Beginning today I am reading and reflecting on Richard Bach’s, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Enjoy the passages I select and the reflections I make on the passage.
Seagulls, as you know never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in their trembling hard curve — slowing, slowing, and stalling once more — was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simple facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again. For gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
Note: What is it that your heart is calling you to become? Have you heard the call? Or, are you so busy with a life others planned for you that can’t hear the call? The call is like an echo, it is always there bouncing around inside of you. Occasionally you’ll catch a glimpse of it. It takes courage to stop and listen to the call and then to embrace it and follow it wherever it takes you. Find your quiet space and listen to your call.
Joe: “I’ve written a dozen jokes about unemployed people.”
Pete: “Can I hear them?”
Joe: “No, none of them work.”
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.” Charles Bukowski
What a wonderful quote. No one likes to fail or suffer. We like to get it online and get delivered to our door. That may be the way business works in contemporary society. it’s not the way life works. Each time we walk through the fire in our lives, we gain lessons. Life is shaping us to become what we are destined to become. Our only part in this play is to learn the lessons life is teaching us and to love what we are becoming. When we do, the suffering ends and living begins.
I think that the good and the great are only separated by
the willingness to sacrifice.
Such glorious faith as fills your limpid eyes,
Dear little friend of mine, I never knew.
All-innocent are you, and yet all-wise.
(For heaven’s sake, stop worrying that shoe!)
You look about, and all you see is fair;
This mighty globe was made for you alone.
Of all the thunderous ages, you’re the heir.
(Get off the pillow with that dirty bone!)
A skeptic world you face with steady gaze;
High in young pride you hold your noble head;
Gayly you meet the rush of roaring days.
(Must you eat puppy biscuit on the bed?)
Lancelike your courage, gleaming swift and strong,
Yours the white rapture of a wingèd soul,
Yours is a spirit like a May-day song.
(God help you, if you break the goldfish bowl!)
“Whatever is, is good,” your gracious creed.
You wear your joy of living like a crown.
Love lights your simplest act, your every deed.
(Drop it, I tell you—put that kitten down!)
You are God’s kindliest gift of all,—a friend.
Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt,
You ask but leave to follow to the end.
(Couldn’t you wait until I took you out?)
Today’s Anagram:
Joe: “I called my urologist and the receptionist asked me if I could hold for a minute.”
Pete: “What did you say?”
Joe: “I said, ‘No, that’s why I’m calling.'”
