Memorial Day

In Honor Of Those Who Serve and Served

Transparency

It is time to stop hiding something from someone. 

This is the day of your liberation. 

Whatever you are keeping from another is not worth withholding. 

It will eat away at you if you are not careful. 

It can do more harm to you than "telling" ever would. 

Speak your truth, but soothe your words with peace. 

Reveal what you've been keeping secret. 

In the end, transparency is best, 

although it may feel uncomfortable for a while.

~Neale Donald Walsh

Congratulations Garrett

This is one of my favorite quotes,

carried with me in planners, PDA's, on post-its, too,

since I was 19 years old.

I carry it mostly in my heart.

"...it is a question of experiencing everything."

This is for Garrett

as he graduates from high school today.

Congratulations.

I'm happy to be your Mama J.

Language

Words are some of the most 

powerful and important things I know...

Language is the tool of love

and the weapon of hatred.

It's the bright red warning flag of danger

and the stone foundation

of diplomacy and peace.

~Unknown

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Conscious Action

Love and loving are conscious actions,

and they don't have a whole lot in common with being in love.

~Richard Skerritt

Moving Within

Journeys bring power and love back into you. 

If you can’t go somewhere,

move in the passageways of the self. 

They are like shafts of light, 

always changing, 

and you change when you explore them.

~Rumi

Sorry, Closed

Any effort that has self-glorification

as it's end point

is bound to end

in disaster.

~Unknown

Fences

Don't ever take a fence down

until you know why it was put up.

~Robert Frost

Justice

The only justice

is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul,

angry or gentle.

Anger is just

Pity is just

but judgment is never just.

~D H Lawrence

Control

Isn't it great to know
that you cannot control your world from the outside?

To try and control things from the outside feels impossible

because it would take so much work

and in fact is impossible

according to the law of attraction.

~Rhonda Byrne

Friendship and Love

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.

Love risks degenerating into obsession

Friendship is never anything but sharing.

~Elie Wiesel

Mother's Day

All women become like their mothers. 

That is their tragedy. 

No man does. 

That's his.

~Oscar Wilde

Exceptional

The thing that makes you exceptional, 

if you are at all, 

is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. 

~Lorraine Hansberry

Sons

Your son is at five your master,

at ten your slave,

at fifteen your double,

and after that your friend or your foe

depending on his bringing up.

~Unknown

Refuge

"The great advantage of a hotel

is that it is a great refuge

from home life."

~George Bernard Shaw

Bad Habits

There's an old saying that,

you can't kill a frog by dropping him into hot water.

As you drop him into the hot water he reacts so quickly

that he immediately jumps out unharmed.

But if you put him in hot water and warm it up

until it is scalding hot

you have him cooked before you know it.

The encroachment of bad habits

in our lives is very much like this.
~Unknown
(No frogs were harmed in the making of this blog entry.)

Happy Birthday Sara

No quote today, just a photo of lovely teenage girls.

Sara enjoyed her 16th birthday this weekend.

My niece Sarah enjoyed a birthday on the same day.

Sara's in the photo above.   My niece is not.  ;-)

Good day to have a birthday!