This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?
Stay we no longer, dreaming of renown, But sound the trumpets, and about our task.
Go back to bed', said the omniscient interior voice, because you don't need to know the final answer right now, at three o'clock in the morning on the Thursday in November. 'Go back to bed', because I love you. 'Go back to bed', because the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer.
Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.
Eternal | Evolution | God | History | Humanity | Ideas | Individual | Longing | Means | Need | Nothing | Order | Peace | Providence | Right | Sacred | Search | Spirit | Story | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wonder | God | Think | Thought |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, and that cannot stop their tears.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Measure not the work until the day's out and the labour done, then bring your gauges.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
Reading |
There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery. This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket. Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.
Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Destiny | Divinity | Faith | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Reason | Religion | Scripture | Will | God |
We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love's sake only. Do not say I love her for her smile —her look —her way of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought that falls in well with mine, and certes brought a sense of pleasant ease on such a day - For these things in themselves, Beloved, may be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, may be unwrought so. Neither love me for thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,— a creature might forget to weep, who bore thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
It does pay to be honest. It pays in rewarding relationships. It pays in unblocked energy. It pays in passion. To stand tall in who you are, unafraid to reveal what you want and need, kind enough to tell the truth, and brave enough to bear the consequences, is a telling sign of spiritual development.
Compassion | Generosity | Life | Life | Meaning | Morality | Openness | Religion | Thought | Thought |