Good Morning Friends & Digital Neighbors! The sleet and snow shut down much of the town for the rest of the day and it ended up being a more quiet afternoon. I suspect with the colder temperatures today it will be more of the same. Getting Jackson back and forth from the office will be challenging since we will have to watch for patches of ice. On to the morning quotes from Ageless Wisdom! Words of encouragement - the other side of criticism. Happy Friday my friends!
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. - G.K. Chesterton Charles Dickens
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
They may forget what you said and they may even forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. - Unknown
Just like criticism, encouragement is best when preceded by thought and reflection rather than just impulsively given. When parents fret over self-esteem of their children, I think there is great potential for more harm by mindless encouragement. Mindless encouragement seems to either create paper-tissues personalities that can handle struggle and failure, or it creates skeptical cynics who recognize the emptiness for what it is.
Actual encouragement instills perspective, appreciation, hope and actual growth. G. K. Chesterton's quote are the people who I have come to truly appreciate. I don't care for the pretentious people. The inflated, self-important and self-promoting aren't of any real interest to me. The last celebrity I got excited about was Harley Race. When some Hollybore dies I don't care that they passed any more or less than the kindly old lady down the street. I am still curmudgeoning over the death of Princess Di from the late 90's and that delusional moment of life in the West. I am sorry the most articulate and attractive of the Royals passed, but didn't really effect my world all that much. So Elton John got to recycle a song, so there was that. 😎 I do think one of the things attractive about Princess Di's personality is her sense of encouragement. That was something she seemed to radiate more than most of her peers. Back to G. K. - lift people up to treat them as your equals (they already are), help them aspire to their better selves is a far better thing than keeping them in their place. Goethe understood that, well at least in his quote indicates he does.
That last unknown quote has been used at many funerals. People will remember how you listened to them, appreciated them, were there for them in crucial moments in life or were there for the long haul of so many ordinary chapters in our life. Time is the most essential gift we have to give to others. Someone would say love, but without time in the field, love is a pretty distant thing less real than the Tooth Fairy. If time is the foundation, love is the crowning of that experience. Within the gift of time are opportunities for authentic human interaction. No time for others - anything you say to them is ultimately empty. After all, you have no time. Examining how we spend our time is a good practice from time to time. It may make us more mindful of how we make times for others, and in those moments of giving of our time, the feelings that endure beyond the experience might be born. Happy Friday!
Somewhere in Iowa is this barn. 🌞
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 ...
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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.”
