REFLECTIONS

"A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out."
George Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99)

"The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward through the night"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw

How to read a book
Grab Your Highlighter-Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake -- not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who say he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of an author. --from How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren

As a trauma chaplain, working with people of different faiths,
I empirically tested those three:
how ritual (however impromptu or improvised in an intensive care ward),
in a gathered community (however small around a bed side),
combined with love and hope in an ethic of care,
is awesome, can work miracles.
Those three generic things make pain more tolerable,
make letting go—even of life—easier, bring new creation out of chaos.

My now reasoned, tested, and streamlined commitment to the religious enterprise is this:
The content of the teaching is far less important than
the gathering of a community,
the practice of a ritual,
and an ethic of caring behavior.
Rev. Barbara Jamestone PhD. 8/22/04 UU Gainesville,Fl.

"Look up, and not down; Out and not in; Forward and not back; And lend a hand. "
Edward Everett Hale

"All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy." - -Ernest Dimnet

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
-Buddha; Submitted by www.WisdomWings.com

"Nowadays we use words so loosely that a writer's meaning may sometimes be concealed from us, simply because he has said exactly what he meant."
- T.S. Eliot (On Poetry and Poets)

"Nowadays we use words so loosely that a writer's meaning may sometimes be concealed from us, simply because he has said exactly what he meant." - T.S. Eliot (On Poetry and Poets)

I had long ago concluded that I had become a liberal largely through religion. Loving your neighbor as yourself, giving your cloak to the man who had none, blessed are the peacemakers: taken together, all of it seemed a clarion call to social justice and the obligation of individuals and institutions to help those who needed help. -- Anna Quindlen

July 29, 2004 from Sen. John Kerry,"I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. Iwill have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings withpolluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary ofdefense who will listen to the advice of the military leaders. And Iwill appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of theUnited States."--from John Kerry's Acceptance Speech at the Democratic NationalConvention