Category Archives: quotes

let it snow

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How did we spend our Easter weekend? Why shoveling the driveway of course. That’s my backyard, not last month, this morning! We had family over Friday night for an early holiday dinner and that’s what they had to contend with getting here, 8 inches of snow and rush hour traffic. We are nothing else if not stubborn here in Michigan and they came anyway. When my sister-in-law from Louisville was getting her son Evan’s winter coat out for the trip he complained, “No, it’s spring!” And she answered, “Not in Michigan!” Little did they know what was really in store for them. Joann was just considering the cold, she left their boots at home and the kids ended up trudging through the snow in their tennis shoes last night.

It was good to see everyone, although my mom wasn’t up to coming and that bummed us out. Like most moms she is the Queen Bee of our family and we missed her terribly last night. I would take all the bad weather Michigan can dish out and never complain again if I could just have my mom healthy again. Joann’s sister Jackie is also very sick and has been in our thoughts and prayers lately. So come to think of it, who cares about the stupid weather. From now on each time I start to whine about the weather I’m going to stop myself, dig up something to add to my “blessing list”, and say a prayer for family members who are dealing with serious illness right now.

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.
~Franklin Pierce Adams

think green

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In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, a photograph with plenty of green in it to remind those of us in northern climates what’s to come. Three more days until Spring!

Walk tall as the trees,
live strong as the mountains,
be gentle as the spring winds,
keep the warmth of the summer sun
in your heart, and the great spirit
will always be with you. ~American Indian Proverb

inspire me

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I haven’t posted a generator in a while, or a Clooney pic, so here’s two for the price of one! Big Huge Labs has a fun photo generator that let’s you make motivational posters with your own photographs. It’s easy to use and you can link directly to your Flickr or Photobucket stream for fast and easy creations and saving. The quality is good enough that you may want to print them out and tack them up over your desk for inspiration. Click on either of my creations for the link and go have yourself some fun:)

sunday smiles

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Time to lighten things up around here and what better way to do that than with another joy filled laughing baby video. Come September I may be posting a baby video of my very own as my son and his wife are expecting their first child. We are thrilled, grateful, and just plain happy about the prospect of becoming grandparents. The baby is due the week before my 49th birthday and I’m thinking that this is one birthday gift Mr. bookbabie will never be able to top!

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. ~James Barrie

fly away

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I did this painting some years ago when I was sick. I really wanted to be out there on that beach, out of my body and away from the life that I was living at that moment because it was filled with loneliness and illness. Not aloneness, but loneliness, there’s a difference. I was married and had two beautiful young children, so I wasn’t alone. Yet as my health failed and weeks became months and those months dragged into years of living in a body that had become a kind of prison, I felt isolated. I was like one of those mimes in an invisible box, I could see the life that I wanted to be part of happening all around me, but I couldn’t quite get to it, it was just out of my reach.

That is what chronic illness is, what it does to those living with it. If you’re lucky and have a supportive family and good doctors some of that burden is lifted, but even still, it is a journey that wears on the body and on the soul. Nietzsche once wrote, What does not kill me makes me stronger. I would sometimes think about those words back then, and the truth is, I sure didn’t feel like I was getting stronger. I think that what life’s trials really teach us is that we can survive. We can do what we never thought we had the strength or the courage to do. Are we stronger? Maybe, maybe not. But as we step out of that box, battered and scarred from the crossing, we take with us the wisdom that no matter how dark the day the wings of hope can take us anywhere we want to go:)

For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
~ Christina Rossetti

wednesday journal

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The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. ~M. Scott Peck

let it be

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When I downloaded Paul McCartney’s song Let it Be the other day from iTunes, I also found the version in the video above from the movie, Across the Universe. Sung by veteran stage actor Carol Woods and 15 year old Timothy Mitchum, the song is set against a scene depicting a family losing their son in Vietnam and the Detroit riots of 1967. I grew up in Detroit, only six miles from the epicenter of the riots. As a seven year old child at the time, I thought that the riots happened “downtown”, far away from my own quiet, tree lined street. And in many respects I suppose it was far away. As a white family, our experience of life in Detroit and in our country during the 60s was very different than that of African-Americans living only a handful of miles away.

When I look at Detroit today, I’m saddened to see that racial, social, and economic separation and isolation continues to have devastating effects on neighborhoods, on schools, and most importantly on children. And as I watch the nightly news and listen to the never ending debate over the political and military issues of the Iraq War, I can’t help but wonder if there ever really will “be an answer” or if mankind is destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. But you know, when I listen to beautiful music like the song Let it Be, when I see exquisite art and watch inspiring movies and plays, when I look up at the night sky and see the glory of a lunar eclipse, or when I look down and into the eyes of a newborn baby it gives me hope, and isn’t that what keeps us all putting one foot in front of the other most days?

One of my favorite quotes is by the poet Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Isn’t that lovely? Have a peaceful and hope filled weekend dear readers:)