Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good middle of the night. Are you ready to enjoy a new inspiring or insightful Quote of the Week? The Themes for this week: Learning to love the Beast and And 9-11 Remembered
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"Lisa Smith-Batchen, the amazingly sunny and pixie-tailed ultrarunner from Idaho who trained through blizzards to win a six-day race in the Sahara, talks about exhaustion as if it's a playful pet. 'I love the Beast,' she says. 'I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control.'
Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn't that the reason she's running through the desert in the first place-to put her training to work? To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who's boss? You can't hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you , is to love it."
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
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9-11 Remembered...
Right after 9-11, I asked Quote of the Week Members to share their thoughts, feelings quotes, songs lyrics as they reflect on the events of that day.
From Jesse, a Yeat’s poem that he feels has sensitivity to the tragic events of September 11th
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
From Ray, a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth…
"Give sorrow words;
the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart,
and bids it break."
Isabelleemailed the Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
Taking, as you did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with you forever in the next.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Vicki sent this in memory of all those who perished; the passengers and the pilots on the United Air and AA flights, the workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the innocent bystanders. Our prayers go out to the friends and families of the deceased.
If I knew If I knew it would be the last time
That I'd see you fall asleep,
I would tuck you in more tightly
and pray the Lord, your soul to keep
If I knew it would be the last time
that I see you walk out the door,
I would give you a hug and kiss
and call you back for one more.
If I knew it would be the last time
I'd hear your voice lifted up in praise,
I would video tape each action and word,
so I could play them back day after day.
If I knew it would be the last time,
I could spare an extra minute
to stop and say "I love you,"
instead of assuming you would KNOW I do
If I knew it would be the last time
I would be there to share your day,
well I'm sure you'll have so many more,
so I can let just this one slip away.
For surely there's always tomorrow
to make up for an oversight,
and we always get a second chance
to make everything just right.
There will always be another day
to say "I love you," and certainly there's
another chance to say our "Anything I can do?"
But just in case I might be wrong,
and today is all I get,
I'd like to say how much I love you
and I hope we never forget.
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone,
young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance
you get to hold your loved one tight.
So if you're waiting for tomorrow,
why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes,
you'll surely regret the day,
That you didn't take that extra time
for a smile, a hug, or a kiss
and you were too busy to grant someone,
what turned out to be their one last wish.
So hold your loved ones close today,
and whisper in their ear,
Tell them how much you love them
and that you'll always hold them dear
Take time to say "I'm sorry,"
"Please forgive me," "Thank you," or "It's okay."
And if tomorrow never comes,
you'll have no regrets about today.
Author Unknown
From Mike comes lyrics from a Phil Ochs song, “Power And The Glory" (1964)
“Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Glory shall rest on us all "
From Jen, a site she found inspiring…
http://people.delphi.com/andybeals/thankyou.htm
Also, Jencloses all of her emails with the following words:..
Be Nice Nice is Good
From Juta came a quote from Goethe...
“Life belongs to the living,
and he who lives
must be prepared for changes.”
Holly felt the following site was heartbreaking and beautiful many photos;
slow to load, but worth the wait:
http://home.earthlink.net/~hankinhsd/thankyou.htm
From Christine, a poem by Siegfried Sassoon…
"A Post-Mortem"
Searching for souvenirs among some rubble,
A post-atomic-warfare man observed
That "those who made this little bit of trouble
Got only what they asked for and deserved."
Then, in a kindlier afterthought's release,
He pitied "them that only asked for peace."
From Ruth…
“All things are connected. We did not weave the web of life; we are but a strand in it. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the people of the earth.”
Chief Seattle
Irene's email message…
loved the choice of wordsworth this week, raoul. you're so right about words failing us, but i've found in the last week that, in fact, words have soothed us, comforted us, rallied us. while we were glued to tv sets, we also read everything we could get our hands on; editorials, reports, testimonies, stories, poems. i have to tried to impress upon my class the importance of the written word and nothing has done more to affirm that than this past week. our family has been fortunate as we have not lost a family member or loved one, but we all suffer and grieve with those who have. i have also been heartened by the positive attitude of my 14 year old freshmen who write about fear but also confidence and hope in the country's future. without hope, we are all lost. love to everyone who receives the quote of the week. i will look for more...irene
And a final quote by Henry David Thoreau …
“The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.”
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!
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