Good Morning Digital Neighbors from across Locals, all your Friends, Refugees, Seekers, Phamily, Triggeratti and ADD Irregulars! A late post this morning from the Friar since I was only moving in second gear in the early hours. Excuses, excuses, but the sad facts are what they are, Brother Ass was a dragg'n this morning and no amount of coffee was going to perk it up before Coffee Talk.
I have mentioned this before, but perhaps not to all of you current readers of these morning rambles. After faith, the most important thing in my life is laughter. Laughter opens the door to humor and joy, it bridges the divides that separate people, and is often the way many friendships are formed later in life when we share a laugh. I doubt relationships can be sustained on humor and laughter alone, but a relationship without humor and shared laughter is usually on the path to withering and dying.
The people that make us laugh are often the most attractive people we meet. Good humor helps us laugh at ourselves without the painful humiliation of fault finding and shaming. Good humor helps us grasp how odd life is and and really odd humanity is. Of course there is always the risk that you take humor too far and alienate or anger your audience or the target of your humor and laughter. Bad humor is often just spiteful and masquerades as funny when it reality it seeks to shame, humiliate or ostracize the subject. It is difficult to discern the dividing line between good and bad humor, thin-skinned souls find most everything offensive and think-skinned ones can laugh at almost anything. I tend to seek thick-skinned people in my circle of friends and associates, I am so weary of the perpetually offended, the victimhood clingers and the too easily to hurt and injured crowd. Some people I know not to joke with at all in ministry because they will be hurt or offended. While offense is in the heart of the offended, if one is striving to be respectful you don't go looking for ways to intentionally offend or insult others. All things can be subject to humor, mockery or questioning, how it is done does make a difference. Well, enough on humor, laughter and the like, how about some quotes and a nice barn? Happy Friday Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, Dawn Patrol, Fascinating People, Merry Bigots and all you Visitors & Vagabonds to the WSN!
Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. — Mark Twain
A good laugh is sunshine in the house. — William Thackeray
As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul. — A Jewish Proverb
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know the man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man…All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature. — Feodor Dostoyevsky
The Old Barn by Mary Carlson on Capture Minnesota
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.
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.”
