Good morning, digital neighbors! Happy Monday, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, ADD Irregulars, Coffee Talkers and WSN Curators, Phamily, Misfits & Dawn Patrol, and Seekers of Sanity and Civility! I hope you all had a great weekend, and welcome back to Monday and another run at the week. If you aren’t part of the work week or dealing with school, Monday probably doesn’t mean too much. Either way, another week is unfolding—how about a look at friends and friendship for these next 6 days?
Social media creates interesting friendships; we can connect with people we have never met and may never meet in person. Yet in the little screens that connect us, we can begin to know others, sometimes connecting more easily than in real life. I remember the first wave of this reality back in the ’90s with AOL chat rooms and instant messaging. It was amazing to chat with people from around the world in real time or even interact with them on bulletin boards or other forums.
The screen is an interesting reality; it affords us some distance and control over conversation that real life does not provide. In theory, it gives someone more time to think before responding, but that theory doesn’t hold much water. Too often, that anonymity and distance bring out the pettier side of humanity—a boldness and rudeness that few would have displayed publicly in the 1990s. Jump ahead 30 years, and now people act as poorly in public as they used to when only being brave behind their screen. Interacting too much through screens seems to be bad for our mental health. We have road rage in our cars and internet idiocy on our computers.
Idiocy is not just an observation of their intelligence for me, but also a statement of emotional derangement rather than emotional composure. I loathe the word “trigger,” but some people have subjects, issues, or fixations that take them to 11 almost immediately. For many, just mentioning the Donald is enough to fracture their brain. More than likely, they could use a good friend to help balance them rather than an echo chamber of agreement that mutes critical thought and emotional integration. A communion of rage and hatred mimics friendship, but it is not friendship.
Friendships come in many layers; many are superficial and others are depth relationships, and usually only a few are so close that they can be an accurate mirror of the self. But you never know when life is going to place someone in your life that you have been waiting to meet and make a difference. We don’t need many friends, but if you have none, you are a prisoner to your own thoughts and feelings. Such a prison is not a place of enlightenment but often a distortion chamber. Well, this is already cruising into TL;DR territory. Happy Monday, my friends! Some quotes and some beauty! TTFN!
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed. - Cicero
The only way to have a friend is to be one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The way to make a true friend is to be one. Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to stick, to fight for, if need be. The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrows and double our joys. Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold. - B.C. Forbes
Autumn Barn - Roland Schumann - 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.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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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.”
