hoped for,
but while we’re here we should
Dance….

Who are you?

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

– E.E. Cummings, American poet

Get Started

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never
be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and
less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now.
With each step you take, you will grow stronger and
stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-
confident and more and more successful.”
Mark Victor Hansen

How?

How do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart?

Being Real

“You are as much a real person as you
are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the
interior is twice as important as the surface.
There are people who are all facade, like a house
left unfinished when the funds run out. They have
the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a
cottage.”

Balthasar Gracian, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom“

Enjoy Life

Now You Can Enjoy Yourself Every Day

 

People are often puzzled by the idea of making life more enjoyable by changing their viewpoints. Let’s examine it:

Suppose you are not feeling well one day, yet you accompany some friends on a leisurely drive through the beautiful countryside. Someone calls your attention to a lovely lake, but because of your illness, you cannot give it your attention or interest. Someone else remarks about a magnificent mountain in the distance, but you hardly hear him. You pass one lovely scene after another, yet they have no meaning to you. Because your illness has taken all your energy, you have none to spare in enjoying yourself. It is the same to your mind as if these natural beauties didn’t exist at all. In your present ill state, they have neither existence nor attraction.

But the next day you recover. You feel fine. There is no inward attention to anything; you are outward bound once more. So again you go on a drive; you visit the very same places. But now, everything is completely different. You enjoy the lovely lake and magnificent mountain. You respond to them. You enjoy yourself.

How come? It was the very same scenery both times. But on the second trip you were different. You saw everything in an entirely new way. You had the inner freedom to see and appreciate your outer world. Like magic, your changed mental viewpoint changed the world for you.

It is difficult for people to grasp that the very same principle holds true elsewhere in life. Yet it is absolutely so. When we are inwardly ill at ease we do not really see things as they are; we see them as we are. And there is a world of difference – an actual world of difference – in the two viewpoints.

As we elevate our mental view points we also elevate our world. How is this accomplished? Enjoyment results from discard, not from acquisition. Discard of what? Of the very things we really want to lose – our acquired negative attitudes.

Enjoyment of life is not the presence of something outside ourselves; it is the absence of something within ourselves. Gloom is a state of inner blockage of your True Self; enjoyment is its release. Just as a balloon rises to greater heights by discarding weights, so do we ascend as we toss out negativities.

Vernon Howard
From Psycho-Pictography

 

Love is life…….

Love is life. . . . And if you miss love, you miss life.

Leo F. Buscaglia

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Dutch painter

Celtic Prayer

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the infinite peace to you.

The Sands of Forgiveness

The Sands of Forgiveness
by Author Unknown

A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:

TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE.

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:

TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE.

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?”

The other friend replied “When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”

LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR BENEFITS IN STONE.

Paradigms

A dead man suddenly came to life and began to pound on the lid of the coffin. The lid was raised; the man sat up. “What are you doing?” he said to the assembled crowd. “I am not dead.” His words were met with silent disbelief. Finally one of the mourners said, “Friend, both the doctors and the priests have certified that you are dead. So dead you are.” And he was duly buried.

I laughed out loud when I first read this story. And I told myself that this–when certainty petrifies into inflexibility–is not a metaphor about me.

It happens, of course, to others.

Certainty can be comforting. I know that I know. I feel tethered to some unmovable truth. And it feels oh-so-good to be right all the time.

Here’s the sticky wicket. My need for certainty changes my focus. I clutch, my fist (and mind) tight, unwilling to let go. My quest is no longer driven by belief (or trust), but fear; afraid I may be wrong. So I spend my energy protecting my turf.

We could learn from the wisdom of a beagle. Snoopy is on his doghouse at his typewriter. He’s telling Charlie Brown, “I’m writing a book on theology.” “Do you have a title yet?” Charlie Brown asks. Snoopy types, “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?”

Our need for certainty is exacerbated by a condition called scotoma (literally, blind spot). Or it can mean, seeing only what you want to see. I have done that. I’ve allowed my assumptions (my bias, my need for certainty) to color all my relationships. And this I know: Once you label someone (or something), you dismiss them. I see only how you (or they) are different, and therefore “wrong”. With my fists clenched, I fail to notice that I am, therefore, unable to receive. From you. From God. I have forgotten that prayer is best with empty and open hands.

Meister Eckert is right: If we only learn one prayer, it is this: “Thank you.” The need for certainty is replaced with humility and gratitude. And with open hands and a receiving heart who knows what may happen?
Sabbath Moment Terry Hershey

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
That is what the things can teach us;
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rilke

The Magic of Love

The Magic Of Love

Love is like magic
And it always will be.
For love still remains
Life’s sweet mystery!!
Love works in ways
That are wondrous and strange
And there’s nothing in life
That love cannot change!!
Love can transform
The most commonplace
Into beauty and splendor
And sweetness and grace.
Love is unselfish,
Understanding and kind,
For it sees with its heart
And not with its mind!!
Love is the answer
That everyone seeks…
Love is the language,
That every heart speaks.
Love can’t be bought,
It is priceless and free,
Love, like pure magic,
Is life’s sweet mystery!!

- Helen Steiner Rice -

The Power of Truth

Monday, December 17, 2007

The more completely you live in truth, the more fully you will connect to and realize your best possibilities. Truth will show you who you are, and enable you to go where you most sincerely wish to go. Truth is not always the easiest or most convenient choice, and it can often be painful. Yet in the long run, truth never fails to be the best course.

When you seek to avoid the truth, you’ll put a great amount of effort into a pursuit that will take you backwards. Instead, work your way willingly toward truth at every opportunity, and you’ll always be making real progress.

Those who fight against the truth are fighting a losing battle. Use every opportunity, in every moment, to put yourself on the side of truth.

Deception costs much and gains nothing of any value. Truth sets you free to achieve, to learn, to experience, express and fulfill the best that is within you.

Be true to yourself, to others, to the world around you and to all of life. Truth will always keep you looking and moving forward.

— Ralph Marston