Santa delivered..............

 

................a new (and much needed) computer.  Handing both new and old off to the Geek Squad at Best Buy later this afternoon.  Apparently they need a day or three to work their magic.  Please keep the Intertunnel alive and well until I return.

Truly blessed this Christmas..........

 

be merry and bright...............

Eric Clapton....................White Christmas

 

Lift up your voice and sing..........

Keb' Mo'...............Merry Merry Christmas

 

Closely joined as flute and drum.............

Mannheim Steamroller....................Pat A Pan

 

Fear not, come rejoice..................

The Band.....................Christmas Must Be Tonight

 

Let your road be clear.......................

I Believe in Father Christmas.............Greg Lake

   

 They said there'll be snow at Christmas 

They said there'll be peace on Earth 

But instead it just kept on raining 

A veil of tears for the Virgin birth 

I remember one Christmas morning 

A winter's light and a distant choir 

And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell 

And their eyes full of tinsel and fire 

They sold me a dream of Christmas

 They sold me a Silent Night 

And they told me a fairy story 

Till I believed in the Israelite 

And I believed in Father Christmas 

And I looked to the sky with excited eyes 

Then I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn 

And I saw him and through his disguise 

I wish you a hopeful Christmas 

I wish you a brave New Year 

All anguish, pain and sadness 

Leave your heart and let your road be clear 

They said there'd be snow at Christmas 

They said there'd be peace on Earth 

Hallelujah, Noël, be it Heaven or Hell

The Christmas we get, we deserve

O tidings of comfort and joy..........

Ian Anderson & Band...God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

 

Following yonder star................

We Three Kings of Orient Are....................

 

Likely not much better..........

 

     What is it about the study of philosophy that tends to make brilliant minds stupid when it comes down to what are known as actual cases?  Consider Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the four great names in twentieth-century philosophy: the first was a Nazi, the second died certain that America was responsible for all the world's evil, the third was a Stalinist long after any justification for being so could be adduced, and the fourth lived on the borders of madness most of his life.  Contemplation of the lives of the philosophers is enough to drive one to the study of sociology.

-Joseph Epstein, Essays in Biography

Imperfection...............

 

     To deny imperfection is to disown oneself, for to be human is to be imperfect.  Spirituality, which is rooted in and revealed by uncertainties, inadequacies, helplessness, the lack and the failure of control, supplies a context and suggest a way of living in which our imperfections can be endured.  Spiritual sensibilities begin to flower when the soil is fertilized with the understanding that "something is awry."  There is, after all, something "wrong" with us.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection

Working on a philosophy..............

 

As good a time as any...............

 

Five things...................

 

change is difficult..................

 

When intellectuals discover that the world does not behave according to their theories, the conclusion they invariably draw is that the world must be changed. It must be awfully hard to change theories.

-Thomas Sowell

via

dogmas.....................

 

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed.  Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.  And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape.

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume 1

Let it be.....................

 

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be."

-Robert Frost, Acceptance

mastery...........................

     Self-discipline begins with the mastery of one's thoughts.  Without control over thoughts there can be no control over deeds!  Let us say, therefore, that self-discipline inspires one to think first and act afterward.  The usual procedure is just the reverse.  Most people act first and think afterward (if and when they think at all).

-Andrew Carnegie, as he answers questions from Napoleon Hill

All mixed up......................

Straight No Chaser.........The Christmas Can-Can

 

tough job.................

 

One secret to being a successful prognosticator? Never mention a number and a date in the same sentence.

-Spencer Jakab

a curious inversion.................

 

The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It’s a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. 

-Mark Steyn

via

participation...................

 

Rootedness is perhaps the most important and least know human spiritual need.  It is one of the hardest to define.  A human being is rooted through their real, active and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future. This participation is natural in that it sems automatically from place, birth, occupation and those around them.  Every human being needs to have multiple roots and to derive almost all their moral, intellectual and spiritual life from the environment to which they naturally belong.

-Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Joyful.....................

O Come, All Ye Faithful......................

 

Happy First Day of Winter.................

 

Nine hours, twenty-two minutes, and twenty-six seconds of sunlight today.  For what it is worth, on New Year's Eve we will have nine hours, twenty-five minutes, forty-six seconds of sunlight.  Sunlight chart here.

content with silence...................

 

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

-Ansel Adams

speaking in silence.................

 

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

-Ansel Adams

Good answer....................

 

I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” That usually doesn’t go over at all.

-Ansel Adams