Latest Entries »

worth

Being is worth.

The molten gold center of us lasts.

Knowledge gradually gathers a beautiful patina.

The wise place an extreme value on not knowing.

Human worth lies beyond gender, wealth, appearance, skill and accomplishment.

Aloneness doesn’t subtract from worth.

Previous anchor decisions sticker worth but the wise reprice their own stuff.

Good lies in the direction of valuing what we haven’t.

Love forges good.

What they did to you doesn’t define you.

Wisdom stops asking “why” and turn its faces to the good found in the present.

Other’s opinions fail to adequately price us.

Loyalty is the most drop-dead, gorgeous thing we have ever seen.

Within the you of the you of the very definitive and superlative you resides the you of value.

waiting

It is a sin to be too patient.

Nothing is worse than waiting for what never comes.

Waiting murders impulsiveness.

It is easier to wait for others remembering others have waited for us.

Wise waiting heals.

The wise seldom wait; they prepare for what’s next.

When many wait and one demands, eyes roll.

The wise wait with a philosophical calm; fools fume grouchy-rude.

Waiting for the right mate is tough waiting; finding the right mate is superlative finding.

Veteran travelers know that true adventures require extreme waiting.

Maturity waits patiently for immaturity to mature.

The magic of music lies in the wait between the notes.

Waiting afford such sweet opportunity for musing.

Justice is defined by its willingness to wait.

The addict who wants forgiveness must wait.

God waits most.

self-esteem

Love yourself; not too much.

Self-esteem in the extreme may turn into mean.

You already love yourself in that you feed, shelter and cloth yourself; love others just like that.

Overly scaffolding our students may raise their self-esteem and lower their self-discernment

The self-esteem movement has raised a generation blind to their own incompetence.

Overpraise undermines.

Trellis yourself and others with love.

The foolish student wants only A’s, but wise students value being corrected.

We were once anxious to prove we were better than animals, now we are wondering if we are better than machines.

Be specific, personal, authentic and brief with compliments.

To tell someone they are a hard worker
is better than telling them they are smart; you are telling them they are in control.

Compliment when it is deserved; correct when it is timely, and remain quiet when others are reveling themselves.

To love ourselves is a baby step toward loving others.

World War 1

After men go insane, they imagine war is a solution.

The machine gun provided a new and horrific way to rip to pieces our own flesh and blood.

Force is sometimes necessary to stop force, but South Africa has shown us that there are alternatives to violence.

A thousand souls cannot dance on the head of a poppy nor can the human mind comprehend the loss of nine million men.

Whenever we begin to think that it is heroic to kill other people then we have fallen off the edge of reality’s cliff.

World War 11 was WW 1 badly resolved; a poor solution reprises a previous horror.

A madman should never be given an army.

When we use the word necessary and the word war together, we too often hide our eyes from the word understanding and  the word respecting.

What was imagined to be an afternoon’s sword fight transmogrified into a muddy, rat-filled, diseased and endorsed trench war, so men ever under-estimate the demonic actualization of their addiction to violence.

World War 1 was a slow cook and a fast burn.

Horror over there is different than horror over here.

Nationalism is a form of self-hatred; it leads us to despise those who are just like us.

War museums lack the dead and so they understate the horror.

To sooth themselves the living try to make sense of the chaos of war by organizing war stuff on thin glass, level shelves and straight wall pegs.

There are choices; Monet painted water lilies while the world machine gunned itself to death.

War museums don’tstop us from doing it again.

adventure

The greatest adventure is in what lies behind what lies ahead.

Discoverers find the thrilling unknown lying just underneath the thin, epidermal layer of the known.

The next adventure is always just one risk away.

Fools hide at home; the wise charge out of the house and rush into the next adventure.

The good are always traveling into the thrilling and dangerous terrain of the other.

Adventure lies on the other side of obedience.

The ultimate adventure begins when we sit still, fold our hands and close our eyes.

A wild ride begins precisely at the spot where the illusion of control ends.

Faith leaves home with bright eyes.

The pounding, sweaty hunt almost beats standing in front of the heart-pounding find.

One cannot even begin to understand home until one leaves it.

When I am no longer ruled by what you think, I go over the falls laughing and plummet into freedom.

Fear hides, but love jumps into plain sight.

It is a fool’s errand to play it safe too much.

20120515-195311.jpg

past

Past good, the future better, the present best.

The past is premium grade rocket fuel.

The damaging past that we can’t forget, we disarm by forgiving.

The present is made out of our past memories and our future hopes.

We dig up the past in order to try to understand the present.

The past is like an old house; it’s always under reconstruction.

The past is always spoken of in the imperfect tense.

The past is remembered best by our ears, eyes and noses.

The past is a like a symphony orchestra that refuses to stop playing.

What happened in the past is now my choice.

When I cry over some else’s past I begin to recover from mine.

The past refuses to pass passively.

transition

We know we have crossed over into maturity when we cease fighting with the people crossing with us.

Progress exists in finding our people.

A gap year is a good year; seeds grow while we wait.

Fast running toward maturity’s pool — dangerous.

A wise life is like an expensive wine; someone has waited for it to mature.

The wise learn their limits.

Maturity exists in knowing who to avoid.

The wise make no comparisons; no two sea crossings are alike.

Lonely spaces lie between our family of origin and our family of destination.

Growing up means learning what is possible, and what isn’t.

Finding our mate is the end of one beautiful era and the beginning of another.

The wise use of money is an accurate metric for maturity.

A no-holds-barred loyalty and a beautiful transparency form a solid bridge between single and married.

Not following the prescribed life is good medicine,

human

We  become more human when we love.

Wisdom is gentle with human.

Human is beyond gender.

War is the hatred of humans.

To be human is to be strong and weak in the same day.

It is human to be embarrassed and not hide it.

We need no excuse for being human.

The wise sit with their emotions, but the fools deny them.

Demons are sometimes just tired humans.

The child who basks in her parent’s love, becomes the bloom of humanity.

When men and women finally see each other as human, feminism will have done its job.

The bathroom reminds us we are not gods.

traffic

Traffic is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it slow.

How poor are they who have not patience, what traffic ever cleared but by degree.

How bitter a thing it is to look into a Fararri and see another man’s eyes!

What’s in a name? That which we call a detour by any other name will still frustrate the heck out of you.

Uneasy lies the road that wears the crown.

The gestures of angry drivers have no eloquence; their fingers are yet unlearned.

The freeway has twelve lanes yet the comutes never does run smooth.

There ‘s daggers in men’s bumpers.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair – from the tailpipe.

Nothing almost sees miracles but horsepower.

Slower and slower and slower, creeps in our petty road pace as we age.

Taffic is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying something whacked out about us.

protection

It is one of the great accomplishments of life to construct a good fence and a strong gate.

The proper function of parents is to  protect.

When good parents are done protecting their children, they will find other little ones to guard.

In dangerous times the protective man is tempted to protect only himself.

The soldier who stops the massacre is the hero of the community.

War to protect too easily transforms into war to destroy.

Indulging instead of protecting brings an ignominious end to a fine career.

It is evidence of the strange disorder of man that he will cheat on his wife one day and take a bullet for his comrade the next.

To pray is to secretly protect.

Restoration is often the first step toward protection.

We will only protect others’ emotions after we have first learned to protect our own.

We should make it our rule in life to always be constructing places of safety and recovery for the terribly damaged.

As a law protects a business so a good father protects his daughter.

sensient

When salt first kissed sugar the tongue swooned.

Brewing coffee, sizzling bacon and baking bread seduced the nose and ruined her morals.

Lips taste precisely like love.

The good life is a high thread count.

The warmest fire is others.

Three things are good, four even better — thick cat fur between the fingers, soft slippers around the toes, a warm cap on a cold day and your hand in mine forever.

Even my hair is in love with shrimp.

Warm skin adores a cool breeze.

Eyes that look, ears that hear and tongue that tastes   – the  espresso machine has ruled them all.

A hot shower does good like a medicine.

Nothing heals like close.

Pain seems to be harming when it is most protecting.

Music kisses the ears, caresses the brain and courts the heart.

Touch banishes neglect.

The sound of the door opening at the end of the day is the sound of love, loyalty and faithfulness.

.

disability

A disability is an opportunity.

On the edge of disability laps the beginning of love.

Normal for me  is who I am, not who you want me to be.

A cure is a loss.

In an unjust society a difference damns you.

Time and patience are disability’s best friends.

Happiness is  acceptance for dessert, with a dollop of  hope spooned on top.

When reason is disabled, rules rush to the rescue.

Disability breeds contentment.

Verbal genius needs a muzzle, but the mute a smile.

Those least able to critique me are the most glad to see me.

The heartbreak of disability lies in the impossibility of normalcy.

Disability  is a community.

A consistent pattern is disability’s constant friend.

superheroes

Inadequacy created the superhero.

Our only political hope is to throw a golden lasso around the goverment.

It is a myth that one superhero can save the planet; it is a reality that a bunch of ordinary people working together might do it.

Superheroes need only one confidant, the rest of us several support groups and a therapist.

What troubles Batman troubles us all — something we remember about our parents.

Fear is green Krytonite, love unstoppable power.

A devastated past is the fuel for a superpowered future.

Superheroes wear costumes because naked acrobats just scare people.

As the Hulk is energized by anger so passions fuel us all.

Superheroes add to our entertainment and subtract from our  cash.

Superheroes are overrated; they make lousy spouses.

After one is super we need them to again be ordinary.

The problem with our iron clad men is that they become more  iron than men.

War

War begins and ends with want.

It is seldom necessary to destroy to protect.

War is a collective insanity rising from two myths: our self-righteousness and the total depravity of the enemy.

To speak against the war is to become the enemy of the state.

Killing is a rush; slaughter a fix, massacre a massively addictive high.

The  most horrible aftermath of war is not simply the destruction of property; it is the massive psychic destruction rising out of  embarrassment, shame, guilt and self-hate.

Killing people solves problems while creating other various nuisances.

Violence is sometimes necessary to stop violence.

During war, the press invariably fights on the side of the government that protects it.

It is seldom necessary to destroy to protect.

The rich war with poor gore.

War culture destroys all other culture.

During war, duty too often bliterates rationality and morality.

The moral certainty of the state during war collapseswhen the bodies are ungraved and the atrocities exhumed.

War is an addiction, and coming off war gives one the shakes, the sweats, nightmares and a compulsive need for another hit.

To war is to marshal plan and order and symmetry to reduce a counterpart to disarray, chaos and fragmentation.

National leaders operate with the relational intelligence of playground preschoolers; they hit and hit back.

War begins in the heart and ends in the grave.

To be medieval was to look in the enemies’ eyes and crunch with long poles,  smash bone with huge clubs and ring helmets with long swords. To be modern is to do such crunching  with a trigger and a button from a distance.  Their eyes — we never even saw their bodies before they vaporized.

The world lacks wise leadership; dialoguing and understanding still take second place to shooting and bombing.

To often, the superpowers intervene to stop atrocities in other nations based on the economic impact, not the human impact.  Remember Rwanda.

The history of war is the history of the death of the  poor for the life of the rich.

A civil war battlefield is forever a deeply tragic place, full of the silence and gravity of separation and death.

World war has yet to be universal war; don’t discount the possibility.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit pretty much everything. The war mongers? Dead.

Only love heals us of war.

self

To thine own self be gentle.

Self is not sacrifice.

Personhood is defined by neighborhood.

The self is cured by the community and the community by the self.

The acceptance of our own anonymity breaks the tyranny of our grandiose self.

We attain independence by birth; we are wooed inside others again by difficulty.

I am wired for not without you.

Self-fulfillment is ever the credo of the stubbornly selfish.

Birth is the shock by which we detrailers from our mothers.

Personhood is the choice to exist inside of God.

The false self is a locked gate, but the true self is an open window to the soul.

The end of myself is the beginning of God.

loyalty

Love your name is loyalty.

Loyalty sits on the edge of the bed when no one else comes to call.

Traitors stab you in the back, but the loyal smack you on the lips.

Loyalty is the champion who asks for no medals.

A true friend offers you loyalty when you can’t find it in yourself.

Loyalty loses no good it might win by fearing to attempt.

Loyalty kisses fragility on both cheeks.

Loyalty is always gushing behind her lover’s back.

Loyalty can hold hands for sixty years withour tiring.

Love is always loyal and whatever is not loyal is not love.

True lovers are forever smitten by the drop-dead gorgeous eyes of loyalty.

Loyalty is the soul of kin.

Loyalty hath no mean and hungry look.

These aphoristic thoughts on loyalty were inspired by the most loyal person I know, my sweet wife Linda.

cars

Whenever I go out for a drive, I know that someone, somewhere in a little room, sends out a mass of selfishly mindless and maddeningly slow motorists to navigate themselves into my way.

A navigation system is a back-seat driver minus the attitude.

A civilized man abandons his coach and finds again the use of his feet.

If it has an overage of sheet metal, extensive plastic bling and massive stretches of chrome, then it’s American.

The invention of the wheel was progress until the invention of gasoline.

The modern car has become an mobile cafe, office and living room.

A world of gas-powered cars may end the world.

Sheet metal is chiton for humans.

You are what you won’t drive.

In California, cars are clothes.

At some point we all want transportation that gets us there before we leave.

Slow bodies want fast cars.

A flashing, blurring, narrowing field of view —  speed thrills just before it kills.

Touring is a tight suspension, a turbo charger and a turning road.

Alcohol, oil and gas don’t mix.

politics

What you must do to win an election generally disqualifies you from being elected.

A  presidential candidate may have no secrets, a President, many.

Politics  is apparently sport; it seems to be an opportunity to score.

Law is order — until people get involved.

Politics plus anything equals politics.

Re-election was invented so that something might finally get done.

When a political campaign reduces a candidate to smiles, handshakes, slogans and promises then unfortunately, that is what they are.

Politically, brutality is not a liability.

Man is a vicious elected animal.

All political life owes its existence to physical death.

Heredity and wealth are forever the political enemy of competence and good will.

Politics is a public brawl in suits and ties.

Politics sides.

acceptance

Gentleness with others thrives in the very places that we shelter our own weaknesses.

Acceptance slides the handcuffed a key.

When I accept you,  I love myself and you.

Acceptance shines in the eyes but radiates from the heart.

To you, I am what you allow me to be.

What I do not accept I murder and leave lying in a pool of judgment.

Acceptance debrides the wounded past.

The house of acceptance becomes the home of the condemned.

The blamed have an opportunity to stop blaming.

I am not safe with you if you do not love yourself.

The judged learn not to judge.

Your safety with me lies in my love of myself.

The condemned have a unique opportunity to make a sharp turn toward perfection.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 319 other followers