Thoughts heard this week

"Are we held captive by our own indecision or are we liberated by righteous determination?" --Elder David S. Baxter

An immature skeptic says: "The little bit I know is more important than all I don't know."
A mature skeptic doesn't roll his eyes at an idea or thought. He decides to look closer at it and says: "Maybe I better look at this again. I have made mistakes before, but there is more that I don't know." --Dr. Norman Doidge

And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up. -John Updike

Books read in 2013

1. Happy Like Jesus
2. 7 - An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
3. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters
4. Proof of Heaven
5. The Coming Jobs War
6. The Power of Everyday Missionaries
7. Refuge & Reality
8. Organized Simplicity
9. Through the Window of Life
10. Inferno
11. Look to the Temple
12. Hope Will Find You
13. The Brain That Changes Itself
14. Christ and the Inner Life
15. Saturday People, Sunday People
16. A Tale of Two Cities
17. The Poisonwood Bible
18. The Emperor’s Soul
19. Visions of Glory
20. Suffering of the Saints: The Waldenses 
21. Helping & Healing Our Families

(The bold ones were my favorites)

Do something intelligent

From a BYU devotional by Brother David R. Seely (not our neighbor Dave :)

Brother Hugh Nibley, one of the great teachers at Brigham Young University, used to describe our lives like going to a Broadway play. Arriving late, we miss the opening—and, leaving early, we miss the ending. To complicate matters, instead of being spectators when we arrive at the play, someone pushes us onstage and we hear a voice saying, “Do something intelligent.” 
His point was that in order to “do something intelligent” with our lives on stage, we need to know the beginning and the ending of the play—and we only get that information through revelation.

To consider persons and events and situations 

only in the light of their effect upon myself 

is to live on the 

doorstep of hell. 

-Thomas Merton

The telltale sign of self-betrayal is needing to concoct a self-justifying story. When we act with integrity, according to what we genuinely feel is right, we have nothing to cover up... we don't have to spend any effort trying to make it 'seem' right.
(Terry Warner's Bonds That Make Us Free, p.37)

Wallace Goddard and C.S. Lewis

Satan must laugh as he keeps us worried about all the wrong things. We worry about airline crashes more than listening to a troubled child; we fret about world conflict more than our home teaching; we worry about money more than about prayer.
Perhaps anxiety, fear, resentment, and envy are all distractions to keep us from the power that can both guide us and save us. We might pray as Fosdick did, “Fill us with Thyself, that we may no longer be a burden to ourselves.”

* * * * *

The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the center—wanting to be God (Mere Christianity).

This whole line of reasoning against self-esteem is easily misunderstood. The solution is not self-hate. It is self-forgetfulness. The remedy is to “be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life” (Mere Christianity).

The secret of my success
is that at an early age I discovered
that I was not God.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes

More from The Anatomy of Peace

Recovering Inner Clarity and Peace

1. Look for the signs of blaming, justifying, and horriblizing in your life.
2. Find a memory of a relationship, an activity, a place, that feels at peace and has no conflict attached to it.
3. Ponder the problem situation you are having anew by asking questions:
... What are this person's challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
... How am I adding to these challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
... In what other ways have I neglected or mistreated this person or group?
... In what ways are my justifications obscuring the truth about others and interfering with potential solutions?
... What am I feeling I should do for this person? What could I do to help?
4. Act upon what I have discovered -- Do what I am feeling I should do.
... Correct - rarely
... Teach and communicate
... Listen and learn
... Build the relationship
... Get out of the way and to a heart that is at peace

from The Anatomy of Peace

Seeing an equal person as an inferior object is an act of violence. It hurts as much as a punch to the face. In fact, in many ways it hurts more. Bruises heal more quickly than emotional scars do.

Generally speaking, we respond to others' way of being toward us rather than to their behavior. [People] respond more to how we're regarding them than they do to our particular words or actions.

When I betray myself by not acting on my good desires, others' faults become immediately inflated in my heart and mind. I begin to 'horribilize' them. A needy man on the street suddenly represents a threat to my very peace and freedom.

Although nothing I can do in the present can take away the mistreatment of the past, the way I carry myself in the present determines how I carry forward the memories of those mistreatments.

We separate from each other at our own peril.

If we have beliefs we cherish, then we know how important others' beliefs must be to them. And if we have needs, then our own experience equips us to notice the needs of others.

Quotes from a 5-Star book

Frau Diller was a sharp-edged woman with...a nefarious glare. She developed this evil look to discourage the very idea of stealing from her shop, which she occupied with soldierlike posture, a refrigerated voice, and even breath that smelled like "heil Hitler."

The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.
She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

Another onslaught of "heil Hitlering" followed. You know, it actually makes me wonder if anyone ever lost an eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You'd only need to be facing the wrong way at the wrong time. Perhaps people did get injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically.

He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, "I know who you are and I am ready." Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested.

Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one than people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving.

Through the fog and frost of the window, they were able to see the pink bars of light on the snowy banks of Himmel Street's rooftops. "Look at the colors," Papa said. It's hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.

The Power of Intention

quotes from Wayne Dyer's book:

Dormant forces, faculties, and talents come alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. --Patanjali

The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning one's self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one's self. --Aldous Huxley

The spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only warriors are consistently attuned to such revelations. --Don Juan Matus

[photo by Robin O.]

What I think about eventually finds me.

I may not be able to change everything in my life with one decision, yet I am able to change the direction of my life with one decision.
That direction begins to change when I start looking within myself.
I now declare that change has begun. --Ellie Drake

A tag from Robin,

What are the 5 most influential books you've read?
Without thinking about it for a long time, I came up with this:

1. A Little Princess (FH Burnett)
2. Les Miserables (V Hugo)
3. The Great Divorce (CS Lewis)
4. House of Glory (SM Wilcox)
5. The Blessings of Abraham (D Clark)

What are yours?

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
–-E. M. Forster

I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest. -- Alexandre Dumas

Quotes from Carl Jung

But what if I should discover that the enemy himself is within me, that I myself am the enemy that must be loved - what then?

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that fits all cases.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Beautiful bodies and beautiful personalities rarely go together.

*What do you think of these ideas?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?

Beware what you set your heart upon, for it shall surely be yours.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Bertrand Russell

Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so.

George MacDonald

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.

If you are not willing that God should have his way with you, then, in the name of God, be miserable--until your misery drive you to the arms of the Father.

What a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his acquaintances may be able to read it. The very intercourse with him may have rendered it more difficult.

As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.