stop talking. inspired by my friend Jose Olide.  

stop talking.

inspired by my friend Jose Olide.  

When a country is well governed, poverty and mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is poorly governed, riches and honor are things to be ashamed of.

Confucius

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

24 Things I’ve Learned In 24 Years

Credit to Keith Craft, Aristotle, and whoever else deserves it. 

1) Act your way into a feeling, don’t feel your way into an action. 

Don’t allow your actions to be controlled by your feelings, but allow your feelings to be controlled by your actions. Being rational gives you a better picture of any situation than being irrational ever could. 

 

2) There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who handle their frustration, and those who wish they had. 

 You’re going to get mad, you’re going to even dislike people that you come in contact. But you can’t ever take back what you say to people. 

3) Don’t be a liar. 

Lies are just a way of delaying consequences, one way or another, we always get what is coming to us. 

 

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We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

Dr. Seuss

Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.

Stephen Colbert

Life is a Remix

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” - Pablo Picasso

“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” - Albert Einstein

Seth Godin recently wrote about plagiarism and originality on his blog. What he said was that “(people that) misuse words like ‘plagiarism’ are rarely actively producing anything of value themselves. “

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Thoughts on Love Wins Part 1

Just a quick thought. 

Rob Bell, in Love Wins makes this assertion…

“How great is God? Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do, or kind of great, medium great, great most of the time, but in this, the fate of billions of people, not totally great, sort of great. a little great.”

The way I’m going to interpret this in the context of this book is that “God is great, He can do what he wants, His intention is to save every soul, and He will, if He is great.”

My problem, up front is that choice is being removed from the equation. 

What Rob Bell is saying, is that as humans, we are incapable of escaping God’s love. Which is true. But what he is also asserting is that we are incapable of escaping God’s ultimate plan, Heaven. Whatever that may mean. 

To me, this is bad theology. 

The element of choice is being removed from the equation. God created us for choice. 

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” - Matthew 7:13-14

Jesus’ own words. 

We have to choose God’s love. He gives it freely, but there is a hard fact hidden in all this. 

An all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God, no matter how much He loves us, does not decide our fate, we do. He has given us a choice, and we have to make it. 

Of course in a perfect world, we are all reconciled with God. But the world is far from perfect, and even though only good comes from God, can the same be said of humanity?

Love can win. But the choice is ours. God chose us, we have to choose Him, not just once, but with the life that we live. “Difficult is the way…” 

“The Lord has turned all our sunsets into sunrise.” -Clement of Alexandria

“The Lord has turned all our sunsets into sunrise.” -Clement of Alexandria

That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.

Kurt Vonnegut