Daily Jots

Thought of the Day:
“And if you listen
You can hear blue
In wind over water
And wherever flax blooms
And when evening steps into
Lonely rooms.”
From “Hailstones and Halibut Bones”
Thinking Outside of the Box:
It is Children’s Book Week in the United States. For many people, that brings back memories of some very special books that may still be in our book collections, or may just live in our memories. I wanted to visit a few of those memories in honor of this week. Some of them come from my own memories and some from the memories of when I read them to my kids. I’ve …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
“None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.”
Kathleen Norris
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I was reading something today that made me think about how quickly our society moves new news into old news. It reminds me of the Top 40 list; a person can be a huge hit one day and a one-hit wonder the next. Its that way with the news too. While the media hypes it and the …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
It is discouraging to try and penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.
Mark Twain
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I’m not a big Mark Twain fan. I know many of you are so I apologize for my lack of fondness for the classic American author. Having said that, I know he did have some good things to say, and this is definitely one of them!
I blogged the other day about closed-minded people (the whole Fox Mulder thing) so I guess …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
“The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.”
Thomas Paine
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I dont know that I would agree with Thomas Paine on this one. I also wonder if he would say it today, in this new millennium rather than during his 19thcentury. I think that the Bible has been examined more and read less. We analyze, we study, and we arrive at these wonderful conclusions, but who actually reads the Bible anymore? The Bible is supposed to be the Word of God written for humanity …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
“One who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in Eternity’s sunrise.”
William Blake
Thinking Outside of the Box:
We, the collective “we” that is, talk a lot about stopping to smell the roses along the way. Enjoy the moment and all of that good stuff. But do we do it? Not really. In today’s society, we are told to do that, we believe we are doing it, but seldom do we actually accomplish it. I once read that a person’s life is not measured in the birth-death dates, but in the hyphen between.
How often on the way home …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I found this quote when I was thinking about how hard it is at times to get motivated to do something that seems a little too big to do, at least at the moment. Sometimes, it isn’t the swashbuckling hero that wins the battle at the end of the day – not always anyway. On those days when you are tired, don’t feel quite like …read more

Comments Off

Thought of the Day:
“Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is.”
Duke Ellington
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I remember being very young and asking my mother how I would know when I was in love. I was less than 12 I’m sure but I was hedging my bets; I wanted to be sure I didn’t make any major FUBARs along the way. Well, I did, but that’s another story. The important thing is her answer and the end result. She …read more

2 Comments

Thought of the Day
“… I run into so many people who are hostile just because they can’t open their minds to the possibilities that, sometimes, the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation.”
Fox Mulder (X-Files)
Thinking Outside of the Box:
I rented the first DVD in the “X-Files” series and watched it last night. I guess it was a trip down memory lane. At any rate, I found the ultimate “outside-the-box” thinker in a favorite character from the 1990s. Fox Mulder. He always had the most unique way of looking at things; right or …read more

2 Comments

Thought of the Day:
“All voices of depression and despair, existential philosophy, capitalism and punk rock – don’t they all come down to this:
I am alone.
All messages of hope and inspiration, great artists, transcendental philosophers and mystic poets, socialism, the world’s great religions – all carry the message:
I am part of something larger than my own mind.”
E. M. Forster
Thinking Outside of the Box:
It seems appropriate, today especially, to have this quote drop into my lap. Things are changing and for the good because whenever we connect with someone else in a collaborative effort, we do become …read more

1 Comment

Thought of the Day:
“Prayer, Meditation, Contemplation, Prayer of the Heart, The Fire of Love, The Negative Way, Via Negativa, Breath Prayer, The Practice of the Presence, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Dazzling Darkness, The Spiritual Life, The Life of Prayer – These are all words for describing and sharing ways of being with Our Lord, which may be summed up in the words Western European Mysticism.”
The Sanctuary
Sunday is here again and I invite you to take some time of rest. It’s hard to do that, isn’t it? To rachet down the noise, the stress, and the …read more

Comments Off