Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Sunday ADD Irregulars, Vagabonds of the WSN, Friends, Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, Phamily & Dawn Patrol, Triggeratti, Fascinating People and Merry Bigots (Tis' the Season😁🎄) Seekers of Sanity & Civility and all you Quarterlings! I hope all of you have had a great Thanksgiving Weekend in whatever way you were able to celebrate. There is never enough gratitude and thanks in the world and in the current chapter of self-absorption perhaps even less than ever. I can't vouch for 5 or 15 centuries ago, but I imagine if they were people of faith they tried to embrace some form of thanksgiving. You don't have to be religious or spiritual to be thankful, but it is easier to thank a Giver than blind luck.
Gratitude is the game changer for individuals. If you seek and cultivate it, you reap its fruits with ever increasing frequency. If you are not seeking gratitude, and expect life to deliver its goodness to you, you will probably be greatly disappointed. Disappointment and unrealistic expectations about life will set you on the path of personal poisoning, the poison will yield a number of foul effects. Inescapable resentment, grievances against life that only a college degree can help you articulate, a willingness to embrace the absurd and demand others see it as normal are just some of the foul effects of poisoning. The poison will settle your person in an emotional and mental state of brokenness. You will see victimhood as a status to be treasured rather than a state to rise above. Real and imagined affronts of the past will keep you from ever moving forward, from knowing yourself and from discovering the healing power of gratitude. Gratitude is the game changer - even if you are in a state of misery, find real causes for gratitude and it can change you life and outlook. Happy Sunday Digital Neighbors!!!!
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.
Quite apart from the fact that I utterly admire, even love, her, this is the best possible response to an idiot, who, in his defense, asked a pretty good question.
https://x.com/TBifford/status/2087992591279407133/video/1?s=61
The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
