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26 July 2011 |
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Life
is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the
hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be
swift to love! Make haste to be kind!
Henri
Frédéric Amiel
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Love
is a wonderful thing. You never have to take it away
from one person to give it to another. There's always
more than enough to go around.
Pamela
J. DeRoy
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Everybody
can be great. . . because anybody can serve. You don't
have to have a college degree to serve. . . . You only need
a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
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The
Unhurried Imagination
Thomas Kinkade
What a joy it is to be able to create something.
Creativity is one of the great privileges of being human.
You apply hands and mind and spirit to fashion something
that did not exist before in that precise form. You
touch the universe with your own unique personality and
somehow at least a little corner of the universe is
changed. And in the process, a part of you is
created anew.
There is something deeply refreshing about any truly
creative pursuit. And the benefits of creative
endeavor don't depend on the quality of the
endeavor. It is the very act of creating that renews
you.
This is why I am so passionate about encouraging people to
paint or draw--to create--regardless of whether or
not they have "talent." I believe that any
creative endeavor pays magnificent benefits for the time
invested.
Not only does it afford the simple, childlike satisfaction
of playing with materials--smearing paint, scribbling
ideas and images, pounding with hammer and nails--but it
also helps us make connections and understand life a
little better.
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Creativity
is woven into the fabric of simpler times. And there
are as many paths to creativity as there are human beings
on this planet. You can be a creative homemaker and
mother (I am married to one.) You can also be a
creative builder, a creative gardener, a creative hang
glider. There is creativity in solving personal
problems, in overcoming obstacles, in keeping
relationships warm.
Creativity is not optional equipment. It is a
built-in potential, a seedling planted deep in the human
personality. And like any other human possibility,
creativity can be helped to grow and flourish.
Because both my happiness and my livelihood depend on
maintaining my own creativity, I have a vested interest in
understanding it. So I have watched other people and
taken note of myself, and I have reached a few
conclusions.
First of all, creativity is contagious. You catch it
from being around other creative people. That's what
was happening with my girls one night in my studio.
My girls saw me making something new, and they were
irresistibly drawn to make something, too.
That happens to me all the time. My own creativity
thrives when I expose myself to what others are
doing. I love to wander through galleries and
museums, to read art books and monographs, to let myself
be uplifted and inspired and humbled. I love to be
around other artists, to talk together or even to paint or
sketch together. . . .
Creativity is contagious, but that's just the beginning of
the process. Motivation needs to turn to ideas, and
ideas need to be incubated. You need to move things
around in your head and with your hands. You
experiment. You move your mind around, allowing
yourself to look at what you're doing from different
angles. . . .
To be creative, all you need is room to play, room to
think, room to just be.
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Like
his warm,
engaging paintings,
this celebrated artist
will help you discover
how to create calm,
not chaos; peace,
not pressure, in your
own life by introducing
you to an era of
simpler times. |
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
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The
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Give yourself the gift of wonderful literature that you
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I
Learned to Stop Worrying by Watching My Wife Wash
Dishes
William
Wood
A few
years ago, I was suffering immensely from pains in my
stomach. I would awaken two or three times each
night, unable to sleep because of these terrific
pains. I had watched my father die from cancer of
the stomach, and I feared that I too had a stomach
cancer--or, at least, stomach ulcers. So I went to a
clinic for an examination. A renowned stomach
specialist examined me with a fluoroscope and took an
X-ray of my stomach. He gave me medicine to make me
sleep and assured me I had no stomach ulcers or
cancer. My pains, he said, were caused by emotional
strains. Since I am a minister, one of his first
questions was: "Do you have an old crank on
your church board?"
He told me what I already knew: I was trying to do
too much. In addition to my preaching every Sunday
and carrying the burdens of the various activities of the
church, I was also chairman of the Red Cross, president of
the Kiwanis. I also conducted two or three funerals
each week and a number of other activities.
I was working under constant pressure. I could never
relax. I was always tense, hurried, and
high-strung. I got to the point where I worried
about everything. I was living in a constant
dither. I was in such pain that I gladly acted on
the doctor's advice. I took Monday off each week,
and began eliminating various responsibilities and
activities.
One day while cleaning out my desk, I got an idea that
proved to be immensely helpful. I was looking over
an accumulation of old notes on sermons and other memos on
matters that were now past and gone. I crumpled them
up one by one and tossed them into the wastebasket.
Suddenly I stopped and said to myself, "Bill, why
don't you do the same thing with your worries that you are
doing with these notes? Why don't you crumple up
your worries about yesterday's problems and toss them into
the wastebasket?" That one idea gave me
immediate inspiration--gave me the feeling of a weight
being lifted from my shoulders. From that day to
this, I have made it a rule to throw into the wastebasket
all the problems that I can no longer do anything about.
Then, one day while I wiping the dishes as my wife washed
them, I got another idea. My wife was singing as she
washed the dishes, and I said to myself, "Look, Bill,
how happy your wife is. We have been married
eighteen years, and she has been washing dishes all that
time. Suppose when we got married she had looked
ahead and seen all the dishes she would have to wash
during those eighteen years that stretched ahead.
That pile of dirty dishes would be bigger than a
barn. The very thought of it would have appalled any
woman."
Then I said to myself, "The reason my wife doesn't
mind washing the dishes is because she washes only one
day's dishes at a time." I saw what my trouble
was. I was trying to wash today's dishes and
yesterday's dishes and dishes that weren't even dirty yet.
I saw how foolish I was acting. I was standing in
the pulpit, Sunday mornings, telling other people how to
live, yet I myself was leading a tense, worried, hurried
existence. I felt ashamed of myself.
Worries don't bother me any more. No more stomach
pains. No more insomnia. I now crumple up
yesterday's anxieties and toss them into the wastebasket,
and I have ceased trying to wash tomorrow's dirty dishes
today.
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We've
partnered with a brand-new site full of uplifting words of
wisdom from very special
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enjoy! http://www.quotesforthejourney.net
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Free
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(This
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1280
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| just for today, i will keep my eyes open. .
. .
just for today, i will spread encouragement. . . .
just for today, i will remember that i'm a very special
person. . . .
just for today, i will be thankful for the sun. . . .
Just for Today, Kindle
Edition, now on sale! |
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If
a child is to keep alive his or her
inborn sense of wonder, he or she
needs the companionship of at least
one adult who can
share it, rediscovering
with the child the joy, excitement
and
mystery of the world we live in.
Rachel
Carson
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Excerpt:
Your Hidden
Potential
Ari Kiev
Your life has
been designed to work, and your hidden potential contains what
you seek and all that you need in life. It is OK to be
who you are and choose what you have. The Quakers call
it the "still, small voice within," that place of
full awareness within that is in touch with the entire
universe and is the source of wisdom. In effect, you
don't have to keep searching for confirmation by focusing on
being someone else or being somewhere else. There is no
place else to be and nothing else to get. You will be
able to grasp the levels of change in your life when you can
allow yourself to be present in the moment, accept the world
as it is, and trust that everything is as it was intended to
be. Thomas Merton put it succinctly: "We have
what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give
it time it will make itself known to us." Putting
it another way, the Zen writer Senrin wrote: "If
you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for
it?"
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A Strategy for Daily Living. Ari
Kiev
A nice look at sort of "putting your life
in order," without being compulsive about doing so. A small, short, easy
read that helps us to see the importance of our day-to-day
existence. |
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Many people
are dissatisfied even though they have what they believe
everyone wants and should want--a nice home, a good job, and
the like. They are unfulfilled by their achievements or
acquisitions and even their relationships. But they
don't know why they are uncomfortable or what it is they
really want or how little effort they devote to what they
really want to do.
What
leads to this misplaced effort, to this lack of meaningful
direction? Many difficulties result from faulty
self-images learned in your earliest years. Much of your
personality and your concept of yourself comes from the
emphasis on some and the neglect of other features of your
personality during your childhood. If this emphasis
matched your temperament, talents, and special skills, you
have developed an accurate and realistic self-image. If
not, you have probably experienced much conflict. You
may, for example, have an inclination to paint but were
conditioned to reject it. The more you become aware of
these suppressed sides of yourself, the more you will be able
to accept and utilize your hidden potential. While your
choices as a child may have been limited, they need no longer
be limited. You decide what to do with your life.
In the last analysis, your behavior, not chance or the
concepts of others, determines your concept of yourself and
whether or not you will reach the goals you set.
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Living
Life Fully's Daily Meditations, Year One
now
available in a Kindle edition!
After many years of sending out the daily meditations via
e-mail, we've decided to make the first year's worth of
them available as a Kindle edition. Now you can have
the entire year of insightful and inspiring meditations
available on your Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook
(coming soon). For the Kindle edition, just click on
the link to the left, and you'll be on your way to a
consistently uplifting reading experience! |
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