Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Thursday ADD Irregulars, WSN Seekers, Supporters, Lurkers and anyone else who stumbled through the door at Padre's to take a look.
Reality - it is out there and it is inescapable. Of course if you subscribe to the simulation theory of trying to understand reality and experience when the Programmer-Gamer-Designer likes to screw with us with uncanny circumstances, repeating themes or laughable coincidents that make you wonder if there is some long joke being played upon us. I don't subscribe to that theory but it is interesting to ponder. So many memes point out some of these odd co-winky-dinks.
Much like an operating system on a computer, your outlook, attitude or posture toward reality and its engagement with you will often guide your footsteps on the path. I am trying my best to acquire the mind & heart of the Master. I want to see life as He did, I want to listen to life with the same attention with which he approached every day, I want to at least from time to time speak with the same thoughtfulness He spoke. It is a high bill to fill and I have many miles to go before I gets there.
It is hard to wrap our minds around holiness - too often seen as stodgy, puritanical, uptight or just a constant parade of NO to anything enjoyable, fun or not 100% Bible approved. The distillation of the Word is no easy feat, one wants to maintain the core continuity of understanding with the flexibility to apply it in every age, culture and circumstance. The Master obviously broke many of the norms of His day and community, but He did not do it for the sake of being defiant or wanting to be an outlier. His mission from the the Luminous, the Divine, the Unnamed One of Mount Sinai was the Gospel.
To be accessible to everyone and taken in by none with evil or selfish intent is a hard balancing act. It is a challenge to love another without approving of the wrong they do from time to time. One can accept another without approving all all they do or think, that is how I relate with the Divine. Love does not mean 100% approval but it does invite those in the relationship to talk about what matters to them. Love changes lives, of both the Lover and the Beloved. But love with out truth is often just sentimentality, which is warm and sugary but not nourishing.
The truth - it is out there they would say on X-Files. Somehow the truth and reality are in a dance that we are invited to participate. For Disciples the Truth resides in the Divine and the revelation we are given, for other Seekers it is the threads and pebbles that the Divine has dispersed throughout creation. Finding them and pondering them is part of at least embracing some truth that will save us rather than settling for lies that please but poison us. There are many, many sweet lies out there and they are just as poisonous as the first lies whispered in the garden.
Well enough rambling Disciples, Seekers, and others just trying to make their way through life. I am glad you are here and I am so thankful for the mixture of thoughtful, humorous and WTF content that is part of this WSN.
If I could talk to my younger self, I would just say that the path to great things is filled with a lot of stumbles, suffering, and challenges along the way. But if you have the right attitude and know that hard times will pass - and you get up each time - you will reach your destination. - Jonny Kim
Sunrise on Spring River, Missouri
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.
Good morning, digital neighbors! Welcome to Friday! I hope all you Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, Phamily & Misfits, Free Thinkers & Questioners, ADD Irregulars & WSN Curators, Curmudgeons & Curmudgeonessas have had a great week. Autumn is off to a wondrous start with a dramatic temperature drop and some much-needed rain. Here are a few autumn quotes for your Friday recollections. Have a great weekend, neighbors!
“How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.” — John Burroughs
“I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks… of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.” — Lin Yutang
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Autumn meadow - Jay Chrohm - Unsplash
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.”
