Inspirational Thoughts...

Besides loving photography, I love to collect old books. I find it inspirational when reading ones thoughts that are over 100 years old. Could the author have ever imagined that something written in 1870 would be embraced by someone in the year 2007? As I turn the delicate pages of one of my favorite books, "Golden Thoughts on Mother, Home, and Heaven", the binding has finally lost it's will to live. The threads are barely holding some of the page placements. But still... My heart is touched each time I "Stay in the Day", embrace the moment of cuddling up and enjoying my visit with authors of old. The enjoyment of good poetry and literature is to me like having a tea party in my mother's Iris garden. Please enjoy a few excerpts of this 137+ year old book from some of the contributing writers:

Home Adornments: "A room without pictures is like a room without windows. Pictures are loop-holes of escape to the soul, leading to other scenes and spheres. Pictures are consolers of loneliness; they are books, they are histories and sermons, which we can read without the trouble of turning over the leaves." by Rev. Dr. Downing

Life's Rests: There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by "rests," and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him beat the time with unvarying count, and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the "rests." by John Ruskin

Kind Words at Home: Speak kindly in the morning; it lightens the cares of the day, and makes the household and all other affairs move along more smoothly. Speak kindly at night, for it may be that before the dawn some loved one may finish his or her space of life, and it will be too late to ask forgiveness. Speak kindly at all times; it encourages the downcast, cheers the sorrowing, and very likely awakens the erring to earnest resolves to do better, with strength to keep them. Kind words are balm to the soul. They oil up the entire machinery of life, and keep it in good running order. ~Anonymous

Now, how much better can that get? What a way to end my day. I'm paraphrasing something my Spiritual Mentor often said from his pulpit, "Five years from now who we will have become like will be as a result of the books we read and the people we hang with." I totally believe that, and have witnessed that. My hope is that I always measure the things I put into my spirit by the books I read and the people I allow into my life. Discernment is a powerful thing. I end my day with a prayer that Father God will continue to direct me in the path He has chosen for me.

Staying in the Day, ~CC