live in love

prom weekend, Jenny's b-day month -- this seemed appropriate -- don't forget to make life a dance

I Hope You Dance-Lee Ann Womak

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances but they're worth taking
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth making

Don't let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

Dance
I hope you dance
(Dance)
I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder
(Dance)
Where those years have gone
(Dance)

it's been much too long - gotta start up again with a bang!

“I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."

"Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life.

We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them."

"Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls."

"What we are trying to do may be just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."

Greg Mortenson

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time

I wish I was at St. Ben's...

I'm At St. Ben's YouTube Video

(well, I guess not right now since they're on Easter Break, but in general I miss college!)

Holy Week kick-off

Are we living for PROXIMITY to Jesus or INTIMACY with Jesus??


http://urminneapolis.org/mediaSermons.php
 Look for Judas: Small Decisions
**sermon not up yet but the others are great, should be soon**

don't worry about tomorrow

Finish every day and be done with it.

You have done what you could;

some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;

forget them as soon as you can.

TOMORROW IS A NEW DAY;

you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
   
³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34

Grief may be a thing we all have in common, but it looks different on everyone.

It isn't just death we have to grieve. It's life. It's loss. It's change.

And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, has to hurt so bad. The thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime.

That's how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can't breathe, that's how you survive.

By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much.

Grief comes in its own time for everyone, in its own way.

So the best we can do, the best anyone can do, is try for honesty.

The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief is that you can't control it.

The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes.

And let it go when we can.

The very worst part is that the minute you think you're past it, it starts all over again.

And always, every time, it takes your breath away.

-Grey's Anatomy

cherishing spring

I found this online, it's beautiful...makes me want to go out and take a walk through the woods.
I wish my pictures would turn out this amazing!

Source:
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=10419&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=13269

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." -Jean-Paul Sartre

Linkin Park sings this in "Hands Held High"
Other lyrics from the song that are powerful:

Jump when they tell us they want to see jumping.
Fuck that, I want to see some fist pumping.
Risk something.
Take back what's yours.
Say something that you know they might attack you for

Cause I'm sick of being treated like I have before.
Like I'm stupid standing for what I'm standing for.
Like this war's really just a different brand of war.
Like it doesn't cater to rich and abandon poor.

 

Twins Opening Day!

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball.  I'll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.  ~Rogers Hornsby

I see great things in baseball.  It's our game - the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.  Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman

I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen.  ~Bob Lemon, 1981

 

One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” -Nolan Ryan