posted December 15, 2007 01:45 PM            

Lord, please let me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.
- unknown

You teach best what you most need to learn.
- Richard Bach

posted December 15, 2007 03:40 PM              

Ralph Waldo Emerson

posted December 16, 2007 09:29 AM            

Good one!

Welcome, Lovely!

posted December 16, 2007 06:11 PM            

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

posted December 16, 2007 06:55 PM            

I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth.

After my death I will let fall a shower of roses.

I feel in me the vocation of the priest. With what love, O Jesus, I would take You in my hands when, at my voice, You would come down from heaven. And with what love would I give You to souls! But alas! while desiring to be a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi and I feel the vocation of imitating him in refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood.

O Jesus, my Love, my vocation, at last I have found it ... my vocation is Love! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love.

Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our father's love — difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul's miseries, her burdens, her needs — everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness — Everything is a grace because everything is God's gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events — to the heart that loves, all is well.

Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you-for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart.

posted December 16, 2007 09:34 PM            

"For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy; in a word, something noble, supernatural, which enlarges my soul and unites it to God.... I have not the courage to look through books for beautiful prayers.... I do as a child who has not learned to read, I just tell our Lord all that I want and he understands."

"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round about it, my poor little mind soon grows weary, I close the learned book, which leaves my head splitting and my heart parched, and I take the Holy Scriptures. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy; I see that it is enough to realize one's nothingness, and give oneself wholly, like a child, into the arms of the good God. Leaving to great souls, great minds, the fine books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet'."

"Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."

posted December 16, 2007 11:46 PM            

"Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul"

posted December 17, 2007 12:23 AM              

Cease, O my sad soul, cease to mourn!
I see my love and faith are paid
With nothing but disdain and scorn,
And I to my grief am betray'd,
O, then if she remain
Still so unkind,
I may as well complain
Unto the wind.

Tell me, O Nature, tell me why
Thou did'st create women so fair?
Or why did'st give them cruelty,
To drive men daily to despair?
Unhappy is his fate
That truly loves,
Yet undeserved hate
His guardian proves.

posted December 17, 2007 01:35 AM              

"I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth."

posted December 20, 2007 02:25 PM            

Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the cripple who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

posted December 20, 2007 11:18 PM            

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."

"One should never listen.
To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers."

posted December 20, 2007 11:21 PM            

"As men's prayers are a disease of the will,
so are their creeds a disease of the intellect."