The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent. —Dr. Smiley Blanton
There is definitely a direct connection between finding your passion and reaching your potential. - John C, Maxwell
Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Pham & Dawn Patrol, Supporters, Members, Posters, Lurkers and all of your Visitors & Vagabonds to Locals and it varied communities.
I often think that one of our greatest failures to young people is to help them discern their talents and gifts in life and how they might make a life out of those talents. That goal of formation for the young has to be done in balance with the realities of life. If your son or daughter wants to build wigga-jiggits and no one wants to buy wigga-jiggits they have a problem. No amount of hard work can change that reality, maybe convincing people they need to purchase wigga-jiggits is one road forward, but unless wigga-jiggits fulfill a real need in life they have limited need or use in life. One can only sell so many pet rocks before the joke is ended.
Your wigga-jiggit gifted person needs to find a way to channel their passion for wigga-jiggits into a hobby and then discern what secondary or auxiliary talents might provide a living to that person. I often think that the main channel for our young people is figure out what you want to do in college. That is such a disastrous choice these days. Given the current environment in higher education; the contamination of grievance ideology, the cult of envy & injury, the exploitation of the emotionally, socially and psychologically vulnerable, college is minefield of impersonal traps and mind poisons.
Discernment of talents, the courage to strive, the ability to recover from failure and dust yourself off, are attributes we can help our young people cultivate. No one is defined entirely by their past, but all of us our shaped by our personal story. The more we know of our personal story, understand it, integrate it, they better chance we have of identifying our native capacities. Everyone has innate abilities that can be developed and new skills and talents, expansive attitudes that they can embrace. We know this well, the Cult of the Left has gotten our young people to embrace some of the most dangerous and idiotic ideas to come out of "higher education".
All of those wigga-jiggit gifted young neighbors need to be helped to see the pursuit of vocation as more fulfilling than the creation of a victim narrative. The explosion of pseudo-victimology minimizes the real traumas and trials of life to the common denominator of hurt feelings and life uncertainty. I can't think of a surer track to run if you want to be permanently miserable than embracing pseudo-victimology. Is there any young person that doesn't experience hurt feelings and life uncertainty in their teen and young adult years? Helping them navigate the waters of personal and vocational awareness is a great gain for them and society.
The key is to trust your heart to move where your unique talents can flourish. This old world will really spin when work becomes a joyous expression of the soul. - Al Sachrov
A sign of things to come, barn season is returning 😁 - September Barn Photograph by Ray Congrove
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
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
They pump up the antisemitism in order to gain control. Their actual goal is to take out all of western civilization. Their greatest goal is the United States of America.
So when Americans and Europeans are voting against "Jews" they are actually voting for self-genocide.
The enemy is both evil and clever. They win if you are naive and gullible.
Hate is like an addictive drug. It feels great at first. Ecstatic. Powerful. Makes you want more and more. It becomes all you think about. Then it kills you.
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.”
