A thought for the Day

[Dan Murphy]

Nice to see your kind words here, JC2, shining and bright as they always are. And Elaine and CBR, I do hope you return with your uplifting words of caring and life. Don't let the sediments of life pull you down and ruin your joy, ignore them, not worth the time to look.



Remember why

Whenever anything seems too difficult, tedious or uncomfortable, stop for a moment and remember. Stop for a moment and remember why you're doing it in the first place.
When there's a meaningful reason for what you're doing, then you can summon the motivation and the energy to get it done. Connect yourself with that reason, and allow it to push you forward. You have a very real stake in the outcome of your own efforts because you've chosen to make those efforts for a reason. Be sure to keep yourself connected to what that reason is.

Discipline, persistence, commitment and effectiveness cannot exist in a vacuum. They need a real and meaningful reason, a driving purpose, in order to thrive.

Whenever something starts to get you down, challenge yourself to remember why you're doing it. Remember why, and move ahead with a fresh, powerful, renewed sense of purpose. Remember why, and you'll have what it takes to get it done.

-- Ralph Marston

 

[CRB#33]

JC2, Elaine, Dan---you all are one class act. I can only learn from you.

Thank you for being my friends.

 

[EROS]

A frequent poster on this thread sent me a PM this morning. I sent back a cordial reply, but he/she apparently has chosen not to open it . Perhaps I'm on his/her IGNORE list..........then why send me a PM in the first place????

 

[EROS]

Originally posted by Dan Murphy
Don't let the sediments of life pull you down and ruin your joy, ignore them, not worth the time to look.

I certainly would AGREE with you, DAN . There is a great deal of "SEDIMENT" on this thread .........

 

[Disney Doll]

I've been away for a couple of days, and the posts that happened while I was gone seem to indicate that there was some sort of unpleasantness on what I have thought was a thread with some lovely sentiments posted. It's too bad if there were some "downer" posts, but I am going to continue to post pleasant, uplifting thoughts when I find them, such as the following:

When a person does a good deed when he or she didn't have to, God looks down and smiles and says, "For this moment alone, it was worth creating the world."--The Talmud

 

[EROS]

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.

Ned Flanders

 

[Dan Murphy]

Thanks for your continued uplifting thoughts, DD. Always nice to read and try to use in RL.

Staying positive

Negativity hurts, no matter where it comes from. Even if you have a perfectly good reason to be negative, even if your negativity is someone or something else's "fault" it still is negativity and it still has the power to cut you down.
Staying positive means not only keeping yourself positive, but also avoiding the negativity that the world can often heap upon you. That takes effort. It is all too easy to get caught up in someone else's negativity. It's all too easy to think that it's OK to experience negativity as long as it doesn't originate with you.

Always keep in mind that any negativity is destructive, regardless of where it originates. Make every effort to turn it around. There is an abundance of energy in negativity. Find a way to re-channel that energy in a more positive direction. You can indeed do it.

There's no need to be naive. Bad things happen, and they often happen beyond your control. But you don't have to let them take over your positive outlook. See them for what they are, and commit yourself to bringing out the positive in them.

There are plenty of excuses for being negative. And those excuses will add nothing to your life. Be positive, in spite of the reasons against it. That will bring significant value and power to your efforts.

-- Ralph Marston

 

[Disney Doll]

We should speak only after our words have passed through three gates. At the first gate, we ak ourselves, "Are these words true?". If so, we let them pass on: if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, "Are they necessary?". At the last gate, we ask, "Are they kind?".
--Eknath Easwaran

 

[EROS]

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

 

[Disney Doll]

Kindness is more important than wisdom,and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
--Theodore Isaac

 

[EROS]

A theologian is like a blind person in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there -- and finding it!

 

[EROS]

Cincinnati Board of Education

Religious instruction and the reading of religious books, including the Holy Bible, are prohibited in the common schools of Cincinnati. The children of the parents of all sects and opinions, in matters of faith and worship, are to enjoy alike the benefit of the common school fund.

Resolution, 1869

 

[Disney Doll]

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.--George Sand

 

[EROS]

If there was an afterlife, Isaac Asimov would have written a book about it by now.

 

[Dan Murphy]

The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it, and then help that best into the fullest expression.


--Allen J. Boone

 

[EROS]

Engel v. Vitale (1962)
United States Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public school officials could not require pupils to recite a state-composed prayer at the start of each school day, even if the prayer was nondenominational and pupils who so desired could be excused from reciting it, because such official state sanction of religious utterances was an unconstitutional attempt to establish religion.

 

[Dan Murphy]

Filled with gratitude

Whatever this day may hold, you can quickly and profoundly make it even better simply by rejoicing that it is here. Be genuinely and jubilantly in awe of your good fortune at being a part of this day.
The problems are problems only when you remain on their level. Rise above them and suddenly you see the way beyond them.

This is a great and wonderful day that is filled with positive possibilities. When your heart is filled with gratitude, the best of those possibilities become abundantly clear. The sincere appreciation for what you have gives value to all that you are. The blessings you enjoy are blessings precisely because you see them as such.

Consider what a real and astounding joy it is to be who you are and where you are on this day. The more you appreciate it, the more you give it, the better it will continue to become.

-- Ralph Marston

 

[Disney Doll]

And David thought:"It's like coming home to yourself at last."

For this is the journey that men make:to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find. Money, position, fame, many loves, revenge, are all of little consequence, and when the tickets are collected at the end of the ride, they are tossed into the bin marked Failure.

But if a man happens to find himself-if he knows what he can be depended upon to do, the limits of his courage, the positions from which he will no longer retreat, the degree to which he can surrender his inner life to some woman, the secret reservoirs of his determination, the extent of his dedication, the depth of his feeling for beauty, his honest and unpostured goals-then he has found a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life--James A. Michener from "The Fires Of Spring"

 

[EROS]

From THE PRINCE OF TIDES .............great writing............with a purpose ......


"I grew up slowly beside the tides and marshes of a Carolina sea island. We lived in a small white house, won by my great-great grandfather, Winston Shadrach Wingo, in a horseshoe game. There are families who live out their entire lives without a single thing of interest happening to them. I've always envied those families. The child of a beautiful woman, I was also a shrimper's son in love with the shape of boats. As a small boy I loved to navigate my father's shrimp boat between the sandbars. I suppose Henry Wingo would have made a pretty good father if he hadn't been such a violent man. From my mother I inherited a love of language and an appreciation of nature. She could turn a walk around the island into a voyage of purest discovery. As a child I thought she was the most extraordinary woman on earth. I wasn't the first son to be wrong about his mother.

I don't know when my parents began their war against each other, but I do know the only prisoners they took were their children. When my brother, sister and I needed to escape we developed a ritual. We found a silent, soothing world, where there was no pain, a world without mothers or fathers. We would make a circle bound by flesh and blood and water. And only when we felt our lungs betray us, would we rise toward the light, and the fear of what lay in wait for us above the surface. All this was a long time ago, before I chose not to have a memory."

 

[Disney Doll]

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.--Washington Irving