Posts (page 3)

How do you want 2008 to be different from 2007? What will you change or do differently? 
Submitted by Becca-Pink.

generally, i wanted my year 2007 be a "jump off" year, but it turned out otherwise. it was a year full of adjustments for me, and i, wanting to take my mind off from a lot of things, remained on my comfort zone.

this year, i expect and look forward to a lot of risk-taking decisions. this time, it's for real. if 2007, has been a "fork at the end of the road," 2008 will serve as the way i chose at the end of the fork. it will be the bend that i will choose to follow, never mind the fears.

i'm certainly looking forward, more excited at how things will turn out this year. just a few weeks ago, i started to apply for a higher position in our company. just last week, i applied for another higher position. no matter what happens, i'm just so glad that i'm back to my old risk-taking self.

What are five words you really like? 
Submitted by purplesque.

berry
music
internet
snowboard
games

Newsletter #54 April 2005

peace of mind

Peace of Mind

If you were to ask your neighbor,
"What would give you peace of mind?" he might tell you,
"A vacation in Bermuda!" or
"An extra hundred grand would give me peace!", or
"A new Ferrari would make me content!"

But going places – and getting stuff – is usually a temporary solution ...

Let's say you buy a lottery ticket and by some miracle you win your dream Ferrari.
Today you are content.
Tomorrow you are saying,
"If I could just catch that little punk who scratched it in the car park!"

Peace of mind rarely comes from getting more stuff.
Getting more stuff usually leads to wanting even more stuff!

Peace of mind starts with being grateful for what you have right now.

GRATITUDE is POWER, and here's why ...

When you are thankful for what you have -
for the friends you have, and for the things you've got,
you attract more good people and good things.

People who always complain about what they DON'T HAVE, stay stuck.
Complainers attract more things to complain about!

It is a law of life.
It's hard to explain, but you can observe it around you.
We get more of what we dwell upon.

That's why all the spiritual masters have taught the same lesson ...
"Start by being thankful. Be happy with what you have now,
and more will come your way."

It's practical advice.

IN A NUTSHELL

Every time you say a silent "thank you" you become more peaceful – and more powerful.

* find more articles like this here

amidst the busy mall about a year ago, i happen to see this one amazing scene that made me pause for a while (i was almost running, doing some last-minute-Christmas-shopping), made me say with some tears flowing on my eyes, "this is how i would like to spend the rest of my life with my *Gift..."

i was so touched then, and i don't wanna let go of the moment i've seen. i captured it using my phone. i remember having a hard time, because i'm trying to focus not to cry to i can take a better shot, but this is the best of it.

now, remembering this after a year makes me wonder... whatever happened to this lovely couple?

i would never know...
all i know is, if only people can love like this, the world will be a better place to live on.
i wish...

*my friends and i like to tag our future husbands and wives as the "Gift" or God's Gift or God's Best

"I encourage you to have faith in God. Believe you are "fearfully and wonderfully made." Look and behave like a well-kept woman. The man that God has reserved for you will see and recognize your specialness because you are the piece of himself that he's been missing. You will complete the puzzle of his life. Since women sometimes seem to know these things before men do, it's up to us to give them time to find out -- without compromising ourselves. Remember, the things you do now will affect your relationship for the rest of your life. Build a solid foundation from the beginning, one that God can bless and build on."

~ Michelle McKinney Hammond

i
learned
not
to
count
my
failures,

but
to
count
how
many
times
i
get
up
each
time
i
fail.

THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
by James Donnelan, SJ

The English poet John Milton once wrote that those who serve only stand and wait. I think I  could go further and say that those who wait render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more self-discipline, more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakeable faith in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our hearts that the great deeds of deering-do that go by the name of action.

Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life - there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important mystery because there is so much waiting in our  lives.

Every day is filled with those little moments of waiting - testing our patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control - paciencia lang. We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call or show up for a date. We wait on line at cinemas and theaters, concert and circuses. Our airline terminals, railway stations and bus depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one - or wait in sadness to say goodbye and give that last wave of the hand. We wait for birthdays and vacations - we wait for Christmas. We wait for spring to come - or autumn - for the rains to begin or to stop.

And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next stop. We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up - to reach the stage where we make our decisions.

We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is part of the tapestry of living - the fabric in which the threads are woven that tells the story of our lives.

Yet the current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait, "grab all the gusto you can get." So read one of America's great beer advertisement - Get it now. Instant pleasure -  instant Transcendence. Don't wait for anything. Life is short - Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you'll die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and irresponsible  reedom - premarital sex and commitment - against expecting anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us - against vows and promises - against duty and responsibility - against dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to hold and wait.

This may be the correct prescriptions for pleasure - but even that is fleeting and doubtful - what was it Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure - "Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated". No if we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if not we never learn to love someone other than ourselves.

For most of all, waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind or a leaf falling from a tree. Anyone who has ever loved knows how much waiting goes into it - how much waiting is important for love to grow - to flourish through a lifetime.

Why is this? Why can't we have right now what we so desperately want and need? Why must we wait - 2 years, 3 years, 5 years and seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should take so long to bear fruit - the seed to flower - carbon to change into diamond.

There is no simple answer - no more that there is to life's other demands - having to say goodbye to someone you love because either youor they have already made other commitments; or because they have to grow and find the meaning of their own lives - having yourself to leave home and loved ones to find your own path - Goodbyes, like waiting, are
also sacraments of our lives.

All we know is that growth - the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to give each other time to grow. There is no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting - of being present without making demands or asking rewards. But there is life in the gift we give.

So lovers wait for each other - until they can see things the same way - or let each other freely see things in quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance and intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait - in silence - but still present to each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven together again in a single love story.

What do we lose when we refuse to wait? When we try to find short cuts through life - when we try to incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume? We lose the hope of ever truly loving, of being loved.

Think of all the great love stories of history and literature - Isn't it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but common mystery - that waiting is part of the substance - the basic fabric -against which the story of that true love is written.

How can we ever either find life or true love if we are too impatient to wait for it?

*copied and pasted (with permission) from a friend's blog

It's dedication time.  What song are you sending out, and who is it dedicated to?

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here

endlessly...

1 comment

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

- dedicated to YOU... we could have been, almost... but you always go...