"The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying." - Francois De La Rochefoucauld In Middle English, the word "conversation" denoted "living among, familiarity, intimacy". I love these shades of meaning because even the most mundane conversation can …
Category: Ideas Worth Spreading
What Good?
For as long as I can remember I've had mixed feelings about holidays. As much as I love the change in rhythm, I've never been able to look past the fact that many of our holidays in the United States celebrate and venerate what may well be humanity's greatest blunders. If the story of the …
Timing and Readiness
Yesterday morning my youngest son told me that he was hungry no more than 5 minutes after eating a big breakfast. I told him that it might be a good idea to wait a few minutes so that his stomach could report on its new contents and he exclaimed: "Daddy, I know how that works: …
The First Step
Watch the first step: it's a doozy! I am training a young Harris's Hawk for falconry at the moment and one of the most significant steps in manning (training) a hawk is getting it to hop from a perch to the glove for food. My new bird, Oya, did that last night! For the bird, …
Righteousness
I recently read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which was written in response to a written statement of public concern issued by a group of white religious leaders of the South. In it King described his rationale for non-violent demonstration in relation to the unjust segregation ordinances in place at the …
Force of Habit
We are, as they say "creatures" of habit, and we have a remarkable ability to develop and maintain patterns of behavior and function in way that allow us to get a lot done without much conscious thought. Because of this, much of what we do in a day ends up being more a matter of …
A Sense of Your Soul
Your soul is the constellation of your being, of your true inner identity. Its peculiar pattern of organization is the result of both inner and outer factors, or put in other terms, of things heavenly and earthly. The colors, shapes, shadings, and textures of your soul are unique to you. You are an individual for …
Love
Love has a strange and marvelous influence upon us. Its effect is multifaceted; love never touches us in just one way. Poets, musicians, philosophers, and artists have striven through the ages to describe love, but love is so vast, so complex, that even the greatest creative geniuses have scarcely managed to touch on the subject. …
Help
"He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it." ― Dante Alighieri My youngest brother, Jonathan, would not be one to say much about his desire to help other people when he recognizes that they are in need, but having watched him over …
Happy not Nice
My youngest son made a comment while we were trick-or-treating the other night that has stuck with me ever since. We had just met a particularly jolly neighbor of ours, an older gentleman, who was clearly a happy person when William said: "Daddy, I would much rather be with a happy person even if they …
Gregory Hake 