Good morning, digital neighbors! As we move through autumn, we come to a week of quotes and musings about wisdom. If you don’t have an interior life—some capacity for reflection, questions, curiosity, and wonder—I doubt you will ever arrive at the shores of wisdom. One needs experience to be wise, although the very young can utter profoundly wise sayings and the very old and accomplished can completely miss wisdom. I wish wisdom came with age, but I’m not so sure of that anymore. When I see old 1960s hippies still trying to recapture the magic of the ’60s, not realizing they come across not as relatable but as antiquated and somewhat ridiculous, I’m pretty certain wisdom walked right on by.
I’m reluctant to call too many people wise, but I know wisdom when I hear it. So few of our conversations contain wisdom. As moderns, we mainly just bitch and gossip. We bitch about everything we dislike in culture, politics, or life, and we gossip about the more personal events in our lives. I don’t excuse myself from these two constant temptations, but they are both tiresome and exhausting when they become the mainstay of conversation. God knows—and He does—I’ve done a fair amount of bitching in these morning missives. Thankfully, gossip doesn’t interest me much. I try to balance these musings with more gratitude and reflection than just harping on and on about the Cabal.
How about a prayer and a couple of quotes for those of us in recovery from bitchyitis or suffering from chronic gossipation? Happy Monday, friends!
O God, it is easy to love the whole world,
but hard to love the person one works next to;
O God, it is easy to campaign for world peace,
but hard to contribute to the peace within my own home;
O God, it is easy to be fascinated with some new truth,
and miss you in the thing I have known so long;
O God, it is easy to share my home and possessions with people I like.
Teach me how to be generous toward others.
Enable me today to say something or do something
that will make a difference to the discouraged,
to the inexperienced,
to the despairing.
Let no selfish concern with my own affairs
shut me off from anyone today.
For your love’s sake. Amen. — Rita Snowden
“He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.” — Boethius
“Wisdom is not knowledge, and we must not confound the two. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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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Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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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.”
