Daring.....................

 

via

Surround.........................

We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us. . . . Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself.  You'll rise together.

-James Clear, Atomic Habits:  Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

Love thy neighbour.......................

     We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.  Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature;  he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain.  He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts.  That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty to humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour.  The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable.  That duty may be a hobby;  it may even be a dissipation.  We may work in the East End because we are peculiarly fitted to work in the East End, or because we think we are;  we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting.   The most monstrous martyrdom, the most repulsive experience, bay be the result of choice or a kind of taste.  We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially interested in leprosy.  We may love negroes because they are black or German Socialists because they are pedantic.  But we have to love our neighbor because he is there—a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation.  He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us.  Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody.  He is a symbol because he is an accident.

-G. K. Chesterton, from his 1905 essay On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

The quality of the music.................

.............................................is one of the advantages of living in the very generous Mr. Harden's neighborhood:

Fifty years ago..........................

On the TV.....................................Mr. Rogers Neighborhood debuts

 

Divergences........................

The great problem of man, how to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbor, and with the whole to which he belongs, admits of as many solutions as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this, and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display their divergences of character. 

-Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen

Like one of Frost's tramps..............

.............I stopped by this morning to watch my neighbor, Kurt Harden, chop wood.   Faithful readers may remember that Two Tramps in Mudtime is my favorite poem of all time.  Frost concludes:


          But yield who will to their separation,
          My object in living is to unite
          My avocation and my vocation
          As my two eyes make one in sight.
          Only where love and need are one,
          And the work is play for mortal stakes,
          Is the deed ever really done
          For Heaven and the future's sakes.

“Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice”
-Henry Ford

"If I had four hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first two hours sharpening the axe."
-one of the many variations of this quote attributed to Abe Lincoln



"Before enlightenment, chop wood.  After enlightenment, chop wood."
-me, paraphrasing a zen saying

A twofer........................

thanks jess

Perception....................

6.  You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave.  The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  This means that the perception of both must be accurate.  The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior.  You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly.  Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both.  You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.

-The Course in Miracles, I:III:6

When in our neighborhood...........

.................................................you must visit Cultural Offering.

The spirit........................

..............................................of Fred Rogers:

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”

"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth."

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” 

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has--or ever will have--something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression."

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” 

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

“It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.”

I'd like these critters...................

..........better if they would just QUIT eating our flowers:

Verse......................

36  Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38  This is the first and great commandment.

39  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Mathew 22: 36-39

The Holy Bible

King James Version

Can I get an amen...................

So, opinions were sought about whether us humans past "the age of reproduction" were "evolutionarily useless."  One brave soul (not me, I promise) took a stab at it.  I'm liking his notion of "communal learning."  It's sort of how I feel about our wee corner of the Intertunnel, it's a place of "communal learning."   Thanks neighbor.

He would've made such an interesting President....

thanks gerard

Love..........................................

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.   There may even be a certain antagonism between love of humanity and love of neighbor;  a low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men.

-Eric Hoffer,  The Ordeal of Change

Learned something new today........................

Can I get an Amen.......................................?

via

Mr. Harden's Neighorhood.........................

................................is a mighty fine place - and so is his blog.  Why don't you take a scroll?

Game face.............................

My neighbor Kurt working hard to create something beautiful: