BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: freda underhill
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 09:06 AM

well, its after 1.00 am. my cat is asleep on my arm.

its cooled own, & has been raining. what a good sound.







night all!

freda

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 12:10 PM

Hi, Animaterra:

Your message gave me such joy! It sounds like Spring has already arrived in your heart. One of the songs we do that I've always loved is Looking Back. It was recorded in the 50's by Nat King Cole, and it's a song I've sung most of my life now. When I asked Frankie in the Messengers to sing it, I wrote a third verse to make it more specifically spiritual:

Looking back over my days
I never gave the good Lord praise
But if I had one more chance,
I'd never do that again

I know you have the CD of the Messengers, and the song is on there.
I've been doing a lot of "looking back" recently, and I certainly have been giving the Lord praise. Six months ago, my friend Joe couldn't walk six feet without being in extreme agony. He said it was excruciating pain. The root of the word is the same as crucify.. which has been described as the most painful death ever designed by man. Now, Joe seems younger than when I met him 8 years ago, and we can't stop rejoicing!

Perhaps the greatest beauty of quietude for me is that it gives me a chance to reflect on my life, and give thanks for all the blessings that have been bestowed on me, and my family and friends. And so, I give thanks for the lifting of your spirit and the realization that
when you love someone, they become a part of you. That can never be taken away.

I wrote a rare (for me) love song a few years ago with the chorus:

Love can be fickle, love can be vain
Ignored or rejected, but all the same
Whatever the cost, love is never in vain
For love lifts the lover

And you will always be lifted by the love you gave. And received.

Love,

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: ranger1
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 06:27 PM

Jerry Rasmussen, thanks for starting up this wonderful thread. All the positive energy here helped me counteract all the negative energy that I have been dealing with lately at work and then bringing home with me to infect my own living space. Today was a beautiful day full of optimism, regardless of all the petty bickering that goes on at work. Thank goodness it's only a temp job. I'm done on March 26th and then I go visit my mother in Washington State for ten days. After I get back, I go back to what I love: I'm a park ranger in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. I'm so glad I found this thread. And Brucie, I'll still be around, nice thing about where I live, is that the woods aren't very far away, no matter where one resides!

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: LilyFestre
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 06:31 PM

LOL LadyJean! I'm not a big fan of skunks myself...especially when they come a'visiting with our 8 dogs.....but I will say that they are the cutest little things and the only time I appreciate them much is when I catch the very first scent of one....I know warmer weather and more light is on the way!!!!!!   :)

Michelle *directing all further skunks to ClintonHammond's house*

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 09:42 PM

You're welcome, Ranger. We all need some positive energy... especially with all that's happening around us.

I was a Geology major and know what you mean about the beauty of the wilderness.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: dianavan
Date: 25 Feb 04 - 10:04 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 03:05 AM

Jerry has always been the eye of the storm. The center of calm, and the beauty of the Mudcat Cafe reality. He is our reflection of the glorious beauty that we all hold inside.
Jerry I'm always glad to see you start a thread for balance, because you know that once in awhile we all need you to start a thread for our balance. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 08:01 AM

Thank you, Rustic Rebel. I am driven to start threads like these, because I need them. Like everyone else, I am bombarded with cynical, angry outbursts, depressing and frightening news and challenges in my own life. I need a constant reminder of the beauty and hope in our lives, in order to keep my balance. There IS a heart to Mudcat, and many inspiring stories to tell. I start these threads because they lift me up.

The first verse of a song I wrote years ago says it all:

"I take cold comfort in thw ways of man
I see no justice in this land
I feel the anger of the un-stayed hand
May my heart find rest in Thee

There is a basic human, goodness, dignity and strength that is too often overlooked in the yammer of bad news. I see it in all those who have contibuted to this and other similar threads and I am thankful for it.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: GUEST,Ebbie
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 10:18 PM

What a great thread. I'm sitting here unwinding from the last few days of traveling around in Virginia and North Carolina. I had a wonderful time but the days were full.

I spent my teen years in Virginia so we drove around seeing all the places I used to know so well- Staunton. Waynesboro. Greenville. Fishersville. Some of them were so changed - so built up and busy or just plain gone - that it was only by lining them up with the mountains and the rise and fall of the nearer landscape that I could hope to pinpoint where a house had been 50 years and more ago or where an event had transpired that had helped form me all those years ago.

In Floyd, Virginia, on the way up to the Shenandoah Valley, for a few hours I visited a beloved friend and her husband. I last saw her 6 years ago but previous to that it had been much longer a separation. As I told other friends later, it had been 43 years since I'd last seen her but within five minutes I remembered why I had loved her so. She is sweet and witty and coltish and wise. And she'll turn 70 this year! The spirit needn't age.

Came home today through snow for the last 100 miles. Apparently the rains that came up from the Gulf of Mexico earlier in the week have reached us as a snowstorm. Practically everything is cancelled for tomorrow. And it's still snowing. But it's very pretty- and the brilliant red of the proud cardinals at the bird feeders in the snow is breathtaking.

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: GUEST,Ellenpoly
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 11:35 AM

My dear friend Bob (the Deckman) sent me a quote yesterday for my birthday, and it was the best present I received (even including the glow-in-the-dark statue of the Patron Saint of Television (I swear this is a real saint, better known as St Clare, of the "Poor Clares" fame, who in her last years would see visions of the mass she could no longer attend, and so was named Patron Saint of TV by Pope Pius XII in 1958) sent by my friend Carol, along with a "Shakespeare Action Figure, with detachable book and scroll"...I LOVE MY FRIENDS!!!
But back to the quote...

LIFE IS NOT A JOURNEY TO THE GRAVE WITH THE INTENTION OF ARRIVING SAFELY IN A PRETTY AND WELL PRESERVED BODY, BUT RATHER TO SKID IN BROADSIDE, THOROUGHLY USED UP, TOTALLY WORN OUT, AND LOUDLY PROCLAIMING . . . "WOW! WHAT A RIDE!"

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 06:36 PM

That IS a great quote! Ellenpoly. Your name is the first word I've come across that I could use to rhyme with melancholy. I hope in real life you are never thus..

A friend of mine told me that the reason people turn to religion late in life is that they're cramming for finals.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: GUEST,Ellenpoly
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 05:13 AM

Hey, Jerry, feel free to rhyme my name anyway you like, but I should warn you that it's really short for Polyhronopoulou (which rhymes with Holy Honolulu, if that's a help)..xx..ellen

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 11:10 AM

I've just returned from a 8,000+ attendee convention in Seattle. Pat and I (she went to museums and shops and things, I went to meetings and exhibits) returned to a newly carpeted basement room (blue with a faint hint of rose). This coming week the bookcases arrive, as do the books we've had in storage. We'll be moving furniture into the basement room this weekend.

We'll find quiet here. The hurly-burly is done, at least until our two friends arrive from the East next Saturday.

It's snowing right now. I want to build a fire (there's a fireplace), put out a comfortable chair, read a good book while sipping a good brandy, and watch the yard fill up with snow.

Maybe I'll do that this evening, and try to find the small, still center point of the hub.

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: dianavan
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 12:44 AM

Rapair - A fire in the fireplace is a wonderful idea when its time to relax. I love to sit in front of the fireplace when its rainy and grey or snowy. If I start to feel blue, it works like a charm. Something primal, I guess.

The "fire in the fireplace" is sooo big in Vancouver, that there is a Christmas program on t.v., THE YULE LOG (complete with crackle and hiss ), that is about eight hours long. It is very, very popular. I think it may be local but I'm not sure. Do any of you know of this program?

Just finished meeting a deadline. Whew, time for a glass of wine and a long hot bath.

AAAaaaaaaa - thanks, Jerry

d

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 01:23 AM

Mets, thanks for sharing that' It is fascinating!!

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: JennieG
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 01:25 AM

Quiet inside is as good, if not better than quiet outside.....
Yesterday for the first time in a long time I felt happy. Without going into details, suffice it to say that the past few years haven't always been good so hopefully things are starting to turn around.
Bought a bookmark the other day with a quote from T.S. Eliot:
>Time that you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time<
I reckon that is my new philosophy!
Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: freda underhill
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 03:47 AM

hi jenny

margaret walters bought me a good bookmark once - it said:

how pleasant it is to do nothing, and then to rest awhile afterwards..


I know how you feel.

all my best wishes

freda

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 07:34 AM

My 28 year old son, who has gone through more struggling in his life than I have at 68 had spent the last few years intensely concentrating on trying to become a better person and catch up with a lot of emotional growing up he was behind on. I talked to him the other night and where he usually has a whole check list of things he feels inadequate about, he was very relaxed. He says he's just decided to take a break on all this self-improvement stuff and enjoy listening to music, reading and doing nothing. I felt so good about that. He's become more comfortable with living with himself. Now, he deserves some quiet time, just to enjoy who he has become.

Jery

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 09:18 AM

I have a neice who's going to graduate from college this coming May. She likes to go hunting. Not because of the the shooting, but because it gives her *another* chance to sit alone and quietly in the woods, listening to herself and what's around her. Not many 22 year olds can do that. Heck, not many 92 year olds can do that!

(She rarely takes ammunition with her and has never shot anything but paper. She just likes to go do this, as well as take hikes alone in the woods and state parks. As for her safety, well, I wouldn't want to lay an unwelcome hand on her....)

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 01:48 AM

my brother in law Bill is a landscape artist.

he gains as much satisfaction from sitting in the hills or beaches at his easel, doing the initial paintings, as he does in the more developed semi abstract finished work in his studio. Landscape painting has given him hours, days, weeks and decades of time outdoors painting. He is a big, powerful farming man with strong opinions - but his paintings are very lyrical and sensitive.

he also paints from his boat, landscapes and oceanscapes.

When I went to visit my sister and Bill a couple of weeks ago, he gave me a beautiful painting, which is now in my living room. When I look at it, I feel his enjoyment of the trees in the painting, and his keen observation of the shapes, shadows and pinks and golden yellows of the countryside near Dungog.

Subject: RE: BS: Ahhhh! Sometimes quiet is good
From: JennieG
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 02:01 AM

Freda,

That painting sounds glorious, and I like your bookmark too, it's great! It's peaceful here, the cats have been fed, the windchime outside the kitchen window is slowly chiming (in the key of D Major - my Christmas present from Himself) and life is good.

The only drawback ----

I now have to turn into The Kitchen Goddess and feed the humans. I cook, he washes up.

Cheers
JennieG