Sunday, December 06, 2009

Sunday Morning Meditations

"Remind yourself that it is not the future or past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less, if only you isolate it and reprove your understanding, if that is not strong enough to hold against it, thus taken by itself." -Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

"The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that makes the problem disappear." -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

"Mourning is immensely reassuring because it convinces us of something we might otherwise easily doubt: our attachement to others." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Pain makes us believe that other people have something we need." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Trying to cheer yourself up isn't easy, and sometimes it feels hypocritical, like going against the grain. But the reminder is that if you want to change your habitual stuckness, you're the only one who can do it." -Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness

"Sorrow, the cause of sorrow, the end of sorrow, and path of eight stages which leads to the end of sorrow." -The Dhammapada

"If I'm as normal as I think I am, then we're all a bunch of weirdos." -Joe Brainard 29 Mini-Essays

"People of the world: relax." -Joe Brainard, Selected Poems

"But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secrets in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow, whose very appearance cheers you up." -Seneca, Dialogues and Letters

"I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities, in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

"One lovely day in spring: you get up and wash, you shave, you brush your clothes off. Each morning there you are, a new man, scrubbed clean, shaven, clothes brushed." George Bataille, Guilty

5 Comments:

Blogger William Keckler said...

This is a good Sunday morning sermon for my cold feet.

I opened the window.

Okay, I opened a layer of the window.

Anyway, thanks.

These are good dead people.

Piers Paul Read (sp?) on EWTN this morning was nowhere near as convincing.

I wondered how long it would be before he said the words "Graham Greene" and it was (I believe) seven words in.

Then I wondered how long before I'd hear "G.K. Chesterton" but that took about 17 paragraphs and was somewhat reverential/ dissmissive.

For a moment, I thought he might be a poet.

But that was his mother I think.

Or father.

Whichever.

He didn't like boys' school because he didn't like boys.

But now he likes shaping boys.

I don't think that sounds fair.

Shouldn't you have to be shaped by boys to shape boys?

And who wants to shape boys anyway?

7:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Todd Todd Todd! Thank you for these. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

8:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i really like the picture of you smiling. and one after another your sunday morning mediations reaffirmed for me that you are beautiful and strong. thank you.

3:33 PM  
Blogger Sarah said...

Ditto what anon said above: you are a beautiful man.

11:15 AM  
Blogger Todd Colby said...

William! Thank you.

10:28 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home