Tao Te Ching: Verse 38
By catherine | May 14, 2008
The Master doesn’t try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.
The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.
The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.
Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.
Written by Lao-tzu. From a translation by S. Mitchell
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Random Thoughts
By catherine | May 12, 2008
This post has no topic; it will just be a random hodge-podge of what’s been going on. So if you came for something high-brow, you’ll be disappointed.
If you haven’t discovered Stuff White People Like, you should check it out. I just read item #99: Grammar and it is hysterical. You’ll think the comments are pretty funny too if you’re a liberal arts major, yuppie-type white like myself who is bothered by grammatical errors and hates Nascar. I also thoroughly enjoyed #98: The Ivy League and #9: Making you feel bad about not going outside, which I do with Lima Bean all the time. I can’t wait to see what the topic is for post #100!
Jagman and I just got back from our couples massage. He likes a relaxing massage and I like a tortureous, deep tissue massage that will leave me bruised and sore for three days. She spent an entire hour working on my shoulders and neck, and my shoulders are still hunched up and tight! “You need a vacation,” she said. Think I can turn that diagnosis in for medical leave???
I had a lovely Mother’s Day working on a new garden in our yard. Jagman rented a sod-cutter and cut it out before I woke up. Then we went to Home Depot and picked out some lavender, foxglove and roses. We got tomatoes for a different area; I’m hoping the deer don’t eat them, because we’ve never had fresh home grown tomatoes from our own yard. We finished planting just before the floods began; then we had a nice dinner with Mensa Child and Lima Bean. How about you???
Speaking of flooding, I am sick of this weather. We had to turn on our heat! Today, I wore a pantsuit with ankle boots. It is May 12th. This should not be! According to footwear guidelines, this is the no-socks, flats/sandals time of year. Ankle boots would be considered a fashion faux pa if it weren’t 48 degrees and raining. (Some students were actually wearing suede, knee-high boots, which I think, frankly, was going too far and would probably qualify for the What Not To Wear show. Just sayin’. It IS May 12th!)
Topics: life in general | 1 Comment »
Tao Te Ching: Verse 37
By catherine | May 11, 2008
The Tao never does anything,
yet through it all things are done.
If powerful men and women
could venter themselves in it,
the whole world would be transformed
by itself, in its natural rhythms.
People would be content
with their simple, everyday lives,
in harmony, and free of desire.
When there is no desire,
all things are at peace.
Written by Lao-tzu. From a translation by S. Mitchell
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Really?????
By catherine | May 8, 2008
We had an emergency situation at school today with a student and needed to contact a parent. His mother’s cell phone was turned off and went immediately to voicemail. His father was on a business trip in Kentucky and doesn’t own a cell phone (which is hardly believable, but that’s not the “really” part). The student says his mother probably has her phone off because she’s in class today at the local community college. So the counselor calls the security office of the school and explains that we have an emergency with a student’s child and need to reach her. The security officer replied, “We can’t get that information. We have no way of knowing what class she’s in.”
Really?????
So if we called back and said “Lisa Smith is a student there and she said she was going to bomb her class this afternoon” you’d have no way of knowing which class she was sitting in with a bomb???????????
Topics: life in general | 2 Comments »
Tao Te Ching: Verse 36
By catherine | May 7, 2008
If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.
The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.
Written by Lao-tzu. From a translation by S. Mitchell
Topics: Tao | No Comments »