ALL MY PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED

 

   If I've asked for something in prayer, I must prepare myself to receive the answer. By opening my mind and heart to whatever the answer may be, I remain receptive to spiritual wisdom. I also must be open to any manner that the answer will come to me.
   It may come through a conversation with a friend, an line in a story or even from the lyrics of a song. I may see a sunrise or overhear a thoughtful conversation. When I feel a deep resonance and peace within I know it is the message for me.

 

If you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding; ... then you will ... find the knowledge of God.--Proverbs 2:3, 5

THIS HAS PROVEN TO BE TRUE FOR ME, SUCH AS DURING THE LIFE - AND - DEATH MEDICAL JOIRNEY I TRAVELED FROM 2001 to 2008:

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
                                                                           Sigmund Freud

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything"

                                                                               Mark Twain

    THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST DIFFICULT SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE FOR ME TO FOLLOW:
                        Love your enemies
         and pray for those who persecute you.

                               -Matthew 5:44

"The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense."
                                                                                        – Arnold Bennett

 

Popular British novelist Arnold Bennett wrote more than 30 well-received novels, including The Old Wives Tale, the fictional life story of two sisters. He was born in 1867 in Hanley, in the heart of the six Staffordshire towns known as the Potteries. Although he left as an adult, settling in London and then Paris, he set much of his fiction in his birthplace, giving the novels a gritty realist texture. He died in 1931.

"Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to do what they want to do."
                                                                        – Kathleen Winsor

(Note: Kathleen Winsor is my kind of writer. Her novel Forever Amber was published during World War II and sold 100,000 copies the first week in spite of our country's preoccupation with defeating the enemies. Maybe that was because her story was considered "racy" - sexy stuff along the lines of D.H. Lawrence. Took courage to write without being limited by the usual standards of correctness, political or religious.)

"If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted on the Sistine floor."

                                                                                               – Neil Simon

"I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop?" 
                                                                                 William Stafford 

About William Stafford

American poet William Stafford is best known for his first book of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, published when he was 48. Stafford was born in 1914 in Kansas and spent most of his life in Oregon. He was drafted into the army in 1941 but opted out as a registered pacifist. His memoir, Down in My Heart, details the forestry work he did during that period. As a poet, he captured the earthy poignant details of everyday life. Despite his late start, he published 57 volumes of poetry. He died in 1993.

                "Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief just keeps you searching for the answers, then pretty soon you get it." 
                                                                                                – Wally "Famous" Amos

About Wally "Famous" Amos

The name Wally "Famous" Amos is synonymous with chocolate chip cookies. He was born in Florida in 1936 and moved to New York at age 12 to live with his aunt, who baked him cookies. After serving in the Air Force and getting his GED, he went to work at the William Morris Agency, first as a secretary and then as the agency's first black talent agent, wooing clients by sending them homemade cookies. He opened his first store in Los Angeles in 1975. He lives in Hawaii and serves on the Board of Directors of the Read It LOUD! Foundation, an organization that promotes reading aloud to children.

"Take calculated risks. That is 
 quite different from being rash."
                                                    – George S. Patton

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin" - Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910, of Albanian descent. At the age of 12 she felt called by God to be a missionary. She became a nun at 21 after three years in a convent in Ireland, and went to teach at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. She never saw her mother and sister again. She was affected her so deeply by the misery and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls that in 1948 she received permission to leave the convent school and dedicate herself to working among the penniless, destitute and dying in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she started an open-air school for slum children, and her life's work began. In 1950 she started her own order "The Missionaries of Charity", which became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI in 1965.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world with the principal task to love and care for those nobody else was prepared to look after. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

                   "I get up. I walk. I fall down.
                    Meanwhile, I keep dancing."
                                                                        –  Rabbi Hillel

 

"The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams." 
                                                                                  Oprah Winfrey

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
                                                                 - George Bernard Shaw

                       Yes-Yes or No-No

   I will confidently say "yes" to a richer, fuller experience of life. I will confidently say "no" to circumstances that do not lead to my highest good.

   With God's guidance, I am assured that whether my word is yes or no, I am taking the right action.

    "Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No.'"
                                                                      --Matthew 5:37

Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble.
                                                                       – Admiral William Halsey

About Admiral William Halsey

American Admiral William "Bull" Halsey Jr. won a Navy Cross during World War I and led the Third Fleet against Japan in World War II. He was born in New Jersey in 1882. After serving on battleships and torpedo craft in World War I, he went back to school at age 52 to become a naval aviator. General MacArthur called Halsey the greatest fighting admiral of World War II. His motto was, "Hit hard, hit fast, hit often." The Japanese signed their surrender on his flagship. He died in 1959.

   When that little voice in my head starts judging me (or others), I have four answers to the voice:

   1. Big Deal!
   2. Who Cares?
   3. So What?
   4. Why Not?

If none of these work, there is one more:
      IDM (it don't matter)

                                           The Four Agreements Companion Book
                                                                               by
                                                                   Don Miguel Ruix
                                      

                 Nothing Fancy
          About The Instructions
                    For My Life

      "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
                               and 
          give thanks in all circumstances."

 

"There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best."
                                                                                  – Doris Lessing

About Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing, the iconoclastic British author who writes both realistic literary novels and humanist science fiction, is best known for her book The Golden Notebook, an experimental novel about a blocked writer who jots down her thoughts in a set of notebooks. She was born in Iran in 1919 to British parents and grew up in Rhodesia. She went through a communist phase but became disenchanted after witnessing the reality in the Soviet Union. She was awarded a Noble Prize in Literature in 2007. She has been married twice and has three children