Quotations Weblog

It was sprayed on a rock. I don’t know what it means, but graffiti has changed from incomprehensible gibberish to strange messages. It seems like the tagger is trying to communicate, but what is he trying to say? I can only imagine…

I took a crisp walk outside yesterday. Even though it was autumn, I found blooming flowers. I usually look upon this time of year with dread. This is the calm before the storm: the storm of the holidays, and the storm of weather that freezes.

This is the time of year before Advent. Some of us are waiting for the holidays. This is the preparation time. Last Sunday’s sermon was titled “What Are We Waiting For?” My minister suggested making a list of everything we are waiting for. Are they things that we are expecting to happen to us? Are they things that we need to make an important action to complete? What are you waiting for? What do you need to do to make your dreams come true? Do you need to rest patiently? Do you need a call to action? Take a look at everything you are waiting for this season and make the waiting less about dread and more about joy.

To read the sermon’s and thoughts of my minister, please visit him at ministrare:

• ministrare

I think this inmate took this quotation a little too seriously. After making an incredible escape from prison, Charles Victor Thompson was captured outside a liquor store.

• CNN.com – Escaped killer captured — drunk – Nov 7, 2005

To escape from prison, he told the guards he was going to meet with his lawyer in a booth. There, he changed into civilian clothes and convinced prison officials that he was an investigator for the Attorney General’s office and was escorted out of the prison. After making such a dramatic escape, I’m a little disappointed that he was arrested at Daiquiris Unlimited.

Had he read the greats, he would have stayed away from the liquor store and kept hiding.

Today’s first quote on The Motivational Quotes of the Day page left me a little flat:

Thanks, Cicero. That makes it so much easier. You’re right. Reason SHOULD direct and appetite SHOULD obey, but life isn’t all that easy. What do I do when my appetites seem to be running the show? You don’t have an answer for me? Lucky thing you weren’t around when Caligula was running Rome.

Of course, being right almost lost Seneca his head during Caligula’s reign. I like his advice better. Whenever my desires start to take over my consciousness, I concentrate on keeping busy with the many tasks that I have in my life.

Memory is such a strange thing. Sometimes, I wonder if the wrongs that I remember are true or not. There are so many people who have been interviewed about what they were doing when Kennedy was shot or when the space shuttle blew up that tell different stories after a few years. If our memories are not to be trusted, what can we trust?

A few months ago, I decided to believe differently. Since I can’t trust my memory, I decided that I would choose what I wanted to remember, even if it didn’t really happen that way. Instead of dwelling on the possible wrongs that were done to me, I consciously decided to believe that everyone involved was honorable and cared about me. I purposely changed my memory of the event so that I would feel better about it.

The truth? Who cares. What is important is what makes me feel better. I’m not going to go through my life remembering the least trivialities of life, even if that means that I have to surgically excise them from my memory.