“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
Dr. Seuss
Category Archives: Unicoi County
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
Perspective
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Richard Bach, 1936-
American writer,
author of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”
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
Return to Your Roots
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)
Patches of godlight
Rocky Fork, Unicoi County, TN
“We — or at least I — shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions
if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason
will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so,
not have ‘tasted and seen.’ Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you
something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.
These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of godlight’ in the woods of experience.”
C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963, Irish author and scholar
“Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”
“Patches of Godlight: Father Tim’s Favorite Quotes”
by Jan Karon, author of the bestselling Mitford Years Series
Less Alone
Poppy field at Farmhouse Gallery, Unicoi, TN
“That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone,
that we are more deeply inserted into existence than
the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”
John Berger, 1926-
“The Sense of Sight”
art critic, novelist, painter
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
A Long Obedience
Linear Trail, Erwin
“There is a vast, rich reality of obedience beneath the feet of disciples…
For obedience is not a stodgy plodding in the ruts of religion,
it is a hopeful race toward God’s promises.”
Eugene Peterson, 1932-
“A Long Obedience in the Same Direction:
Discipleship in an Instant Society”
Forget It
Pine Ridge Falls, Unicoi County, TN
“One of the keys to happiness
is a bad memory.”
Rita Mae Brown
Rule of Faith
Rocky Fork, Unicoi County
Lex orandi, lex credendi
(the rule of prayer is the rule of faith)
In the end, what we pray is what we believe.
Afraid
View from Beauty Spot, Unicoi County
“Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh
and the living colors of earth and sky and sea?
Why am I afraid of love, I who love love?
Why am I afraid, I who am not afraid?
Why must I pretend to scorn in order to pity?
Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand?
Why must I be so ashamed of strength, so proud of my weakness?
Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor
in order to touch or to be touched.”
Eugene O’ Neill
Tempting Moment
“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place,
but far more difficult still,
to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
Be Authentic
Lower Higgins Creek, Unicoi County
“You should not live one way in private, another in public.”
Publilius Syrus, b. 100 B.C.
The Source
Red Fork Falls
“When you drink the water, remember the spring.”
Chinese Proverb
Tender Tennessee Christmas
My home in today’s lovely snow
“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you….
In spring, summer and fall people sort of have
an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country,
can you have longer, quiet stretches
when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
Ruth Stout, 1884-1980
Organic gardener
Find Another Door
Rocky Fork
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Helen Keller, 1880-1968
Just Listen
Sill Branch Falls
“Listening, not imitation,
may be the sincerest form of flattery.”
Dr. Joyce Brothers, b. 1927
Some Days
Rocky Fork
“Life is just one damned thing after another.”
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
Influential exponent of the Arts & Crafts movement
Trust
Sill Branch Falls, Unicoi County
“When you really trust someone,
you have to be okay with not understanding some things.”
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
