Happy Friday, Digital Neighbors! Good Morning Friends & Refugees, Early Birds and Later Dayers, Conversants, Lurkers and Wanderers on the Report, hey there PHAM and finally good day to all you ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators and Outliers. Two quotes for your Friday!
Ugliness creates bitterness. Ugliness is an eroding force on the people of our land. We are all here to try to change that. - Lady Bird Johnson
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seek beauty and don’t listen to the Gospel of the Moment that is trying to persuade you to swallow lie after lie and pretend it is the truth. Every lie we embrace erodes the spirit within us. Every lie that deceives us leads us that much further from reality. There are no genders – you can be whatever you want to be. I identify as dung beetle, and there is ample crap for a happy future. Get to rolling your future now!
We are frequently told ugliness is beautiful, we are preached inclusiveness & diversity constantly while at the same time being told that whiteness is a problem, and males exemplify what is worst about whiteness. Don’t forget “body positivity” – fat is A- OK!!! And we ain’t talk’n just a little chub, you can have rolling layers of life and we will just assume you are as healthy as someone striving for a “normative” BMI. Normative, there is word that is banished from our reality. Send in the performative shriekers, wake up the privilege police: “NOT FAIR!! NOT FAIR!!” so we can all be alerted to life’s most basic reality – life is not fair. Not only is life not fair, but it is also profoundly indifferent to you.
For the record, many of the cultural advocates of “equality” were really waiting for revenge on the parent culture that gave them the freedom to differ and disagree. Losing freedoms because you granted too many to those who don’t really believe in freedom is one of the most bitter ironies. Many cry freedom and equality, but most have wanted power and privilege for themselves. You can’t escape the Hegelian dialectic when you have made that your interpretive key for relationships and reality. UGH – Sorry for that ugly offramp to a morning meant to be about beauty.
Life is not fair, but it is beautiful. Find it in nature, find it your family, find it your friends. Ultimately, cultivate beauty in your heart. Nature, music, classical arts and other venues have a shot at restoring beauty in your heart. Seek the company of those who feed your own hunger for beauty. Make time for those who matter and the endeavors that bring meaning into your life. It can’t always be sugarcoated goodness, see the above paragraphs, but one cannot have a steady and constant drone on how freaking bad things are. I don’t have to make bad news that the only thing that rests on my mind and feeds my fears & angers. I am so thankful for faith, friends, pets and a whole lot of perspective that insulates me from horrors and sorrows of life without blinding me to them. May your imagination lead you to pleasant venues, may it strengthen your spirit and keep you grounded in reality with a sense of hope and purpose. I can’t change the world, but I am going to do my damnedest to make my acre of reality worthwhile.
Lake Jasna, Slovenia - Hasmik Ghazaryan Olson - Unsplash
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
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Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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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.”
