Do more than belong: Participate.
Do more than care: help.
Do more than believe: practice.
Do more than fair: be kind.
Do more than forgive: forget.
Do more than dream: work.
- Attributed to American College administrator William Arthur Ward
Do more than… April 5, 2008
Listen for possibilities… November 12, 2007
If you should try to understand me
hrough the eyes of your experiences,
Your only understanding will be
Misunderstanding.
For we have walked different paths
And have known different fears.
And that which brings you laughter just
Might bring me tears.
So if you can learn to accept me
And the strange things I say and do,
Maybe through your acceptance
You will gain understanding.”
(I, ME refers to possiblities)
- Anonymous
The Invitation… July 6, 2007
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tip of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours or mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Opening The Invitation
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Harper Collins (2004)
You are the guy who’ll decide where to go… March 19, 2007
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
- Dr.Seuss, American Writer & Cartoonist, 1904-1991
Forgive and Forget… March 17, 2007
Remember the smile,
not the frown;
Remember the joy,
not the tears;
Remember the laughter,
not the fights;
Remember the kindness,
not the mistakes;
Forgive and Forget
– Anonymous
A Relationship is like a rose… March 10, 2007
A relationship is like a rose,
How long it lasts, no one knows.
Love can erase an awful past,
Love can be yours, you’ll see at last.
To feel that love, it makes you sigh,
To have it leave, you’d rather die.
You hope you’ve found that special rose,
’cause you love and care for the one you chose.
- Rob Cella
Forever Friends… March 10, 2007
You’r my friend and that is true,
But the gift was given from me to you.
We went thru moments that were good and bad,
Even moments that were happy and sad.
You suported me when i was in tears,
We stuck together when we were in fear,
Its really sad that it had to be this way,
But it has reached its very last day.
Miles away cant keep us apart,
’cause you’ll always be in my heart.
- Author Unknown
Mind… February 28, 2007
Mind is the master planner that molds and makes
And man is mind and forever more he takes,
The tools of thought and shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills
He thinks in secret and it comes to pass
His environment is but his looking glass!!!
- James Allen
Courage… February 28, 2007
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
- Amelia Earhart
The Road Not Taken… February 28, 2007
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost
