Recognize Good Work . . . . . Soundings, Vol. C, # 4A

     “Recognize good work and you give others the will to do better work. Don’t recognize it and you feed one of the biggest gripes people have — lack of recognition.
     The best thing to do every time is to give credit where credit is due. You’ll be a better person for it and you’ll win more respect.”

Celtic Spirituality . . . . . Esther de Waal,
                                        “The Extraordinary in the Ordinary,” Weavings, Vol. II, # 3, p. 13

     “The Celtic approach to God opens up a world in which nothing is too common to be exalted and nothing is so exalted that it cannot be made common. …
     As we read these words we can glimpse that experience of the presence of God which has been the reality of … people’s lives ever since the start of the day. It is a gift which they have, and which they bring to us, of taking this moment, this place, this happening as the time and place for an encounter with God. So God meets us where we are, at home, at work, in the daily, in the ordinary.”

Act Precedes Will . . . . . Parker Palmer

… “Do not think your way into a new kind of living,
but live your way into a new kind of thinking.”

An Irish Blessing

Positive vs. Negative Pride. . . . . Rev. Robert H. Schuller,
                                                    Self-Esteem: The New Reformation

     … “We have failed to distinguish between positive pride and negative pride. Negative pride is that destructive arrogance that assumes, ‘I can do anything all by myself!’ It is the exact opposite of that healthy humility I choose to call ‘self-esteem.’ Positive pride is that creative and compassionate confidence Christ inspired when he said, ‘You are the light of the world!’”

Love & Talent . . . . . Sydney J. Harris

     “Love that is not expressed in loving action does not really exist, just as talent that does not express itself in creative works does not exist; neither of these is a state of mind, or feeling, but an activity, or it is a myth.”

The Good Life . . . . . Anonymous

     “When you can look at yesterday without regret and at tomorrow without fear, you’re on your way to the good life.”

Cultivate Tact . . . . . Baltasar Gracián

     “Cultivate tact for it is the mark of culture … the lubricant of human relationships, softening contacts and minimizing friction.

On Experience . . . . . Aldous Huxley

     “Experience is not what happens to a person, it is what one does with what happens to him to her. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves.”

The Time Is Short . . . . . Phillips Brooks

     “Oh, my dear friends, you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day; you who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot quite make up your mind that now is the day to sacrifice your pride and kill them; you who are passing men sullenly upon the street, not speaking to them out of some silly spite, and yet knowing that it would fill you with shame and remorse if you heard that one of these men were dead tomorrow morning; you who are letting your neighbor starve, till you hear that he is dying of starvation; or letting your friend’s heart ache for a word of appreciation or sympathy, which you mean to give him some day — if you only could know and see and feel, all of a sudden, that “the time is short,” how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do.”

The Frozen Eagle . . . . . Source Unknown

     Once a proud eagle perched on the tip of a chunk of ice floating swiftly down the river. The big bird seemed oblivious to the tremendous waterfall that lay ahead. At the same time, a hunter was walking down a path along the river’s edge. Seeing the huge bird perched on the chunk of ice, the hunter clapped his hands and cried out, “Brother Eagle, fly away, fly away. There is danger ahead!”
     The eagle merely shrugged its great wings as if to say, “Don’t bother me. I know what I’m doing.”
     As the chunk of ice floated closer to the waterfall, the hunter again cried out, “Fly away, Brother Eagle! There is a waterfall ahead!”
     At that moment, the eagle looked down just in time to see that the chunk of ice had reached the brink of the waterfall and was about to go over the edge. It spread its mighty wings and prepared for immediate take-off. But the eagle was unable to rise. Its claws were frozen to the ice and it went down with the iceberg.
     What are you frozen to? What do you need to let go of, to stop clinging to? Hear the voice of Jesus calling out to you — “There’s danger ahead.”
     For an eagle to soar high in the sky it has to let go of the earth. So too, for people.