C.S. Lewis
The Four Loves, "There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken ... The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

“ We are most human when we feel dull." The Rebelution: The Joy of Boredom

“ i’ll be honest. i didn’t know who penelope trunk was a few months ago. a friend said she was a fab writer, and as an aspiring fab writer myself, i figured i should click on over. hooked. on. sentence. one. imagine my delight when i discovered she was going to be speaking at south by southwest.

imagine my heartache when i discovered she was speaking at the same time as kathy sierra. oh well. i could get the kathy podcast later.

after an amazingly brutal career advice conversation with the crowd (i love this woman even more now) i stood in line to bid a fond (and admittedly nervous) hello. something she had said earlier about people being afraid to be amazing and great really resonated with some things i’m internalizing at the moment. so my question for her at the end?

“what would you say to someone who’s afraid to be great?”

“well, uh, you have some food in your teeth.”
lovely. bloody spinach dip. $^@%#!

"you need to surround yourself with people who will tell you that you have food between your teeth.”
she encouraged me to find people who fail, so i can learn. she inspired me to set huge, ginormous goals. to find people who dream big too.

** now, i know i am not the only one who’s struggling with that fear - the fear of being great. and if you have asked the why and the how of overcoming that fear… don’t worry.

the fact you are asking that question in itself means you care. and you will be great.
(that’s the last little bit she told me). and with the smallest little bit of oomph in my heart, i said thank you, we said goodbye, and i scurried off to the bathroom to pick the spinach out of my teeth. FlowerDust.net | Anne Jackson » Blog Archive » the brazen spinach dip and fear

"Harvey and I sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella." Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers - soon we have friends. And they come over... and they sit with us... and they drink with us... and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey... and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back; but that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us." Elwood P. Dowd, from Harvey

The Confession of St. Patrick

"I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many..."

Luke 21:28

"Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Luke 21:14-15

"Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict..."

Job 28:28

"And he said to man, 'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.'"

Caedmon's Call, The Truth

"...and thank the Lord, that the truth's not contingent on me..."

Dreams in the Dusk

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day’s close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day’s loss
Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

Carl Sandburg

I'll tell you how the sun rose,--
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"
...
Emily Dickinson

A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.
The wife said, “You should do it, because you get up first, and then we don’t have to wait as long to get our coffee.”
The husband said, ” You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee.”
Wife replies, “No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee.”
Husband replies, “I can’t believe that, show me.”
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says……….”HEBREWS”

Jericho, new episode

Really? Did that really just happen?!

Purpose/Driven?

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I once heard a friend say he felt that at the age of 19 he should have already done something along the lines of curing cancer. Granted he was being dramatic, but I think he wasn’t far from describing the feelings many have in this society. The first question most people ask and are asked when meeting someone is "What do you do?"

I too feel the pressure to do "great" things and have been told on a number of occasions that I am "special." I’ve heard the often taken out of context Jeremiah 29:11 "God has a plan for my life," along with numerous spiritual clichés one is fed if they are in the church for more than a day. And I have dreamed of being that “someone” who does that “something” incredibly life and world altering. And now, upon entering adulthood, I am loathing myself for falling into the trap of daily 9-to-5 cubicle life and wondering why I didn't major in something more adventurous in college...

Summer Lee Carison, http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7502

hoy es la dia de nieva

Josh Ritter, girl in the war
Peter said to Paul
"All those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
But now talkin' to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun
I gotta girl in the war, man I wonder what it is we done

Paul said to Petey
"You gotta rock yourself a little harder;
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire"
And I got a girl in the war, Paul the only thing I know to do
Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through...

Blog for the Movement soon to come? Yes, perhaps.

Freedom

The tension of tomorrow

collides with today

as the 60 watt lamp

at my beside

taints my darkened walls with

plastic light.

The books lie open, half-read…

prod my wonderings.

Are these 60 watts

counting down with me,

‘til I can again sense the dawn?

No.

They can only hope

that I refuse the moon’s seductions,

keep the favonian breeze

from loosing my hold

on tomorrow,

from cooling my hot heart running

in disgust.

Welcome to the 12 o’ clock.

A Kiss for the Knight

With Conviction

Trenchant gaze collides with unforgiving morn,

Dares the sun to rise.

White-fire rays alight ‘pon Earth’s surface, torn

Between the lengthening of shadows

Between the impudence of days.

With heavy greys of autumn’s breath,

This gaze bespeaks the dying night—

Clinging still to haunting mists

When offered blazing light.

Yet haunting mists keep not their shape,

Nor form of set prediction,

When offered room within a heart,

The heart has lost conviction.