The Creative Tension

We cannot go back to a pristine and innocent time where humanity was free and without sin. Nor can we lunge into the future where God's kingdom is fully established and righteousness and peace will reign supreme. Both the beginning and the future are denied for us, for we are in the middle. Yet both affect us, for that innocent beginning reminds us that sin and dis­obedience are not intrinsic to our lives and the future beckons us with the promise of God's new world. This does not make life in the mid­dle undesirable; it only makes it full of promise and tension.

Perseverance

If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, then, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before! We have evidently tapped a new level of energy. There may be layer after layer of this experience, a third and a fourth wind. We find amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed, because habitually we never push through the obstruction of fatigue.

- William James (1842 - 1910) Psychologist and philosopher

Attitude

I play to win even when common sense should tell me that I no longer have a chance. Even when I have been playing at my worst, or when all the breaks have been going against me, I approach each new day, each new hole, as a glorious opportunity to get going again.

- Arnold Palmer

The Greatest Loss

Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well

- Mary Cholmondeley

Where Life is Wasted

Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well

- Mary Cholmondeley

One Difference...

Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualise not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualising the impossible, they begin to see it as possible

- Cherie Carter-Scott

One More Step...

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed

- Charles Baudelaire

Who We Are

I look back upon my youth and realise how so many people gave me help, understanding, courage – very important things to me – and they never knew it. They entered into my life and became powers within me.
All of us live spiritually by what others have given us, often unwittingly, in the significant hours of our life. At the time these significant hours may not even be perceived. We may not recognise them until years later when we look back, as one remembers some long-ago music or a boyhood landscape.
We all owe to others much of the gentleness and wisdom that we have made our own; and we may well ask ourselves what will others owe to us

- Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) French medical missionary

What is Most Needed

The celebrated historian Barbara Tuchman called our times, "The Age of Disruption, a period when we've lost belief in certain kinds of moral understanding of good and bad."
A reporter for The Indianapolis Star once asked the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner what she thought was most needed in the next century.
"Probably personal responsibility," she replied, explaining that this means "taking responsibility for your behaviour and your expenditures and your actions, and not forever supposing that society must forgive you because it's not your fault."

Our Purpose

This is our purpose:
to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us;
to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves;
to act in such a way that some part of us lives on

- Oswald Spengler (1880 - 1936) Philosopher

To Change the World

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime

- Dale Carnegie

The Voice of God

When God speaks He speaks so loud that all the voices of the world seem dumb. And yet when God speaks he speaks so softly that no one hears the whisper but yourself. Today, perhaps...

- Henry Drummond

Who is it all for?

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

- John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

Trouble

Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life. If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favour. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Trust

Having someone's trust is like having money in the bank. Just like a bank account, you must make deposits if you expect to make withdrawals. When you keep your word, it's like making a deposit into your trust fund. The more often you perform the way you promised, the larger your balance is. Whenever you break your word, you have made a withdrawal from your account. You have a separate trust fund with each person that you have a relationship with. If you have been making regular deposits into your account with that individual, when the time comes that you are unable to keep your word (let's face it, nobody's perfect!), you will still have a large enough balance of trust to draw from. That person will realize that your account is still good. You are trustworthy!

- Matt Dimaio

First concerns

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are

- John Wooden (former college basketball coach).

Relationships

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if he or she were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again

- Og Mandino

Consequences

The effects of our actions may be postponed but they are never lost. There is an inevitable reward for good deeds and an inescapable punishment for bad. Meditate upon this truth, and seek always to earn good wages from Destiny

- Fu Wu Ming

The Seven Blunders of the World

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle

- Mahatma Gandhi

Scientist Says That Physics Points to the Creator

John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and a minister, claims that the equations that guide physics point to a Creator. Polkinghorne said,
Physicists are deeply impressed with the order of the world. It is rationally beautiful and structured, and the feeling that there is a mind behind it is a very natural feeling to have …. I think the feeling of wonder, which is fundamental to the experience of physicists … is fundamentally a religious experience, whether people recognise it or not.

Pallab Ghosh, "Historic Hunt for 'God Particle,'" BBC News (10 September 2008)

The Gods of Our Age

There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God. We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshiped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save or bring happiness to the human heart. Only God is able. It is faith in Him that we must rediscover

- Martin Luther King Jr. -

Identity and Culture

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

- Sydney J. Harris

Reflection on Culture

Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him

- Alexis De Tocqueville -

Facing Opposition

It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil - far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word "human" disappears from the race

- Jill Tweedie

Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent

- Calvin Coolidge

Bjorn Borg

My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories

- Bjorn Borg

Blame

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy

- Wayne Dyer -

A Daily Pratice

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and scientist (1749-1832)

Speed... or?

Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished

- Confucius