Good Morning Phamily! Happy Monday Dawn Patrol, Supporters, Members and Lurkers! This week I thought I would pull a book off the shelf and share some quotes from it. The BIG Curmudgeon. I have a whole row of books with quotations, some of my greatest insights or key phrases have been in simple quotes from people so much smarter or wittier than myself.

Back in my 30's I was labeled by a number of older priests of being a curmudgeon because I was a complainer about the lack of responsibility that so many took with their lives, let alone their faith. While I strive to be a person of encouragement, I think most encouragement falls flat if you don't honestly and accurately assess the situation you wish to change for yourself or in those moments of trying to aid others. My optimism begins with realism and then the hard work of the doing. Two quotes to start on the Monday road trip with Curmudgeon Padre!

"I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon." - Edward Abbey

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die. - Oscar Wilde

Happy Monday friends!