Profundities and Door Sayings
This page is for short or medium thoughts that come to me or to others. They will appear in no particular order. Some will be profound, so deep they're shallow, some will be funny, some will just seem worth capturing for no apparent reason other than I want to post them somewhere I can retrieve them. Like everything else in Mentiscopia, this is simply a repository for ideas as they come to me. Perhaps someday I'll try to organize them.
Door sayings were sayings I had posted on my door (duh) at Norwich. I'll indicate them when I enter them by "DS:" Their date of entry represents the date I ran across them in my files, it may be followed by when they actually came to me if I know it.
DS: Sometimes you have to take less than you want to get what you need. (22 10 14) 02 01
The word, "eclectic," is favored by diverse groups. - Carl P
"God put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing & left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone." - Ravi Zacharias (@RaviZacharias)
There can never be a bigger half.
But there can always be a "bigger half." - Carl (14 02 10)
Every little bit will help a little bit. - Carl (14 02 28)
You'll never get out there if you never get out there. - Carl (14 10 17) to myself, in response to my hesitancy to put my ideas out there. This is the evening I posted a reply on Patheos and pointed people to my blog. Probably won't amount to anything, but who knows....
If one is taking care of a bet while going to bed, is one settling up or settling down? Carl (15 01 13)
We wear a pair of pants because we have two legs. Why don’t we wear a pair of shirts—we have two arms? Carl (16 01 12)
If you make your refrigerator colder, are you turning it up or turning it down? Carl and Chris (14 05 22)
What did the flower say to the bee? ... "This bud's for you." Carl (16 04 24)
Did you hear about the guy who underwent a sex change and then had a baby? -- He became transparent. (19 01 22)
DS: You CAN take it with you. . . . Have knowledge and fail to teach it to others! (19 01 25) (01 12 10)
Time pases slowly in the moment but passes quickly in the recall. (19 02 15)
"You can't convince people that you're wonderful and Jesus is wonderful at the same time." Tony Campollo
"You may never know that Jesus is all you'll need until Jesus is all you have." Mother Theresa Corrie Ten Boom
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
"Success often comes with a lot of creative failure." Not sure-my notes say Martin Luther King or John McCain
"If thinking doesn't make it so, what does it do?" (93 11 01)
'There are millions of possibilities, but only one will be realized." (19 07 23)
Overheard in the hallway outside my office door-why we are failing (pun intended) our students: (99 09 30)
"I didn't realize colleges gave out D's."
"I really enjoy physics, but you know, it's a lot of hard work."
"He gave us problems on our exams that aren't even in our book."
What did the life saver say to the rope? I'm better than you; I have no loose ends. (20 030 8)
The problem with our age is that the definition of truth has morphed from, "That which captures reality" to "Whatever spin you can give the consequences of your or other's thoughts and actions that make you more influential." (22 04 16)
Did you hear about the workaholic who felt he could never stop working?
When he died, he was cremated. He finally urned his rest. (23 06 21)
Summer simmers (2023 08 20)
History of the Republican Party: Honest Abe to dishonest Don. (2023 08 22)
A Short Fable
A man was walking in the woods one day, deep in thought. Suddenly he heard a voice saying, "Surrender, we've got you surrounded!" "Surrender? Surrender to what?" He replied. The voice responded, "Beauty."
This fable came to me fully formed for no apparent reason in the middle of the night, 22 05 05.
Are We Being Dumbed Down? (2022 06 13)
Today I found this defaced label in a men's room stall. I recognized the colors of the Ukrainian flag, and the "God bless you" message penned on the label. I wasn't sure what the Z scratched over the two meant, so I looked it up. 1
I wonder, "Who or what in this country can possibly support Russia in its diabolical invasion?" I can understand people in Russia supporting it since there the truth is vigorously censored. But I can't imagine anyone in the U.S. supporting it where daily we hear and see the ugly truth of Russia's flagrant disregard for human life, civilian property, and the international rules of war. So, do we have a secrete underground of Russian agents greasing the skids of dissension, and/or has our education system become so flawed that critical thinking is neither taught or condoned? 2
Incidentally, any country where it is dangerous to think is doomed to be less creative than a country where free thinking is allowed-I know, my ability to think was hampered by a father (he meant well and I still love him dearly), who insisted his way was the only way so any attempt to explain my reasoning fell on closed ears. I quickly learned to stop thinking. As an adult, this hampered me until I understood what had happened and learned how to think creatively and critically. Shortly thereafter (during the Cold War) I had the opportunity to spend an evening with two Soviet scientists. They struggled to think creatively during our conversations and the best they could do was wander "aimlessly" until they stumbled upon something relevant. I knew in that moment, that we would win the Cold War.
1https://www.npr.org/2022/03/09/1085471200/the-letter-z-russia-ukraine
2My conversations with active professors confirm that our youth are not being equipped to think critically or creatively. I regard this as one of the most troubling developments in our country today.
Condemn or Love?
We often rush to condemn those we deem devoid of God. This is wrong. Rather, we should love them; not to condone their behavior, but to see in them the dim presence of God and magnify that in our own mind and the minds of those we would condemn. The outcome of this approach is much more in line with God's will than any other approach. I know, I've seen it happen.
Truth--or Consequences?
If you have egg on your face, you are a yolkfellow. This came to me during a Bible study on 23 04 16 when I was trying to type the word, yoke-fellow and erroneously typed yolkfellow (because I wasn't thinking).
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