“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration,  the rest of us just get up and go to work.” -Stephen King I enthusiastically agree that to be a serious writer you can’t passively sit back and wait for ideas to fall into your lap. Our calling is to go out and grab inspiration by the horns. I…

  “Hidden in the deepest darkness is the greatest light. It’s our job to light up a world of darkness, to reflect God’s light in this world.” -Rabbi Reuven Wolf   Hanukkah begins this evening and ends on the evening of December 30 this year. I picked this quote because it honors Hanukkah, but I…

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?” -Bob Hope Yes, we could and should love others every day of the year, but this Christmas I would like to place love on the top…

“The meaning of life is to find your gift.  The purpose of life is to give it away.” –Pablo Picasso In this season of giving I can’t help but feel anxiety and tension about what to give to whom and how much to give to how many — not to mention what I want for…

Did you know that yesterday was St. Andrew’s Day, which is an official national holiday in Scotland? In case you’re wondering, Saint Andrew is represented in the New Testament to be the disciple who introduced his brother, the Apostle Peter, to Jesus. So whether you have Scottish blood or not, whether the bagpipes make you tear…

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into…

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.” -Albert Schweitzer We live in a world in serious need of kindness. While most of us probably can’t manage “constant kindness,” I bet the more we think about kindness, the more we can manage. So…

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices – today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.” -Kevyn Aucoin

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” -Martin…

“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!” -Winnie the Pooh As the leaves begin to burst into color here at Chautauqua, I feel like following Pooh’s suggestion to leap into the leaves — or perhaps better yet to treat…