What will you let life do to you this year?

When you were a young lad or lassie how many times were you asked, “What will you do in life when you grow up?”

I have a different spin on this which is not peculiar youth or young people: What will you let life do to you?

“What do I mean?”, you ask. It’s really quite simple: Every person, influence, work of art and music, hobby, passion, group, tribe and such is writing paragraphs and chapters in the unique storybook which is your life. Your very being may even form a dynamic circuit with select others.

Picture your life as a huge whiteboard. Now walk along and read the entries on it — “the good, bad and ugly”, if you will. As you look around you see the various people in your life writing on your “lifeboard”. What kind of story has emerged? Are you happy with it? If not, how many “bad content writers” can and should be banned from writing on your lifeboard in 2015?

Dr. Anthony G. Payne

 

Some questions for you

SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU: 

►Which dominates your life: Competition or sharing & harmonization?

►Is what you’ve been doing with your life consistent with your core nature, or not? That is, are you faithful to your true or authentic self or not?

►Do you tend to think your own thoughts or those of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, etc.?

►Are you nurturing what is genuine & true in life or something else entirely?

►Which is better: To be whole or something else?

►Do you resist learning what closed doors have to teach you?

►Have you consciously embraced your limitations?

►Are the “ought’s” & “should have’s” that bedevil you reflect who you really are?

►Do you run from failure and “experiments gone bad” or learn the lessons they offer and revise your life course accordingly?

►Have the roles you play in life, its pleasures, indulgences, escapes, or obligations, or something else eclipsed or undermined the “you beneath & within”?

►Do the conflicts and paradoxes in your life demand resolution, or embrace & integration into all that you are?

►Is your trip through the valley preparing you to fulfill your unique purpose in life?

The loss of civic virtue and the fall of the Roman Empire (and perhaps America as well)

Who among you has not read an editorial, op-ed piece or commentary that points out alarming parallels between America and the Roman Empire in decline? Do you believe America’s sun is setting? And if so, why? Is it the shift from democratic republic to oligarchy and/or plutocracy? Loss of our moral bearings? Rampant fear and paranoia? Racism? Xenophobia? Religious intolerance? Other evils? I’m sure you have your own pet theory. Is loss of civic virtue on your list? If not, why not? Need convincing that this belongs there? Then drop down, click the mp3 link under Rabbi David Wolpe’s name, and listen to his powerful sermon.

January
Mishpatim : Why Rome Fell and We Might, Too
keywords: Anton Chekhov, Benjamin Guggenheim, Christianity, civic virtue, Constantinople, Edward Gibbon, Egypt, Herman Cohen, John Jacob Astor, John Lukatz, lead, Mishpatim, physician Roman Empire, Rome Titanic, Tucson
January 29, 2011
Rabbi David Wolpe
mp3
drash – Rabbi Nicole Guzik
mp3

Virtual cloud watching for you

As a boy in Lubbock (Texas) I spent many lazy summer afternoons just lying prone on a bed of rich green grass and cloud watching (While, yes, looking for recognizable patterns or characters). I bet you did your fair share of childhood cloud watching too. If  so, you’ll appreciate this video immensely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf1P4WuQ8Lk 

And here’s a perspective-expanding book to read while you cloud watch: Faces in the Clouds by Stewart Guthrie, Ph.D.

Choctaw Doc