Good Clean Reads

“He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Two boys from our local high school were swept into the ocean and drowned this afternoon while attending one of the first social events for the annual Mr. Axeman competition. Their friends stood by on the beach and saw them swept away, powerless to save...

“Forgiving is love’s toughest work, and love’s biggest risk.  If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator.  Forgiving seems almost unnatural.  Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do.  But forgiving is love’s power to break nature’s rule.”  ~Lewis B. Smedes

Sometimes forgiveness catches you by...

By Wendy Strgar

“Sexual pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon.”  -Simone de Beauvoir

Driving my son and his friends in the car the other day from a basketball game I overheard the question that made me cringe decades ago: “How far did you get?” asked one to the other with an elbow to the ribs. I shouldn’t have let on that I was listening, but I felt obliged to...

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.”     -Rumi

It is a gift to arrive in this field where your shortcomings and mistakes are part of a huge space that can hold them and transform them into steps on a path...

“Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries. ” ~Astrid Alauda

John Gottman described the experience of total overwhelm as being emotionally flooded. He employed the term in his explanation of what happens to many couples in the heat of an argument. When things get intense and we are overcome by our emotional state we lose our ability to communicate...

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” -Zig Ziglar

I have achieved my goal of the positivity quest, which was to change my mind. It has been a long and well-documented climb of turning my sights and sensitivity towards a positive world view. Yet, here I stand, 365 days later with not only an extraordinary view of my life’s potential...

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” -Albert Einstein

The Hubble telescope has captured images of the universe that provide scientists a whole new universe to contemplate. It was able to...

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” -Oscar Wilde

Reducing the holiday experience down to the most basic elements is one way of getting back to the memories that are most precious and the experiences that are most sought after. As cliché as it sounds, late night cookie baking can be as sweet and tender as life gets. This week I have been visiting with one of...