When Everyone Else Seems to be Winning — and You Feel Like a Bit of a Loser

I rest my chin on the farm gate, and exhale in one long breath while two baby calves with saucer-like eyes stare back at my daughter and me.

It’s a showdown.

And these cows simply won’t budge. Read on...you will be glad you did.

Weeds

If there are weeds in your life, you just need to pull them.

We can't just ignore them or yank their tops off at the surface. We can't just shoot them with some deadening chemicals. We can't just throw plastic over everything  and sprinkle some mulch on top -- they will grow there, too...because it is 'in' our hearts that they grow.

We have to do the work of pulling them out by the root -- the difficult, dirtying effort to get down on our knees. The discipline. The regularity. The prayer, acknowledging that the length and depth of some roots is yet unknown to us.

Nonetheless, tend your garden...pull the weeds out.

Little by Little

The greatest things ever done on Earth
have been done little by little.

-- William Jennings Bryan

It might be easy to imagine this kind of thing in terms of some of the great building endeavors throughout time -- the Pyramids for example. But, if this is true, and I suspect it is, it has equal implications for the things that are built (changed?) in our hearts as well. Little by little.

...this should make us quite respectful of this process in others, as well.

Millions Long

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

-- Susan Ertz

Peace Is Not Placidity

Peace is the centre of the atom, the core
Of quiet within the storm. It is not
A cessation, a nothingness; more
The lightning in reverse is what
Reveals the light. It is the law that binds
The atom's structure, ordering the dance
Of proton and electron, and that finds
Within the midst of flame and wind, the glance
In the still eye of the vast hurricane.
Peace is not placidity: peace is
The power to endure the megatron of pain
With joy, the silent thunder of release,
The ordering of Love. Peace is the atom's start,
The primal image: God within the heart.

-- Madeleine L'Engle, from The Weather of the Heart

I Shall Be Waiting For You

Personally, I have found the holding of these contrasts (see yesterday's post and the link below) about marriage a challenge, a defeat, and a wonderful endeavor over the years. Marriage is both something wonderful and terrible. All-in-all, it seems to me, especially as time passes, that it is much more of the former.

I Shall Be Waiting For You

Marriage

I don't know of anyone who hasn't struggled in their marriage, at one point or another, with what it 'should' be like...to the point that they wondered if it should also be 'over'. No one.

I have learned, however, of many people who never let on that this happens...which seems to leave them and others wondering what is wrong with their situation, or more especially, what is wrong with their partner.

The greater discovery and truth, though, is that until this road is traveled, and to some degree with others, the greater problem of me is not identified. And, that discovery, is the start to something that includes struggle, but also transcends it.

Live Your Best Life

My friend, Jim, sent this to me and I noted the author, since these days I am slowly reading her book. This is one of the more welcome Saturday Morning treats I've enjoyed in a while. ...tears reflect the welling up of something deep within me as I read this very poignant and real depiction of our human experience:

Live Your Best Life

...read it slow and more than once. It's awash in redemption...as we all are, all the way to the end.

Hurry

Hurry always empties a soul.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

...making me unavailable.

Don't Underestimate

Don’t underestimate the goodness of God.

It would be a shame to do so and to your detriment.

Interfere

Do not let what you cannot do interfere
with what you can do.

-- John Wooden

Deposits, in the Long Run

Raising kids is like buying savings bonds...like making long-term deposits in the bank; the return is for value more fully realized in about 25 years. Actually, there are many more returns and more often than this. But, nonetheless, our kids often have to struggle on their own before they realize the value of the some of things we would love for them to know...the same kinds of things we had to learn along the way.

Keep making those deposits by doing the right things and believing that satisfaction can prevail, in the long run, over how accepting they are of them in any given moment.

Every quarter you put in the bank of who they are...matters.

Do What You Can

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Fatherhood

When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant that I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in only 7 years.

-- Mark Twain

...brings a wry smile, doesn't it? Goes along a bit with this one.

Pride Is Heavy

Pride is heavy.
It weighs.
It is a fatness of spirit,
an overindulgence in self.
This gluttony is earthbound
Cannot be lifted up.
Help me to fast,
to lose this weight!
Otherwise, O Light One,
how can I rejoice in your
Ascension?

-- Madeleine L'Engle, from The Weather of the Heart

We're Raising Boys

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.
Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass.'
'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply.
'We're raising boys'.

-- Harmon Killebrew

In other words, be there...with them. I love this thought...presence matters.

Walk Alone

There have been times, many actually, when beauty sears me so deeply I can hardly lift it to another person. There have been times when seeing or experiencing beauty without another has hurt just as much.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Never Grows Old

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

-- Franz Kafka

Artists

All children are born artists.

-- Picasso

Not Possessed

Beauty cannot be possessed. It reaches out to us, into us, from within us, but it can be controlled and possessed.

Proud Assertion

Flowers...are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Graduate!

For those who want more...and more.

Beauty Heals

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

-- John Muir

Beauty

Is there anything more powerful, more compelling than beauty?

The invigoration of a sunrise, the peace of a sunset, the delight of a happy woman, the strong love of a man, the innocence of a child.  The joy of redemption, the harmony of nature.  All are just slivers of the beauty that alters a man's consciousness...of himself, of God, of the world.

Religion

Religion bears the burden of its own inconsistency.

Anger's Pathway

To be human now (in our fallen-mess) is to be angry. We are so far from what we should be.

Teach us, God, to bring our anger to you, as a pathway, so that we can be sorted out by you and so that we don't misplace our anger upon others. For only you can right all wrongs in others and more importantly in ourselves.

Imagination

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

-- Albert Einstein

Those Damp Woods

Those damp woods...so deafeningly silent, so passively active, so windily aimed at its destinations.   Its colors and moistened fragrances, its musicality and secrets unendingly discovered...all shake me like a sieve, sorting out my soul and lifting what is true out of the morass of everything that so surrounds and passes through me.  My oh my, the woods are like the voice of God directly to me...searing me to the core, in such powerful and tender ways.

Top 26 Road Movies

"Ultimately, road movies offer us a brief glimpse of potential alternatives to the soul-sickening 'everydayness' of our lives.

Consider these 25 Road Movies a kind of antidote. They are the opposite of mindless entertainments; they are signposts for the search."

Image Magazine's Top 25 Road Movies.

...a bonus, you might recognize some reviewer names.

Keep Out of the Habit Before They Are In It

Late-1850, Abraham Lincoln's step-brother, John D. Johnston, wrote to him and asked, yet again, for a loan with which to settle some debts. Said Johnston:

I am dund & doged to Death so I am all most tired of Living, & I would all most swop my place in Heaven for that much money [...] I would rother live on bread and wotter than to have men allways duning me [...] If you can send me 80 Dollars I am willing to pay you any Intrust you will ask.

On previous occasions Lincoln simply would have agreed to such a request. This time, however, sensing an opportunity to impart some wisdom, he responded with the following letter of advice and a proposal:

...click here to read what appears to me to be a quite wise response.