This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
There is no better way to earn money than to do the things that you love to do. Money can flow into your experience through endless avenues. It is not the choice of the craft that limits the money that flows - but only your attitude toward money.
People | Understanding | World |
In order to be one, you must first be two.
Commitment | Love | Marriage | Relationship | Security | Story | Will | Writing |
The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction.
Growth | Need | Problems | Quiet | Society | Society | Brevity | Learn |
The pastoral vocation in America is embarrassingly banal. It is banal because it is pursued under the canons of job efficiency and career management. It is banal because it is reduced to the dimensions of a job description. It is banal because it is an idol – a call from God exchanged for an offer by the devil for work that can be measured and manipulated at the convenience of the worker. Holiness is not banal. Holiness is blazing.
Language was a long time without having any other words than the names which had been given to sensible objects, such as these, tree, fruit, water, fire, and others, which they had more frequent occasion to mention.
Distinguish | Fear | Ideas | Metaphysics | Reason |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.
Sabbath is not primarily about us or how it benefits us; itÂ’s about God and how he forms us. ItÂ’s not, in the first place, about what we do or donÂ’t do; itÂ’s about God completing and resting and blessing and sanctifying. These are all things we donÂ’t know much about; they are beyond us but not beyond our recognition and participation.
Day |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
I hold more and more surely to the conviction that the use of masks will be discovered eventually to be the freest solution of the modern dramatist's problem as to how -- with the greatest possible dramatic clarity and economy of means -- he can express those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of psychology continue to disclose to us.
Dirty | Little | Marriage | Pain | Play | Time | Ugly | Think |
If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.
Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |