Stealing this week’s svithe

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I'm feeling lazy. Here are a few thinkable thoughts pulled from semirandom locales:

Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. But we cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them, and we cannot expect to know all, or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received. That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another.
Joseph Smith


If the child sees that the parents are very happy because he has become knowledgeable, he starts gathering more and more knowledge. He starts forgetting the knack that he had brought with his life, that was inborn. By the time he comes out of the university he has completely forgotten one of the most beautiful things that was given by God to him: the capacity to wonder, the capacity to see without thinking, the capacity to contact reality without the mind continuously interfering, distorting.
Osho International Foundation


The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing circumstances and the most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that grins when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation, peace, and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. That kind of happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus.


Billy Graham


I swear by the pen and what the angels write,
By the grace of your Lord you are not mad.
And most surely you shall have a reward never to be cut off.
And most surely you conform (yourself) to sublime morality.
So you shall see, and they (too) shall see,
Which of you is afflicted with madness.
Muhammad


Last night I said to myself: tomorrow I will be good. Good? I wasn't any better than I was the day before. Now here is a new month, and I haven't yet thought out how to be more sensible, how to master my impulses and my temper. I am ashamed to be so undisciplined. I hereby resolve that with God's help I will be more reasonable. Today the day is nearly over and it isn't much, but for the rest of the day I will observe silence. Not talk, but answer politely. Not seek out conversation, but work on my shawl, which must be finished at least by day after tomorrow.
Anais Nin


The distinction between liberated, aspirant and bound subsists only so long as this Elixir of Experience is unknown to one. The enjoyer and the enjoyed, the seer and the seen, are merged in the non-dual, which is indivisible. The devotee has become God, the Goal has become God, the Goal has become the path; this indeed is solitude in the universe.
Sant Jnaneshwar


True words aren't eloquent;
eloquent words aren't true.
Wise men don't need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren't wise.
Lao Tse

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Stone Soup Svithe

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Someone in Sunday School made a fascinating suggestion today regarding the feeding of the five thousand. She said perhaps she was a skeptical soul, but she had always suspected that what happened with that miracle was this: people had been hoarding food, hiding it, hoping not to share, but as the baskets were passed around, the spirit of the meeting overcame them.

"This does not," she said,"offend my understanding of a miracle."

Nor mine. And I quite like this explanation.

I rather imagine Thomas Jefferson is feeling a tad hasty about now.



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I'm all alone today, so I'm making an experimental (and noisy) svithe. Forgive me.

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So Lady Steed and the Big O went to see her parents this weekend so I could have some time to rewrite two short stories and Byuck, all of which need to get back to their new homes pronto (and hopefully stay there this time).


Yesterday, between bouts of preposition rearranging, I caught up with Master Fob. One of his recent posts inspired me to write about love, but the story I had in mind I'm not ready to tell, so I'm going somewhere else instead. But it's still related--just more more inspired by the fact that today I am alone.

It is bad to be alone. Or at least being alone all the time can't be good. For whatever reason, God made us social creatures. I may be somewhat less social than other people, but I am still human and I do like people. Most of the time.

Or at least I try to be inoffensive. But putting a bunch of wav files in this post certainly isn't helping.


And I don't suppose I will even write a very good post. I'll be too busy figuring out where to stick what to pay much attention to whether or not the whole thing is working. I screw a lot of things up this way. And yet Lady Steed loves me anyway. It's a funny thing about her.

Anyway, people.


Today in Sunbeams, we talked about how we are like Heavenly Father--how he made us like him.


I think it is an extremely safe assumption that God is a social creature himself. The world's a factory designed to make people he would like to spend eternity with. And one of the things I suppose we have to learn how to do is getting along with each other.

Um, actually, that's not what I was planning on talking about. This is a svithe--this'll be more about charity than---

I know, but---

No! No it's not! You aren't listening! Boy, if Lady Steed was here, she---

Ha, ha. Very funny. Let's be serious.


But it wouldn't hurt to talk about Lady Steed a little. After all, she loves me even though I have limited skills:

Because let's face it--brains and artistry just aren't that marketable. I'm not sure what employers want, but it's not that. And so she's a remarkable woman, to stay home and wisen up the Big O while I'm off wasting myself in the pursuit of lucre when we all know she's a much more marketable human being.

Actually, no. It's a three-day weekend. Ha ha!


Anyway, this is a svithe about sociality and leaning on one another and being with one another and helping one another and how that's good. Or it's supposed to be.


I actually feel very strongly about this, even if I don't really live up to it all the time. I feel it's important to help an old lady get her groceries into her trunk, smile at the people we pass on the sidewalk, prevent toddlers from running out onto the Beltway, know our neighbors. We need to genuinely care for the people around us--family, friends, neighbors, strangers; whether in our town or clear across the country. We need to love them all!

Um. Huh. I don't think....


Anyway, forget it. What it comes down to is this: We need people. You, me, God, everyone. And I'm happy to have some good ones in my life. One in particular who's coming home tomorrow. So, if you'll excuse me,




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Svithe: The Parable of the Drunk Driver

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For behold, a man is like unto a drunk driver who, if he watcheth the line upon the road and strayeth not from its path, may well make it home without tragedy.

But, if he looketh at the pretty headlights of oncoming traffic, he will be attracted to them and end up killing a family of four that just closed escrow on their first home.

So it is with us.

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