September   29,  2021

 

 

 Thought for the Day

 

“Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.”

 

Al Bernstein

September 28,  2021

WITH  AWE

 
There are many things to pause
for a moment with – like before doing:
opening up a can of paint before painting
a room, tasting a cold glass of water
with ice cubes, showing your kid how
to “walk the dog” with a yo yo, flying a kite
with your daughter, going on your first
plane flight, hearing the pouring of cold
ginger ale into a tall glass – on a hot day,
and many more. There are many more
moments like that …. Don't miss them ….

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

September  28,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“The marriages  we regard as the happiest  are those in which each of the partners believes that he or she got the best of it.”

Sydney Harris

 September 27, 2021

O  MY  GOD!

 

Sometimes
when  something
amazing happens
we say, "Oh my God!"

I'd rather think
that God loves it
when we do something
extraordinary and amazing!

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

September   27,  2021 

 

Thought for the Day

 “Last night I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where I go now and then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses. What incessant murmurs fill that ever-laboring tireless church!  But to-day in my walk I thought that after all there is no conflict but rather a contrast. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another.  Two different deities presented themselves: and, though I have only cloudy visions of either, yet I now feel the distinction between them.  The priest in me worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another shrine. The priest worshipped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and Might.  In the shadows of the church I could hear the prayers of men and women;  in the shadows of the trees nothing human mingled with Divinity.  As I sat dreaming with the Congregation I felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating and consoling them; and as I went tramping through the fields and woods I beheld every leaf and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the Invisible.”

 

Wallace Stevens, Journal

September 26, 2021 

WHENEVER

 
I enjoy who I am,
therefore I enjoy
wherever I am,
whenever I am.
 
How about you?
Do you like
who you are,
wherever you are?
 
If not, sit down
and I’ll listen.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

September   26,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“The almost religious reverence for wood is, fortunately for us, among the many traditions that have stood the test of time.  A tree, like other natural phenomena, is believed to possess a spirit, and a carpenter,  when he cuts down a tree, incurs a moral debt.  One of the themes that runs throughout Japanese culture is the belief that nature exacts from man a price for coexistence. A carpenter must put a tree to uses that assure  its continued existence, preferably as a thing of beauty to be treasured for centuries.  There is a prayer that Nishioka recites before laying a saw to a standing tree.  It goes in part,  “I vow to commit no act that will extinguish the life of this tree.”

 

S. Azby Brown,

The Genius of Japanese Carpentry