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  Volume 16, # 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December, 2000

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Plant these "seeds" well and water often. Enjoy!

month of December graphic

All That Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous, Bits & Pieces, March 1990, p. 11

"To look is one thing.
To see what you look at is another.
To understand what you see is a third.
To learn from what you understand is still something else.
But to act on what you learn is all that really matters."

Miracles Happen! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rev. Robert Schuller

"In the presence of Hope, faith is born;
in the presence of Faith, love becomes a possibility;
in the presence of Love, miracles happen!"

Balance Sheet of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas J. Watson,
                                                                                                                                                My Life at IBM and Beyond, p.50

    Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, didn’t believe the road to happiness and success was all that complicated. In fact, he often listed their components in balance sheet format.

LIABILITIES:

Reactionary Ideas
Love of money
Unwholesome companions
Lax character
Lack of love for others
False Friends

ASSETS:

Vision
Unselfishness
Love
Good Character
Good manners
Friendship (Real) 

    To Watson Sr., life was like a balance sheet. And in life, as in business, building assets and reducing liabilities makes for good progress.

No Nonsense Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Sloma

    "There will be moments when, despite all the training and experience that you have acquired, you will need help—maybe not technical or quantitative help, but inspirational help. Its really not a bad idea to start each day by renewing your awareness of your need for these qualities:

share the powerPlease God, grant me—

Wisdom Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Farmer’s Almanac–1989

"Knowing without doing is like plowing without sowing."

"By saying a little, some people acquire a reputation for knowing considerable."

Rightly Timed Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Twain

    "The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."

Great Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."

Life’s Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. Jackson Brown,
                                                                                                 Life’s Little Instruction Book

"# 20: Be forgiving of yourself and others.

# 33: Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

# 43: Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day."

Fire of Advent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 187

Advent wreath with burning candles    "Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time."

Ethos of Legalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Scott Peck,
                                                                                     A World Waiting To Be Born, p. 112

    "Aleksandr Slozhenitsyn criticized the culture of narcissism in American society for its ethos of ‘legalism,’ by which he meant our unfortunate attitude that ‘as long as it is legal, it’s okay.’ It was an accurate and devastating criticism. The fact that an act is legal doesn’t necessarily mean that it is ethical or civil."

Do and Dare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dale Carnegie

    "Take a chance! All life is chance. The man or woman who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The ‘sure thing’ boat never gets far from shore."

Visioneering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dennis Denton, Insight, # 83, 6

3. Action. This is when the goal starts to become evident to the outside world.
The goal will require growth and stretching on your part, and you won’t be able to just stay as you are in order to attain it."

On Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adm. Hyman G. Rickover

    "A free society can survive only through men and women of integrity. Mediocrity can destroy us, just as surely as perils far more famous."

A Spark of Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris

    "Every believer in this world of ours must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying leaven amidst his fellow men; and he will be this all the more perfectly the more closely he lives in communion with God in the intimacy of his own soul."

Light is to be shared

The World Is Too Big . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous,
                                                                                                           Sunday Sermon Masterpiece Collection, Vol. I, p. 153

    Perhaps you picked up your morning newspaper and read an editorial that went something like this:

"The world is too big for us. Too much is going on, too many crimes, too much violence and excitement. Try as you will, you get behind in the race, in spite of yourself. It’s an incessant strain to keep pace…and still, you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political world is news seen so rapidly you’re out of breath trying to keep pace with who’s in and who’s out. Everything is high pressure. Human nature cannot endure much more!"

    Was that editorial written last week, last month or last year? Believe it or not, it appeared in a newspaper called "The Atlantic Journal" on June 16, 1833.

Christmas Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living Faith, Vol. 4, # 3

    "Meister Eckhart once said: ‘What good is it that Christ was born 2,000 years ago if he is not born now in your heart?’

    "Lord, we do far too much celebrating your actual coming in our hearts. I believe in God, but do I believe in God-in-me? I believe in God in heaven, but do I believe in God-on-earth? I believe in God out there, but do I believe in God-with-us?

    "Lord, be born in my heart. Come alive in me this Christmas! Amen."

 

A Successful Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elbert Hubbard,
                                                                                                         Winning Words of Champions, p. 276

"A successful person is one who has tried, not cried;
      Who has worked, not dodged;
    Who has shouldered responsibility, not evaded it;
    Who has lifted the burden instead of standing off, looking on and giving advice."

Is God No Longer Welcomed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.B. Holderby, Jr. Radm,
                                                                                                        CURRENTS, Feb. 1996

    "On Christmas Day, in the Washington Times, there appeared an article entitled ‘When God is no longer welcomed in the workplace.’ The writer quoted from guidelines issued by the Postal Service, Internal Revenue Service, and the Forest Service that prohibit visible religious symbols in the workplace. The writer suggested that such restrictions on religious expression create a culture or atmosphere more sympathetic to atheism than to freedom of religion.

    …Stephen Carter in Culture of Disbelief uses the powerful analogy that today’s culture tends to view religious faith as a private hobby with no lasting or public significance.

    …There is a French proverb that says, ‘you not only have to want what you want, but you have to want what it leads to.’ Simply put, if keeping God out of the workplace is desirable, then we must want or accept what a workplace without God becomes. I suspect that such things as honesty, integrity, civility, cooperation, and readiness will not be easily found in such an environment. If those values are truly what we want, then what we want is God in all of life."

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