HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7

“Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters…Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls…So then each of us will give an account of himself to God…So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.” Rom. 14:1, 4, 12, 22

• “Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.” -Buddhist quote

Thank you Gary Larson.

"Man surprised me most about humanity.Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." -The Dalai Lama

"Now hast thou but one bare hour to live 
And then thou must be damned perpetually
Stand still, you ever moving spheres of Heaven
That time may cease and midnight never come."

-Christopher Marlowe

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."  -Buddhist Teaching

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

BAY

shotgun sensibilities
plague my waking dreams
the soul of my birth dies
nothing lies in my path but
ashes and dust...
a rage builds tempest within,
i cannot stop it -- i only hold
it at bay with powders and 
herbs.  nothing saves me from
my Destiny of Blood.
torn by a jagged sky
my sensibilities ruined
perceptions ravaged and scattered
everyone tellin' me what i ought
to do. slipping into a  permanent
hate. a vacancy is opening, the
boy is dying, the man no longer cares--
the maniac is quite austere.
i think i had too much to dream last night.

-Dale Massey

"If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."
– PLATO 

CHARADE

crawling just below the surface
tendrils advancing on worn synapses
i scream out in deafening silence
even in this state there is no respite

why do i continue on?
to play the game i suppose
to hold their hands
to stutter and play mute

i am grieving
i am tearless
why do i fear myself, hate myself
this maddening charade?

-Dale Massey

“Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.” --Albert Einstein

"Love until it hurts, and then when it hurts there is only love." --Mother Theresa

“Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.” 

-Blake Crouch

"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” 
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
http://merton.org

Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.-- Kevyn Aucoin

"Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius (Nothing has yet been said, that hasn't been said before)." -Cicero