“Nothing is more desirable than to be released from affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be deprived of a crutch.”

                   - James Baldwin

If you watched The Vancouver Olympics, you know this is Canadian skater Joannie Rochette, whose indomitable will and courage provided us with a fresh perspective on this week’s Point-To-Ponder.

“Often men can see farther through a tear than through a telescope.”  - Lee J. Muir

“Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you.  It is meant to, and it couldn’t do it better.  Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruitation.” 

                                                                - Florida Scott-Maxwell

(This is an interesting quote, especially considering the author uses the word fruitation which does not exist in the two dictionaries that I checked, and that includes dictionary.com.  Perhaps if we substitute the word “growth,” the paragraph may be read a bit more correctly, though I suspect the meaning we derive will have changed little.)

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly, being loved in spite of yourself.”

                                                            - Victor Hugo

“Statistically, the probablility of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in contented dazzlement of surprise.”

- Lewis Thomas, The Lives of A Cell: notes of A Biology Watcher

“You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you gotta suit up for them all.”

                                                - J. Askenberg

The soul’s journey, is a sole journey, but encouragement from the sidelines is strongly encouraged, and that is why I’m cheering for YOU!

                                                        - R.J.S.

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you. “

                                 - Wayne Dyer

“The power that makes the grass grow, fruit ripen, and guides the bird in flight is in us all.”

                                      - Anizia Yezierska, Red Ribbon on a White Horse

“Every friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

                               - Anais Nin