The Things He Has

"The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success."

- Hamilton Wright Mabie

Plant the Seed

"We plant the seed of an apple tree not so we can sit under the tree. We plant it so someone else can sit under the tree."

- Jim Tunney, "Dean of N.F.L. Referees"

Gut

"Gut reaction. Get instincts. Gut
Feelings. Gut checks. Gut.
Feelings. Waist Waste.
Gut wrenching.
Store, Hide. Pain. Neglect.
Tire. Tired. Sick and tired.
Gut less. Less Gut.
Got Gut ?
Get out. Gut."

- Anonymous

Saved by Hope

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

The 12 Steps

The 12 Steps
Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Doing Nothing

"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

- Winnie the Pooh

Boys of Fourteen

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years".

- Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874

Genuine Love

"Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved." - M. Scott Peck

As without Light

"... without darkness
Nothing comes to birth,
As without light
Nothing flowers."

- May Sarton

Courage to Be

"f you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Compassion to Embrace

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. - Albert Einstein

Respect You

"When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you."

- Lao Tzu