Chasing Beauty

Life-sustaining joy is forged in the ordinary moments when we pause and appreciate the beauty around us. You can also follow more edited posts at www.kingdom1st.wordpress.com.

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"I have what I call an 'iron prescription' that helps me keep sane when I drift toward preferring one intense ideology over another. I feel that I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I'm qualified to speak only when I've reached that state…

"That is probably too tough for most people, although I hope it won't ever become too tough for me… This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is very, very important in life. If you want to end up wise, heavy ideology is very likely to prevent that outcome.”​

Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack

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In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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“Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

"Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.”

Sam Altman, How to be Successful

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With young children in the house, the question isn’t why there’s a lone sock on the counter. It’s: why are you surprised there is. Hah.

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The Phantom Cry

You know the feeling when your cell phone vibrates, and you pull it out of your pocket only to realize it didn't. I was in the kitchen last week and heard baby Silas crying in his bedroom. So I take a step towards his room, only to realize I’m holding him... Or, I’ll be home by myself - no one around - and off in the distance, I’ll hear the phantom cry. yay.

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Union with the spiritual, the universal, cannot be abstract. It must be particular.

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Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.

Thomas Merton

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The Christian of the future will be a mystic or . . . will not exist at all.

Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality

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Life is only difficult when we expect it should not be difficult. If we carry the assumption that life should not be difficult, we are in opposition to life. Once we recognize that life is difficult, it is no longer difficult. Happiness comes with accepting the fact that challenges are an essential part of life. Challenges are here to awaken us.

Eckhart Tolle

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“Get into the habit of asking yourself, does this support the life I am trying to create?”

Irisa Yardenah

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Beauty is meant to be honored; we are meant to feel that powerful attraction and pull, including its sexual component. Beauty, of course, is also meant to be respected and not violated.

Ron Rolheiser

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In the end, all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well.

Julian of Norwich

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If you can work hard and creatively you can have just about anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.

Ray Dalio, Principles

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With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ‘tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.

Thomas Browne, 1643

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Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality.

Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old, 57.

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[Love is] the ‘will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’

bell hooks

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To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

Fred Rodgers