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Volume 16, # 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April, 2001 |
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Volume 16, # 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April, 2001 |
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Spiritual Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . St. Therese of Lisieux
"One of the most difficult things about being a spiritual director is to encourage people along paths you would not choose for yourself."
Learn To Be There . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jim Rohn
"Lifestyle is learning to be wherever you are. It is developing a unique focus on the current moment, and drawing from it all the substance and wealth of experience and emotions that it has to offer. Lifestyle is taking time to watch a sunset. Lifestyle is listening to silence. Lifestyle is capturing each moment so that it becomes a new part of what we are and of what we are in the process of becoming. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well."
Co-Creators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation."
Afraid of Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plato
"We understand why children are afraid of darkness, but why are men afraid of light?"
The Moral Compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Bennett
Wm. Bennett in the Introduction to his book The Moral Compass writes: "…much of life is a moral and spiritual journey, and we undertake it, at least in large part, to find our way morally and spiritually. Thus it makes no sense to send young people forth on such an endeavor having offered them only some timid, vacillating opinions or options about conduct in the hope that in the course of their wanderings, they will stumble onto some more definite personal preferences which will become their ‘values.’ We must give our children better equipment than that. We must raise them as moral and spiritual beings by offering them unequivocal, reliable standards of right and wrong, noble and base, just and unjust."
Word of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Stott, Authentic Christianity
"We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior."
Power to Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Scott Peck,
A World Waiting To Be Born, p. 245"P
OWER—the capacity to influence others—is almost by definition the most potent factor in organizational behavior.…The distinction has been drawn between spiritual power—the capacity to influence others by the loveliness of one’s being—and political power—the capacity to influence others by one’s money or dominant organizational position.…Defined as the capacity to influence, power is therefore the capacity to make things happen.…"
Wisdom Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Arthur Ward
"Before you speak, listen.
Before you write, think.
Before you spend, earn.
Before you invest, investigate.
Before you criticize, wait.
Before you pray, forgive.
Before you quit, try.
Before you retire, save
Before you die, give."
Mama Says… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mama Ziglar
"Set a good example and you won’t have to set many rules."
Creative Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S
OUNDINGS, Vol. 3, #7
"Creative thinking is an acquired skill. We are born with the equipment, but we must be taught to use it. And therein lies the function of education. No teacher ever created an ounce of intelligence. Teachers can only condition and train the intelligence that already exists.
In a sense, we are all teachers. We come into contact with other people every day and influence them one way or another. In doing so, we should keep in mind the true function of education—teaching logical thought processes rather than merely requiring that they memorize facts by rote."
Take Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Benjamin Franklin
"Take time for all things;
great haste makes great waste."
Mind Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T
OP PERFORMANCE, Vol. 1, # 3"Professionals know if they are going to change their status in life, they must improve their performance and to do that, they need to change their thinking. To change their thinking they must change the input into their minds, so they selectively choose the ‘good stuff’ as ‘mind food.’"
Morning Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous
Eleanor Roosevelt carried the following prayer in her purse:
"Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us seekers after that which we can never fully find, keep us at tasks too hard for us, that we may be drawn to you for strength. Amen."
He Most Lives… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philip James Bailey
"He most lives who thinks most,
feels the noblest;
acts the best."
The Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Og Mandino
"Choice! The key is choice. You have options…So how do we explain that vast multitude of humanity that continues to exist in hopeless mediocrity, unfulfilled, frustrated, envious, drained of confidence and self-esteem, unable to meet even their daily obligations, and sad—so sad—that each new day produces no fresh seedling of hope, only more weeds of despair from showers of tears?
The answer is simple and obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for the better things of life because they have never been aware that they had any choices!…
Look closely. Consider the choices still available to you, choices that you can elect immediately, no matter what your present condition may be, so that you can live the remainder of your life as your Creator intended for you to live—in glory, not in shame.
I choose a better way to live!"
Come, Holy Spirit
"Come Holy Spirit,
Fill the hearts of your faithful.
And kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created.
And you will renew the face of the earth. Amen."
Lay Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthony de Mello, SJ
The Master ordinarily dissuaded people from living in a monastery. "To profit from books you don’t have to live in a library," he would say.
Or, even more forcefully, "You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a monastery."
Stretching One’s Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. Lee Sharpe,
Treasury of Inspiration, p. 20R. Lee Sharpe related, "One spring day when I was just a kid, my father called me to go with him to Trussell’s blacksmith shop. He had left a rake and a hoe to be repaired. And there they were ready, fixed like new. Father handed over a silver dollar for the repairing. But Mr. Trussell refused to take it.
‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s no charge for that little job.’
"But father insisted that he take payment.
"If I live to be a thousand years," said Sharpe, "I’ll never forget that old blacksmith’s reply.
‘Sid,’ he said to my father, ‘can’t you let an old man do something now and then—just to stretch his soul?’"
It’s the old law. The giver receives more than the receiver gets. Bread cast upon the waters comes back a thousand-fold. One who stretches his soul into deeds of love and kindness, unfailingly reaps a just reward.
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