by M. Morford

If you find yourself praying
For the peace and prosperity
Of someone who has done you harm,
If you catch yourself
With a spiraling longing
That defies words,
Or if in the middle of the stillness of the night
You know
In your deepest emptiness,
That those who make your life a burden,
Who make you crazy,
And restless for a better place
Belong in your life
And are as essential as gravity
And serve as a reminder
That the real kingdom,
The only citizenship that matters,
Is the one that stretches beyond ourselves
And into the territory we were created to share.
And if you find yourself praying like this,
You may walk our streets
But you inhabit a different kingdom.

Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity & faith

- CS Lewis

The only thing that the world hates more than unilateral American leadership is an absence of American leadership

- Condoleezza Rice

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."

- John Burroughs

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."

- Blaise Pascal

by Larry Shallenberger

Shields of faith forged on youth’s anvil
Amid the hammerings of spaking and understanding
Proudly carried in plains of battle
Absorbing fiery darts so effortlessly
That one doubts the archers’ malice
More than a conqueror until the day its weight
Wraps around the warrior
A cicada shell
Whose defenses must be breeched
Or entomb it’s wearer
Alive

1 Corinthians 13:11

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” 

- Dorothy Bernard

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

- Samuel Beckett

http://youtu.be/UiUxIGMSFfY

This past Sunday we had the chance to participate in an adaptive surfing program called Best Day.


At the end there was an awards ceremony and each of the kiddos got a T-shirt, a goody bag, a medal and about 100 high-fives from the crowd.

As usual I was astounded by the strength, dedication and courage of everyone there - the organizers, the volunteers, the families and the surfers.

Check it out and volunteer. If you can't volunteer your time, that's GREAT because it means you can volunteer some coinage instead. This is a seriously great group of extraordinary people and they helped to make this Father's Day one I won't soon forget!

Best AWESOME Day!

http://youtu.be/sED6FRXIHJc

http://youtu.be/Pwe-pA6TaZk

“Our churches have explored and exploited our need to replace the numbness in our lives with a passion for something, anything. We’ve created worship in which the music is meant to stir the emotions, but so often the soul is left unmoved, and unfortunately the words spoken turn out to be little more than manipulations of the heart.  We have created cathartic experiences filled with weeping and dancing in the Spirit that leave us with the sense that we have touched God, but that fail to give us the sense that God has touched us.  We run to churches where the message feels good and where we feel energized and uplifted—but rarely if ever challenged or convicted.” 

- Henri Nouwen

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy

- CS Lewis

The more pride we have, the more other people’s pride irritates us 

- CS. Lewis

http://youtu.be/-DAT234I_BA

"No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one's best, to keep the brain and conscience clear, never be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved, then do one's duty."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God. 

- CS Lewis

"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

- Socrates

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends 

- CS Lewis

 If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now? 

- CS Lewis

by Kristen Lindquist

One happy hour drink in Orono and now I'm driving
up the Penobscot just for kicks, past the bridge to Indian Island,
past the just-closed Georgia Pacific plant, tidy yards
of Milford, "Place of a Million Parts" junkyard,
the drink still warm in my belly, the strong, true edge of things


glowing with rich clarity in the late summer, late afternoon light.
Dylan's tangled up in blue on the radio, dozens of migrating
nighthawks flit over fields along the river, crickets shrill
in tall grass, window draft tickles my tan shoulders.
Later tonight, the Red Sox will win with another Big Papi


walk-off homer that will make me whoop to myself in the car.
But for now, I'm moving through Olamon, Passadumkeag,
away from the river, into the woods. It's the end of a long day,
but there still seems to be plenty of time and road ahead.
Something about the light, the beauty of the sky, makes me think
I should keep going right on to northern Maine, all the way
to Canada. I could just keep driving all night, potato fields
north of Houlton balancing the dark outside my car windows,
lights across the St. John beckoning me over the border.
I've got a full tank of gas, credit cards in my wallet. I could


drive all the way to Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island,
stay in some quaint inn on a craggy coast, walk low beaches
in search of sandpipers heading south from the Arctic.
How far north do roads go? But it grows late, shadows deepen,
and so far from home, I realize I don't know the station


broadcasting tonight's game. So it's finally baseball
that curbs my sudden wanderlust. It's the simple pleasure
of a good game coming up that makes me turn around
to re-enter the bubble of radio reception, to start
the long drive back to everything familiar and well-loved.

"I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet." 

- Rodney Dangerfield

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. 

- C. S. Lewis

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls-family, health, friends, integrity-are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.

-author unknown

"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle." 

- Albert Einstein

“There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.”

-John Gregory Brown

Be jealous . . .



http://youtu.be/4EERSfHiqT8

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation

- CS Lewis