Quotes / stories that inspire you or motivate you to be better

[Padreruf]

I meant in everything that he wrote. Every book.

I agree...he is not a "classical theologian" in that he debates both sides fully. He is an academic who came to faith late in life after a long and arduous intellectual and spiritual journey. His purpose in these works is to show that Christianity offers the best option for life.

He is not taken seriously by the "intellectual" theological community for this reason. They consider him a public preacher and a 2nd rate theologian. I disagree...he took some fairly sophisticated theological understandings and made them palatable to the average person.

Oxford professor of mathematics, John Lennox, is the current C.S. Lewis...and he is brilliant at it. You can listen to his lectures on YouTube.

 

[Bazza]

Listen to the whiskey.

It is old and wise.

 

[Bazza]

The Winds of Fate

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow
“Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As we voyage along through life’
“Tis the set of a soul
That decides it goal
And not the calm or the strife.​

I ran across that poem just now as I was reading through the history of Oak Hill......the Florida town we re-located to in Jan. 1970 after my Mom re-married.

The only reason I was doing this reading is I was going through some stuff from Mom's house and in it was a box of various civic duty and political pins from all those past years of their lives. One of them was a US Postal Service pin and I am giving it to my postal carrier, Tom. So I looked up my step-father's bio and printed it out to go along with the pin so Tom would see my step father's 12 year stint as Postmaster of Oak Hill back in the 70's.

Then I got pulled in to the rest of the town's fascinating history that goes back to the 1800's.

When we moved down in 1970 I think the population was only around 1,500, IIRC.

My brother and I were both in the middle of 10th grade even though he has 11 months on me. I remember being called "rednecks" the first day of school, just because we were living in Oak Hill. Growing up in Norfolk, we had never heard the term before. I keep wondering if I got too much sun on the back of my neck!

Anyway.....thought it was a nice poem with a lot of meaning.

Here's the pin:

 

[crimsonaudio]

“One of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses early in their lives is because they’re using drugs to numb a very painful existence. The reason it’s painful is the reason they became artists in the first place: their incredible sensitivity.

If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming. When those around you don’t see what you see and feel what you feel, this can lead to a sense of isolation and a general feeling of not belonging, of otherness.

These charged emotions, powerful when expressed in the work, are the same dark clouds that beg to be numbed to allow sleep or to get out of bed and face the day in the morning. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

- Rick Rubin, "The Creative Act"

 

[B1GTide]

“One of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses early in their lives is because they’re using drugs to numb a very painful existence. The reason it’s painful is the reason they became artists in the first place: their incredible sensitivity.

If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming. When those around you don’t see what you see and feel what you feel, this can lead to a sense of isolation and a general feeling of not belonging, of otherness.

These charged emotions, powerful when expressed in the work, are the same dark clouds that beg to be numbed to allow sleep or to get out of bed and face the day in the morning. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

- Rick Rubin, "The Creative Act"

Thanks, but the use of mind altering drugs should be feared. They kill the person that you were and often completely take control of who you are. You no longer control your destiny as you cede that control to drugs.

Drugs are not an escape. They are a form of death. Death of self and self control.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Thanks, but the use of mind altering drugs should be feared. They kill the person that you were and often completely take control of who you are. You no longer control your destiny as you cede that control to drugs.

Drugs are not an escape. They are a form of death. Death of self and self control.

He's not condoning their (ab)use, but rather explaining it.

 

[B1GTide]

He's not condoning their (ab)use, but rather explaining it.

I didn't suggest otherwise.

 

[crimsonaudio]

 

[alabama mike1]

"In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety."

Abraham Maslow

 

[OakMtn4Bama]

YIKES!

 

[B1GTide]

View attachment 41898

YIKES!

I hope so, but doubt it very much.

 

[crimsonaudio]

 

[Bazza]

View attachment 42103

It's called "piling on".

I see it all the time on message boards and always make a point to say "Hey wait a minute here..."

Keyboard warriors.......

 

[alabama mike1]

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”

Salvador Dali

 

[crimsonaudio]

This is good.

 

[alabama mike1]

" A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

[crimsonaudio]

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
- John Wooden

 

[crimsonaudio]

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 

[crimsonaudio]

 

[Bazza]

"If you are the smartest person in the room then you are in the wrong room".