Alternative Thought for the Day

TripleJ

New Member
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.
Maxims of Ptahhotep, 3400 BCE:cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
Originally posted by Christy
I dunno, the older I get the more I believe Ignorance is bliss. :silly:
Well, the more I learn, and I try to learn all I can, the more I realize how very little I actually know ...........
 

TripleJ

New Member
Originally posted by Ken King
And you're one blissful lady, aren't you? :killingme Sorry, just couldn't resist.
I'm sure you meant that with love, kindness and compassion in you heart .....:cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
There are times when ignorance would indeed be bliss, but as with everything there is another way of looking at things.........., yes ignorance is bliss, many times I would shed awarness of pain, suffering and sorrow in the world, if I could, but, compassion prevents this. I think, in my previous post, this is not the route of thought I would take. Instead, the ignorance here is mentioned in regard to the fear ignorance breeds. Knowledge is the key to understanding one another, without it we pay a horrible price in the acts and mistakes we make :smile:
 

TripleJ

New Member
The Happy Guy

Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don't find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings YOU the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.
:cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
"If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?"
.........[Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed]
:cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha

:smile:
 

Bertha Venation

New Member
Originally posted by mainman
may I ask what happened 15 years ago?
Sure. Ask anything. First a brief history: My beloved Grandma took me to Vacation Bible School at age six and there I "got saved" - "became born again" - "accepted Jesus as my savior." Until I left high school, I attended a Baptist church (on my own, no parental involvement) and then I attended a Baptist college. I sunk myself, mostly as a method of surviving homefront craziness, into the church. Threw myself into it for all I was worth.

Now: a couple of years after I left college, things started to happen and my life got a little crazy. One of the hardest, most terrifying results of increasing craziness -- and the very best thing that's ever happened to me -- was that I began to question my beliefs. It was terrifying to question my faith because I had never done so. I had nothing else to believe -- or so I thought. I feared that if I began to question God I'd incur his wrath. I feared that if I questioned my salvation, my need to evangelize, my almost obsessive "daily devotional time" -- everything I'd built my life on, I'd find myself with absolutely nothing. It's very hard to explain; suffice to say it was terrifying.

The shortest answer I can give is that this questioning began about fifteen years ago, and after a number of years I came to these conclusions: I can be a spiritual woman on my own terms. I can follow Christ without believing that the Bible is the literal word of God (how can it possibly be?); I can embrace tenets of various faiths, most of which I used to consider cults; I can see the life & love in atheists (whom I used to reject) and the spirituality in paganism; etc., etc. -- and I can live by this quiltlike set of beliefs and be the woman I need to be.

This is an incomplete answer to your question. Feel free to ask more.
 
K

Kain99

Guest
I don't want to break the pattern here but........ Damn! I love your honesty Bertha! :smile:
 

TripleJ

New Member
Originally posted by Bertha Venation
:blushing:

Kain, thank you... it's another outgrowth of that process of questioning. I'm a very, very lucky woman.
Yeah, it seems you are a very lucky lady, I've liked your posts from the very first one :cheers:
 

TripleJ

New Member
"Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing."
..........John Dewey
 

TripleJ

New Member
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Unknown
 
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