“The most important of life’s battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.”
David O. McKay
Category Archives: Unaka Mountains
Suffering
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
You too?
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:
“What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis
Shadows of Words
Country road on Unaka Mountain
“Love and business and family
and religion and art and patriotism
are nothing but shadows of words
when a man’s starving.”
O. Henry, 1862-1910
Native of Greensboro, NC
Ministry
“Ministry is the spiritual act of seeing and helping others see the
face of a loving God even where nothing but darkness seems to be present.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Dutch Catholic priest and writer
Something to Say
Looking towards Johnson City from Horseback Ridge
“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong.
I want to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in
words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole.”
Andrew to Alexa in “The Elect Lady” (1888)
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
Be Fruitful
Highbush Blueberry
“Every branch that does bear fruit,
He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
Father Tim, Mitford Series
What if?
Beauty Spot sunset, Unicoi Co., TN
“Look at the many ‘if’ questions we raise:
What am I going to do if I do not find a spouse, a house, a job,
a friend, a benefactor? What am I going to do if they fire me,
if I get sick, if an accident happens, if I lose my friends,
if my marriage does not work out, if a war breaks out?
What if tomorrow the weather is bad, the buses are on strike,
or an earthquake happens? What if someone steals my money,
breaks into my house, rapes my daughter, or kills me?”
……
Jesus says simply, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Dutch Catholic priest and writer
(as quoted by Brennan Manning)
When You Don’t Have To
Sunset at Horseback Ridge, Unicoi County, TN
“What you do when you don’t have to,
determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.”
Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936
English author and poet born in India
Deliberate
Unaka Mountain switchback
“The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding,
is to go deliberately forth and try to lift
with one’s sympathy the gloom of somebody else.”
Arnold Bennett, 1867-1931
English novelist
Starting Point
Unaka Mountain Road
“The toughest thing about success
is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.
Talent is only a starting point in this business.
You’ve got to keep on working that talent.
Someday I’ll reach for it and it won’t be there.”
Irving Berlin, 1888-1989
Walking Distance
Unaka Mountain
“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”
Steven Wright, b. 1955
Moving Ends
View of Roan Mountain and Unaka Mountain over town of Unicoi
About the time we think we can make ends meet,
somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964
Prosaic Days
“Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.”
Emily Dickinson
Perfect Pause
“Bittersweet October.
The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause
between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.”
Carol Bishop Hipps
Dark
Unaka Mountains
“I would rather walk with God in the dark
than go alone in the light.”
Mary Gardiner Brainard, 1837-1905
Can’t Hear
“What you do speaks so loud
that I cannot hear what you say.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
Patience
Unaka Mountain
“I am patient with stupidity
but not with those who are proud of it.”
Edith Sitwell, 1887-1964
British poet
On Time
Unaka Mountain
“If something anticipated arrives too late it finds us numb,
wrung out from waiting, and we feel — nothing at all.
The best things arrive on time.”
Dorothy Gilman, 1978
Be Vulnerable
Hoar frost on Unaka Mountain
“When we were children,
we used to think that when we were grown-up
we would no longer be vulnerable.
But to grow up is to accept vulnerability…
To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
Madeleine L’Engle, b. 1918
“Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, 1980
Spoke Too Soon
Unaka Mountain
“Speech is conveniently located midway
between thought and action,
where it often substitutes for both.”
John Andrew Holmes
“Wisdom in Small Doses”
Mute Appeal
Unaka Mountain Road
“Autumn wins you best
by this its mute appeal
to sympathy for its decay.”
Robert Browning, 1812-1889
English poet
Greatness
View from Unaka Mountain, looking towards Buffalo Mountain and Johnson City
“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you.
But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you
take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes.
Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley
can you ever know how magnificent it is
to be on the highest mountain.”
Richard Nixon, 1913-1994
U.S. President
Frustration
Unaka Mountain
“My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration:
set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes,
cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell,
simmer down and go about business as usual.”
Phyllis Diller, b. 1917
Comedienne
Awe
Sunset from Beauty Spot, Unaka Mountain
“Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul.
They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance,
of the briefness of our span upon this earth.
They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude
beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.”
Elizabeth Aston
The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy
