life

Thinking Out Loud:

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“For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

NOTE: The new year is will be here in a few days. It offers 366 days (2024 is a leap year) of adventures. Will you choose to be an adventurer or will you chose to watch life pass by? Age doesn’t matter. Adventures await us. Now is the time to start dreaming of the adventures you want to take. Adventures come in all sizes and shapes. No two adventures are exactly alike. Think of an adventure as experiencing life differently than you’ve been experiencing it. Sometimes life thrusts an adventure upon us. Other times, we can choose to explore new and exciting adventures. Yes, there still are so many things each of us has never seen.

Thinking Out Loud: What Is Your Image of Your Future?

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Learning to Appreciate. A look at appreciative inquiry. Excerpts are taken from, Appreciative Inquiry Handbook (2003) by David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline Stravros.

“Organizations are heliotropic in character in the sense that organizational actions have an observable and largely automatic tendency to move in the direction of images of the future.” P. 18

Note: The authors are speaking of organizations. I believe what they are saying can be applied to human beings. I lived in a high rise apartment building in Columbus, Ohio. The population comprised of people from all age demographics. The young people were mostly Ohio State University students. Their image of the future was one of hope and dreams of what they could do with the rest of their life. They were filled with energy. Many of the older people had an image of life that it was over. A friend I knew, I’ll call him Bob was sitting in a chair in the lobby. He hadn’t shaved and looked depressed. I walked over to him and asked him how he was doing. I could tell from our conversation that he had given up. It was apparent in the way he was taking care of himself. Three weeks later Bob was carried out on a stretcher and taken to a mortuary. His image of the future was death; it contrasted with the image of life held by the college-aged students. What image do you want to have for your life one of life or one of death. Appreciative inquiry proposes that holding positive images of the future shape the actions we take to make that image real.

Today’s Inspiring Photo: Grow Your Own Garden: It’s Your Life

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To Live – A Poem by Paul Eluard

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To Live 

Paul Eluard

We both have our hands to give
Take mine I shall lead you afar

I have lived several times my face hasw changed
With every threshold I have crossed and every hand clasped Familial springtime was reborn
Keeping for itself and for me its perishable snow
Death and the betrothed
The future with five fingers clenched and letting go

My age always gave me
New reasons for living through others
For having the blood of man other’s heart in mine

Oh the lucid fellow I was and that I am
Before the pallor of frail blind girls
Lovelier than the delicate worn moon so fair
By the reflection of life’s ways
A trail of moss anf trees
Of mist and morning dew
Of the young body which does not rise alone
To its place on earth
Wind cold and rain cradle it
Summer makes a man of it

Presesence is my virtue in each visible hand
Only death is solitude
From delight to fury from fury to clarity
I make myself whole through all beings
Through all weather on the earth and in the clouds
Through the passing seasons I am young
And strong for having lived
I am young my blood rises over my ruins

We have our hands to entwine Nothing can ever seduce better
Than our bonding to each other a forest
Returning earth to sky and the sky to night

To the night which prepares an unending day.

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Thinking Out Loud: Live Life Courageously

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Cervantes  work, Don Quixote.

“The fear Thou Art in, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “prevents thee from seeing or hearing correctly, for one of the effects of fear is to derange the senses and make things appear different from what they are; if thou art in such fear, withdraw to one side and leave me alone to myself, for alone I suffice to bring victory to that side to which I shall give my aid.” ― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Note: Fear is a crippler. Once it grabs hold of us our minds create situations that do not exist. We imagine the worst and create a minefield for us to navigate through. It causes us to be paralyzed from acting. It is wise to ask ourself if the fear we currently experience is real or is it imagined? It takes courage to live. It takes courage to set out on the adventure. If we live in fear and do not take our adventure we find ourselves slowly becoming emaciated as we watch our lives slip past us. Step boldly into life and experience it to its fullest.

Today’s Poem: Let Me Arise by Violet Fane

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Let Me Arise

Violet Fane

 Let me arise and open the gate,
to breathe the wild warm air of the heath,
And to let in Love, and to let out Hate,
And anger at living and scorn of Fate,
To let in Life, and to let out Death.

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The Secret ~ A Poem by Ralph S. Cashman

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The Secret

Ralph S. Cashman

I met God in the morning
    When my day was at its best,
And his presence came like sunrise
    Like a glory in my breast.

All day long the Presence lingered,
    All day long he stayed with me,
And we sailed in perfect calmness
    O’er a very troubled sea.

Other ships were blown and battered,
    Other ships were sore distressed,
But the winds that seemed to drive them
    Brought to us a peace and rest.

Then I thought of other mornings,
    With a keen remorse of mind,
When I too had loosed the moorings,
    With the Presence left behind.

So I think I know the secret,
    Learned from many a troubled way:
You must seek him in the morning
    If you want him through the day!

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The Early Morning, A Poem by Hilaire Belloc

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The Early Morning by Hilaire Belloc

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

Hymn to Love, A Poem by Lascelles Abercrombie

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Hymn to Love by Lascelles Abercrombie

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As théou, Léove, were the déep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn’d not through us thy imagining
Like fiérce méood in a séong céaught,
We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,—
The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the world’s fate
Is turn’d, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter’d,
Not borne down by the wind’s weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
Like darkness fill’d with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
And Love’s meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
As rain blown along earth’s fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee,
Thy thought’s golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
Love’s zeal in Love’s own glory.

Lesson 1 ~ A Poem by Julie Hill Alger

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Lesson 1 

Julie Hill Alger

At least I’ve learned this much:
Life doesn’t have to be
all poetry and roses. Life
can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks,
electric bills, dishwashing,
chapped lips, dull stubby pencils
with the erasers chewed off,
cheap radios played too loud,
the rank smell of stale coffee
yet still glow
with the inner fire of an opal,
still taste like honey.

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