Love Does by Bob Goff

I enjoy those parts of the Bible where Jesus talks about how much He loves His bride.  It makes me wonder if the trees and mountains and rivers are things He planned in advance, Knowing they would wow us.  I wonder if God returned over and over to this world He placed us in thinking that what He had created was good, but it could be even better, even grander.  I wonder if He thought each foggy morning, each soft rain, each field of wildflowers would be a quiet and audacious way to demonstrate His tremendous love for us.  p. 24

The thing I love about God is He intentionally guides people into failure.  He made us be born as little kids who can't walk or talk or even use a bathroom correctly.  We have to be taught everything.  All that learning takes time, and He made us so we are dependent on Him, our parents, and each other.  The whole thing is designed so we try again and again until we finally get it right.  And the whole time He is endlessly patient.  p. 29

One of my favorite quotes: The more I've listened to God, the more I've realized I don't always catch what God is up to in real time either.  Some people speak with a great deal of authority about what God is doing *right now*.  I'm always amazed because I can never figure out God that quickly.  I usually understand what God is doing by seeing it through the rearview mirror.  Only then can I connect the dots, and even then, it's a pretty dodgy sketch.  p. 140

Truth and Beauty

But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of what a perfect relationship would look like.  Love, in her imagination, was so dazzling, so tender, and unconditional, that anything human seemed impossibly thin by comparison.

I wanted to keep her as much for myself as for her.  We had a wonderful time that visit.  Even when Lucy was devastated or difficult, she was the person I knew best in the world, the person I was the most comfortable with.  Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't even realized was gone.  With Lucy I was a native speaker.  p. 216

Tatoos on the Heart

If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than others.  p. xiii

With That Moon Language

Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them,
     "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud;
     Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, 
This great pull in us to connect.  
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying
With that sweet moon
     Language
What every other eye in this world
     Is dying to
     Hear.

--Hafez

I heard someone say once, "Just assume the answer to every question is compassion.  p. 62

Sometimes it's enough simply to acknowledge how wide the gulf is that we all hope to bridge.  p. 67

Here's what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.  p. 67

Perma Chodron, an ordained Buddhist nun, writes of compassion and suggests that its truest measure lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.  p. 71

She was one of the countless "what if" kids.  What if she had actually been parented?  What if she was surrounded by love and as much attention as a kid needs?  What if she just had a stable place to rest her head?  p. 93

If our primary concern is results, we will choose to work only with those who give us good ones.  p. 178

10% Happier

...I had read the research showing that regular churchgoers tended to be happier, in part because having a sense that the world is infused with meaning and that suffering happens for a reason helped them deal more successfully with life's inevitable humiliations.  p. 49

While I had never really thought about it before, I suppose I'd always assumed that the voice in my head was me: my ghostly internal anchorman, hosting the coverage of my life, engaged in an unslicited stream of insensitive questions and obnoxious color commentary.
Per Tolle, even though the voice is the ridgepole of our interior lives, most of us take it completely for granted.  He argued that the failure to recognize thoughts for what they are--quantum bursts of psychic energy that exist solely in your head--is the primordial human error.
...The ego is never satisfied.  No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete... p. 57

The route to true happiness, he [Buddha] argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires througha  wider lens.  p. 90

The whole game [meditation] is to catch your mind wandering and then come back to the breath, over and over again.  p. 100

To apply mindfulness to acute situations:
R: recognize the feelings
A: allow--lean into the feelings
I: investigate--check to see how they're affecting your body
N: non-identification--see that just because you're feeling ____ does not make you ____

"The Way of the Warrior"
1.  Don't be a jerk
2.  When necessary, hide the zen
3.  Meditate
4.  The price of security is insecurity
5.  Equanimity is not the enemy of creativity
6.  Don't force it
7. Humility prevents humiliation
8.  Go easy with the internal cattle prod
9.  Nonattachment to results
10. What matters most?

To clean hummingbird feeder

Here is a trick for cleaning your feeder. Put about 3 Tbls. of white vinegar mixed with two cups of water in the feeder. Add about 1/2 cup of white uncooked rice. (I use a funnel) and shake. The friction from the rice will clean even the dark mold off of the inside. Rinse well before filling.

Ordinay Grace by William Kent Krueger

In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way.
And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one.  It may not be the miracle you've prayed for.  God probably won't undo what's been done.  The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning adn be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.
Jesus suffered through the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father.  For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice.  p 195

I'd hoped for a kind of miracle that day, hoped for something like the joy that had filled me on the Sunday before when my father had stood and delivered his brief, miraculous sermon.  And if not joy then peace at last.  But as we entered the gate of the cemetery I felt only grief knifing deep into my spirit.  p. 267

I know from my studies and from my life that there is no such things as a true event.  We know dates and times and locations and participants but accounts of waht happened depend upon the perspective from which the event is viewed.... p. 306

Soul Surfer

...for me, knowing that God loves me and that He has a plan for my life that no shark can take away is like having solid rock underneath me.  Look, lots of bad stuff happens to people.  That's life.  And here's my advice:  don't put all your hope and faith into something that could suddently adn easily disappear. And honestly, that's almost anything. The only thing that will never go away, that will never fail you, is your faith in God.  p. 206

So I think this was God's plan for me all along.  I am not saying that God made the shark bit me.  I think He knew it would happen, and He made a way for my life to be happy and meaningful in spite of it happening.