From The Archive

 As I labor these days to say something fresh and new,  I occasionally remind myself of how easy it used to seem.  Here, for example, is a single day's output from June 2014.  

 

"Sometimes we don't know what we want, and we blame our unhappiness on someone who doesn't know, either."

"Everything happens for the purpose of whatever you decide to do about it."

"So often people who have the same definition of fun have the same definition of love."

"I have found that winning isn't everything, and, in fact, in the relationships I most care about, it isn't anything.'"

"To truly forgive is to allow the other person to forget."

Sometimes Fate arranges that you be somewhere by yourself, so that you might be asked, "Are you here by yourself?"

"For every childhood question there is a preposterous answer that you weren't actually supposed to believe forever."

"To really know someone is to know the silence that stands for the thing they never speak of."

"There are times in life when the only difference between day and night is whether you're alone or alone by yourself."

"We are all human beings, subject to human weakness, often mistaken for betrayal."

"No matter how you hurry about, you will notice at the end of the day that you traveled at the speed of time."

From The Miscellany Drawer

 "I don't question the idea that it's never too late to repent.  I do question the idea that you can lie to God all your life, and He will believe you on your deathbed." 

"It is possible, in the rearrangement of facts, to create many fictions -- and more than one true story."

"Nothing unites people more defiantly than denying the same indisputable evidence."

"There are no louder defenders of privilege than the distant descendants of those who earned it."

Friendly Persuasion

 "Nothing makes you a decent person like having someone in your life who stubbornly operates under that assumption."

From The Observation Tower

 

"There are reasons no one could love you -- until they become the reasons someone does."

"Sorrow is different from happiness in that it is recognizable while in progress,"

"Life is a vale of tears in which at times you just can't stop giggling."

"Nobody wants your opinion unless you maintain a suite of offices in order to give it."

"The problem with having just one body is that people keep mistaking you for the previous occupant."

"Another day like all days -- trivial things claiming importance by going wrong, important things seeming trivial by going right."

Memorial Day Thoughts

 You don't have to believe in an after life to believe that there are people gone from this earth you can still make proud of you.

There are memories that will always make me lonesome but will never make me sad.

The thing about people who understand you is that when they are gone, you can still visit them, and they still understand you.

The Process at Work

Overheard at a town meeting: "All I want is what I rightfully deserve and my fair share of the rest."

Sunday Sermonette

 It can be argued that civilized society is founded not on the principle of loving thy neighbor but on the "pretense" of loving thy neighbor, a less demanding practice we call "civility."

  Today, as we witness the decline of civility, and the erosive impact of that decline on society, we come to a realization -- that pretense is difficult to sustain, that truly loving thy neighbor, as the gospels preach, might always have been the easier path.