Good Morning Digital Neighbors & Friends! Since this has morphed into a week on friendship, more from the treasure trove of quotes called the Forbes Book of Quotations! Three quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson on this important topic of friendship. Again we don't need many friends but to have none is a lonely path to walk and probably not a mentally healthy one. On to Emerson!
A friend is a person before whom I may think aloud. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lots of gold here in Mr. Emerson. The freedom to think aloud has become one of the most curtailed realities on the modern age of offense. Thinking aloud will probably earn you an IST label by the nouveau-righteous of cultural-political cult. The Isting of others is less about clarifying or identifying attitudes and more about the ability to silence or dismiss others because their offensive existence. The testing of ideas, the comparison of attitudes or the debating of points is replaced by the dismissal of persons. It makes the whole ignore-malign-imprison-kill process a lot easier down the road.🙊
To think aloud it to open your mind and heart to another. It is to risk potential offending other, being misunderstood or having to further clarify your point if you are actually in a conversation with a person with a capacity for listening (less and less of those among us - one hopes that Locals draws a higher percentage of those with this capacity).
Old friends get you, even when you are stupid. Old friends give you the opportunity to walk about your statement without waiting for the moment to pounce on your error, stupidity or poorly thought moment. Repeated stupidity can lead to the end of the a relationship, one can only suffer so much stupidity before the frustration capacity of good souls is overwhelmed. New friends with patience & think skins are potential old friends in the making. I hope you have old friends, or can find new ones with that capacity. They probably have the greatest potential to help us overcome and grow beyond repeated acts and statements of stupidity. That dance of acceptance and pushing beyond our current limits and attitudes is best accompanied with a friend who loves us as we are but sees the potential we might miss.
Being a friend. Those first people outside the family fold that were welcomed into our lives. Extroverts tend to make them easier, but can often live only at the surface and have shallow friendships. Introverts may not have many friends, but if they have a few they tend to run deeper. Time and vulnerability determine the depth of friendship, you have to spend enough time and be open enough to discuss things beyond the superficial items of the news, entertainment or current culture were we live in a hyper-emotional state of being. Of course the number one risk of vulnerability is oversharing and alienation. You share a bit too much of the darker, WTF side of your story and your friend has that awkward and identifiable moment of silence or look of shock. You hope there is a moment for clarification or further explanation, a good friend will afford you that, but it may be the turn in the relationship that ends it. Once alienation begins, more than like the dissolution of the relationship will follow.
If you demand perfection in persons, you will probably have either no friends and superficial associates that you call friends, but they know nothing of consequence or significance in your story. "Friends" of the passing moment may ease temporary loneliness, but they will not reach that part of our person that we open to very few. We cannot have depth relationships with everyone, but to have none is your life is a poverty. An large number of superficial friends or relationships of limited depth is not a bad thing, it is what brings people together in various associations around hobbies and shared interest. They may never talk person history, the sharing of joys and the revealing of warts, but they have a common interest that satisfies that communal urge in us.
Seems unusually long this morning - I am sure the 25 typos & grammatical errors will become more evident to me when I read this again later. Such is life with my morning babble. BARNS!!
Winter Barn in Maine - Dunno who took it DDG delivers! Happy Thursday my friends!
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
