Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Last post

This is maybe my last post on this blog. I have to say farewell.
Please visit my new website:
http://simpleimages2.wordpress.com






Saturday, December 8, 2012

Fruits of the Holy Spirit


The fruits of the Holy Spirit:
“agape (love), chara (joy), eirene (peace), makrothymia (patience), chrestotis (kindness), agathosyne (goodness), pistis (faithfulness), praotes (gentleness), and engratea (self-control).”
Apostle Paul “describes the fruits of the Spirit in the form of a scale, a hierarchy. He lists the highest and the most exalted gift first and ends up with the most basic and fundamental…” One could see that “one must traverse the lower steps to reach the highest of stages.” One has to “start from the base, with self control, and climb up the ladder all the way to love.”

“Paul did not place faith at the top part of his hierarchy but at the bottom triad, namely faith, gentleness, and self-control…”  because Paul “claims that a time will come when faith will be transcended. It will take place when we have direct contact with God. Faith will no longer be necessary, and only love, the ultimate stage of the spiritual hierarchy, will remain.”
---excerpts from Inner River by Kyriacos C. Markides


 for more Saturday Snapshots see Alyce at: http://athomewithbooks.net/


(photo: of Napa's eastern hills after the rain taken from First Street bridge, downtown Napa,CA )

Friday, December 7, 2012

Wine

"Wine to me is entwined with pleasure, joy, fun, family, and friendship. It’s not the sort of thing that requires book learning, academic training, or special classes, but rather an elemental pleasure that satisfies emotionally and physically. Yes, wine also has its aesthetic dimension, its rare and subtle beauty that becomes more apparent with experience. Plunging deeply into wine can be thoroughly rewarding. But it’s not at all required. It all depends on what you’re after. The simple contentment that comes with a glass or two at dinner is no small thing."
...excerpts from How To Love Wine by Isaac

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Skills

"While hard skills are best put together with measured precision,soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever changing environments."
"...most talents are not exclusively hard skills or soft skills but rather a combination of the two."

...excerpts from The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle

Sunday, December 2, 2012

On thinking for oneself


"A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when a man looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the things he knows by comparing truth with truth, that he obtains a complete hold over it and gets it into his power. A man cannot turn over anything in his mind unless he knows it; he should, therefore, learn something; but it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
Reading and learning are things that anyone can do of his own free will; but not so thinking. Thinking must be kindled, like a fire by a draught; it must be sustained by some interest in the matter in hand. This interest may be of purely objective kind, or merely subjective. The latter comes into play only in things that concern us personally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think by nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; and they are very rare. This is why most men of learning show so little of it."
…excerpt from: On Thinking For Oneself  by Arthur Schopenhauer

Saturday, December 1, 2012

What the trees tell us


SOME TREES
by John Ashbery
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Some comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Place in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
*************************
Ashbery writes: “...the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.”



(photo: taken from one of the meadows that overlooks Lake Tahoe that we hiked a day after Thanksgiving. Alone and bereft of leaves, the tree stands with pride and dignity. )

My blogger free storage is now full. I'll not be able to put any photos unless of course I upgrade and buy additional space.